Why I travel

Posted on 11 January 2011

Wow, a First Blog Post. I haven’t done one of these in just over four years!

So, I guess I should tell you a little about how I came to be blogging here, an introduction if you will. I do have my own personal blog, which is more like a diary than anything else and filled with my recommendations on what I’ve thought about books I’ve read, movies I’ve watched and plenty of other things.

And since I started that blog, my travel posts have been my favourites by far. They’re the ones I go back and re-read more often than anything else. And I now have plenty of them. You see, my goal is to do at least one international trip each year.

It started rather naïvely in 2003 during a break-up. I was young and still believed that all there was to life was working, falling in love, getting married, buying a house together and living happily ever after. The travel bug had yet to bite. During the break-up, he told me he knew I’d follow him wherever he wanted to go, but where did I want to go? I had no answer.

That is probably the most tangible pivotal moment in my life. Since then, I’m a different person. After that I sat down and really thought about what I wanted to do and tried to answer the question of where I wanted to go.

I’ve been to 21 countries since then and am planning on adding another 3 to the list in 2011. Mostly I’ve travelled up and down my own timezone, which means that a vast majority of those countries are on the African continent. I can’t really explain why, but when I decided to start travelling for myself, and therefore choosing destinations for myself, I wanted to explore “my own backyard” before heading off to all the usual destinations. Something in me just tells me that first world countries are for when I’m older.

Also, I've done most of these trips on my own. Not completely on my own, I was with tour companies, but I mean without anyone I knew joining me. Occasionally whatever boy I was dating at the time came along, once I was joined by a now-friend and once even by a family member. But mostly it was on my own. I’m hoping that’ll be inspiring to anyone who is reading, but mostly I hope it’ll be especially inspiring to my much younger girl cousins.

The other thing I’ve learnt over my travels is that I want to see and experience unique things (that appeal to me, should go without saying). And I do have a bucket list, or what I call my “Life List”, so that lately whenever I’m considering where to next, I try and do the trips that will cover multiple experiences on my list.

I also don’t think about the next destination until the previous trip is all done and blogged and, honestly, usually not till the start of the year. Except Peru, Peru has been on the back-burner since 2005 and I finally got there last year. Also, I started planning this year’s trip a few weeks before the ends of last year. Which has turned out to be very lucky indeed because it seems likely I’ll be travelling in April (I seem to travel almost exclusively in the second half of the year, actually) so I need to get booking!

Countries I’ve visited before 2003 – not including South Africa:
Namibia, Mauritius, France, Czech Republic, Italy, Austria, the Netherlands, the UK and Swaziland.

Countries I’ve visited after 2003 – not including South Africa:
Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Lesotho, Singapore, Thailand, Egypt, Kenya, Uganda, the DRC, the UK, Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Tanzania (Zanzibar), Canada and Peru.

Next up: Russia, Mongolia & China!
 






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