Many people ask me now before I really left "When are you coming back from your vacation?", others ask why I am escaping life and I have also heard that I´m irresponsible for avoiding "being an adult".
So I´m just going to clarify a few things. Almost everyone I know wants to travel, they all look forward to that 2 week-vacation in Thailand or the shopping weekend in London. But for me that isn´t traveling, that is being a tourist.
Ever since I was a child I felt that I was different (not implying I´m somehow magically special), I wanted to learn about animals, I found my passion in that field and I wanted to see the world. The more I learnt of it in school, the more I wanted to visit new places. I made those list "Places I want to see before I die", and I think I really need to hurry up if I´m going to make it before my 80th birthday! I´m not a girl who wants a 9-5 job or knowing exactly what will happen in the next 2 years, heck I barely know what I´ll be doing tomorrow!
I have an urge to be spontaneous, if that is by going to the store and figure out there what I want for dinner or randomely booking a flight-ticket doesn´t matter, as long as I can be spontaneous.
Maybe I will "settle down" as people tend to call it, but that is not in my near future, and that is okay. I don´t need to follow the "normal route of life", I have my university degree to fall back on, and I plan to use it when I travel. I have had comments about why I "wasted all those years and all that money" to get my education if I´m not going to use it anyway...Well I don´t see it like that, I see it as a great foundation for volunteerwork abroad, getting new connections and have a profession I truly love. But that doesn´t mean I need to get a fulltime job at an animalhospital and work there for 45 years...I want to use my degree to pursue my dreams, WHY is that so hard to understand?
When I mention traveling longterm people automatically think of fancy resorts, huge suitcases and a poolbar , and they think that is how I want to live my life and therefore I need to be filthy rich. But what I want to do is to see places no one writes about in travelmagazines, i want to eat where the locals eat, volunteer with animals so I can put my skills to use, volunteer with children because it´s a good thing to do, I want to swim in oceans and shower in a waterfall, I don´t just want to travel because it´s cool, I want to trael to find myself, to grow as a person and to help others grow. Hopefully I can even make a difference in someones life.
I want to get out of my comfortzone and try things I couldn´t even dream of, I want to be lost in a new country, and by being lost finding parts of myself I never knew existed and also finding places I would never have seen if I wasn´t lost. I wan´t to sit in the mountains with the cheapest bottle of wine I could find, with people I just met and share stories and knowledge, knowing that they KNOW and understand since they are also filled with wanderlust.
I have this amazing backpack, it´s a purple one and I fell in love with it the first time I saw it and I knew THAT was the one I would carry with me around the world. That might be a little pathetic to have a strong bond to your backpack haha but I can´t help it, haha
So whatever fits in that bag will be my life, I want to marvel at languages and buildings, I want to try wierd food but most of all I want to feel free and not have anything that makes me feel tied down.
I also have an urge to meet new people who might not share my thoughts and views on things but still can be a good friend or just an interesting acquaintance. I want to share stories, knowledge and learn about their history and the cultures of their country. I want to meet people that will stay in my life one way or another, despite the facts that there are oceans and half a world between us.
I want to see what the world has to offer, I strongly believe that life wasn´t meant to be lived in only one place, how can we say we know life when the only life we know is our own. We don´t know how the people in South Africa live, how the orphanages is staying afloat in Rwanda, how the people care for stray animals in Spain or how different people cook their food. We have no idea if we only spend time in one place and I want to know, I want to see, I want to live!
I want to see the sun rise and set in different parts of the world and marvel at the beauty of the moon over different oceans. I want to skinny dip, ride in a small aircraft and skydive, but I also just want to sit at a local café and read a book and taste their biggest cake.
When I go back to Sweden, I want to feel that I have homea all over the world, I want to feel that I have family all over the world and I want to feel like I made as big of a difference in peoples lives as they did in mine!
When I say I want to travel the world, I mean I want to LIVE in the world, I want to be a citizen of the world, not just of Sweden. I want to know that I left pieces of my heart in all the places I visited.
And if all this makes me irresponsible, naive and childish, then so be it. Because experience is invaluable and can never be replaced by all the money in the world!
A beach in Khao Lak - Thailand
A cheap local meal in Thailand
On my way to an adventure in Thailand, going by a ongtail boat to see mangroove trees
Never miss a moment of your life, find what you are passionate about and GO FOR IT!
Love / F
