Why I'm travelling to Asia for over a year, and how travelling might change your mind
The Move
On Wednesday the 1st of March, I will leave the country, this continent, and travel to India. I do not plan on coming back for at least a year.
I am travelling with just a single, hand luggage, backpack.
During this time, I want to volunteer to help some of the poorest people in the world, to explore how minimal things are required to be happy...
and perhaps become a monk.
Why?
Now that's a good question.
By writing here, I want to understand my own internal nonsense that has gone on to cause me to want to leave.
More importantly, provide something interesting, maybe even useful, to those interested in travelling, and living differently.
What will this include?
- Why travel can be used to change the ways we think
- How going to less developed countries might wake you up
- To try and justify why my sharing my nonsensical, travel-babble online might be worth your time
I'm new to this though. So hopefully I don't lose you too quickly. Thank you in advance for your patience.
How travelling can change your mind
If the holiday is only going to last a short amount of time, after you return home the temporary enjoyment will be gone and you're back to the usual way of living.
We may finally escape the depressing perils of UK weather, but of course, no sun when we return.
So why go travelling in the first place?
I am interested in seeing how I can make the most of my time when travelling, by using it to inform how I live the rest of my life.
In other words, how can you try and change your mind through travelling?
I feel this might be far more useful, and interesting.
#1 Going beyond "my" life
When I've read more about other countries and their wealth, we people here in the West (e.g., UK, USA, and Europe), are quite privileged.
At least a billion people live in quite extreme poverty around the world.
And I, like most people, have grown up with the narrative that a good life is one where you become educated, make great relationships, find work that is enjoyable, and do what you love.
But I get the sense this has the undercurrent of me me me
A life that I enjoy, work that makes me fulfilled, and finding fun in my life.
I do not feel there is somehow something wrong with enjoying life.
I spend enough time worrying about my own problems, and people pointing out how I can be too self-centred (sorry), that I couldn't begin to tell other people how to live.
I'm going travelling for me after all... So I've already knocked myself out of the competition for who can be the most selfless traveller.
So how might travelling open you to others?
In spite of such poverty and differences in quality of life, it might be eye-opening to go and see life not focused on our own 4 walls of security.
In particular, in somewhere like Asia and India, where there are such large wealth gaps between people who have so much, and so little.
It might provide a better appreciation of what I do have, and to not live taking that for granted.
And perhaps how other people might need help more than we currently understand.
And what better way to get a different perspective on
- how lucky we are,
- how much other people might need help,
- and how rewarding helping them might be,
than travelling to different cultures and trying to directly interact with different people? and those that might have less than you?
Direct experience, not facts and figures
Intellectually we know there's poverty elsewhere.
I certainly feel many parts removed, and protected, from what that experience must be like.
I sense until you see the reality of other's situations for yourself, eyes wide open, with all the senses and smells (including those which might make that new exciting street food come back up), it's difficult to really appreciate enough to change how you might live differently.
That's why a key reason I'm going travelling to a place that has such a different culture: to get a direct experience of how other people live, and to understand what it might be like to live with substantially less privilege than I've been born into.
And hence why we're here: to share what I'm learning.
Or at least try... and likely fail.
How to do that?
That's for a future post.
#2 Take your travels beyond the destination
As we go forward into life, travelling in places we're unfamiliar might provide some inspiration:
Perhaps, of going beyond a life that only focuses on finding fulfilment in the ways we're used to. And seeing how other people might need our help.
Even though you may leave the places you travel to, the understanding and perspective you gain travelling can endure.
Despite you physically leaving, your experience can continue to inform how you can live your life. Hence, we can travel with the intention of going the comforts of living as we would at home, and being in more difficult, challenging, and culturally new situations.
And hopefully learning something important for when we come back.
#3 Travelling to change your life when you return,
Wouldn't it be interesting to try and get a direct experience of how different cultures live, how people live with less and whether are they happy, and to open up the possibility of how you might live differently yourself?
The classic life plan follows like:
Do education, get a job, and then keep working in that job for the weekends and everything around it is often the standard pushed.
Does that sound restricting? What if there were different ways?
Hopefully, by travelling to other places, we can begin to appreciate if we can live differently.
We can break out of the usual loops we get in, with people who think the same, and with the same level of constant comfort.
but an effort has to be made to do so - to actively seek out different situations and people, and to be open to how it changes us.
Changing my mind, and perhaps changing yours
On this blog, I hope to share the reality of exploring less fortunate places, what it's like living with less, and really what beauty and joy can be found in travelling.
(really just a more grandiose way of saying I'm going to be blogging about my travels)
In doing so, I hope even just begin to help other people get a sense of what the rest of the world is like (ideally without the vivid details of what round 2 of that street food looks like.)
If you become even remotely inspired to travel, or reconsider what life's about, then my masterful scheming will hopefully be doing some good.
Why listen to anything I have to say?
I am not an expert on travelling, life or anything in between. If you've read this far in, you likely have a better attention span than me.
I am using this space precisely because I am a complete amateur:
I want to write from the perspective of someone who knows very little.
This amateur perspective might be useful to people who are not experts themselves, as you can watch a beginner like yourself learn.
I'll try and answer some questions like these, and almost definitely be confusing:
- What can be found in relinquishing all and becoming a monk?
- What is the real experience of people living in poorer places?
- What is it like working with people in different cultures?
- How do we actually travel well? And how to avoid (and how to fail at avoiding) the deli-belly
More than anything, I hope you can tell me all the ways my perspectives and writing is wrong and can be improved.
That's precisely how anything I learn might be made more useful for you and others. Don't hold your punches.
Welcome to this blog and travelogue. I hope you find something interesting.
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