Eden, National Geography, Nat Geo Wild, and the Travel channel have become common place on my TV and have entwined the urge to travel to foreign lands into the fabric of my being.
Deep huh? I’m not joking.
It’s such an odd feeling. I would usually sit at my computer screen and scroll for hours through YouTube videos or through the pages of my favourite Tumblr blogs however, somehow, recently I haven’t wanted to do that at all. I’ve been researching into taking a year-long gap year to some of the most beautiful places in the world. It’s a lot harder than anyone would first think, so much goes into planning such a trip, but isn’t that part of the fun? I have a list of places I would like to go to and see however my research has uncovered that I am a traveller that wants to go everywhere and anywhere and so I have had to think really hard about where I want to go and what I want to do.
Ultimately, for me, this would be a learning experience. I hope to become involved in some of the programmes I’ve researched, one being teaching English to children in China for 6 months (easier, and not as costly as one might think.) I want to emerge myself within culture and taste foreign foods, smell foreign smells and see foreign sights. I’m not interested in a tourist holiday, yes I want to see the sights but I wouldn’t mind going off of the beaten track aswell. It’s all early days, but hey, I’m going to need a lot of time to plan.
Here’s my list;
China, Vietnam, Thailand, India, Tanzania, Rio De Janeiro
and here’s my goodnight….
I beg young people to travel. If you don’t have a passport, get one. Take a summer, get a backpack and go to Delhi, go to Saigon, go to Bangkok, go to Kenya. Have your mind blown, eat interesting food, dig some interesting people, have an adventure, be careful. Come back and you’re going to see your country differently, you’re going to see your president differently, no matter who it is. Music, culture, food, water. You’re going to get a sense of what globalization looks like. It’s not what Tom Friedman writes about, I’m sorry. You’re going to see that global climate change is very real. And that for some people, their day consists of walking 12 miles for four buckets of water. And so there are lessons that you can’t get out of a book that are waiting for you at the other end of that flight. A lot of people come back and go, “ooooooh.” And the lightbulb goes on.”
– Henry Rollins
thelondonlady 