This post was pub­lished over 700 days ago and there­fore may not rep­res­ent cur­rent Out­side Con­text think­ing or opin­ion. Please, do not let that detract from your enjoy­ment of it!

The flat is empty — everything is in storage.

I leave work tomor­row for good — can’t wait!

The bags are packed — full to the brim for a year’s worth of travel!

Basho is going global.

On the 22nd of June, Cesca and I are leav­ing these shores to go on another adventure:

Bilbo: [voice] It’s a dan­ger­ous busi­ness, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no telling where you might be swept off to.

We will be vis­it­ing Aus­tralasia, Indoch­ina, China, India and Japan and are expect­ing to spend at least a year on the road (but who knows?)  The only things we have booked are the flights and will be winging everything else, so it should be a real adventure!

From tomor­row I will be writ­ing an entire new series of art­icles about this little jaunt.  Out­side Con­text will be a true journal with writ­ing, video and photo’s of our travels.

So, what brought all this about?

For Cesca the urge to travel is seem­ingly in her blood and some­thing totally innate.  The ques­tion is actu­ally a non-question; why travel?

Why not?

For me it has always been dif­fer­ent, for while I have been abroad many times, just drop­ping out and leav­ing for a long time has never been high on my “life-list”

But then a few things happened.  Not enough in isol­a­tion but together they formed a flood.  One of my friends got can­cer.  My Grand­father died.  My father got made redund­ant.  Cesca and I struggled to find a happy life in the city. We came into a little cash.  The hous­ing mar­ket went into insan­ity (and looks like it’s about to die of a heart attack).  The UK con­tin­ued to become a sur­veil­lance state.  etc, etc…

So the ques­tions I want to answer are: “Is there a bet­ter life out there?” and “What do I want to do with my life?”

Should be nice and easy…

You see, I couldn’t help but notice that many of my friends took a real long look at their life upon turn­ing 30. Almost as if the fam­ous “mid life crisis” had, in my gen­er­a­tion, star­ted early.  As soon as you hit the-big-three-o.  It cer­tainly happened to me and these thoughts con­tin­ued in me until they built enough iner­tia to make changes.

Morph­eus: I know *exactly* what you mean. Let me tell you why you’re here. You’re here because you know some­thing. What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s some­thing wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driv­ing you mad. It is this feel­ing that has brought you to me. Do you know what I’m talk­ing about?

Cesca and I sat down and had a chat and the wheel of life star­ted turning.

Nat­ur­ally, I star­ted read­ing travel books, came across the works of Alan Watts and real­ised that I had always thought of life with ana­logy to a jour­ney.  A pil­grim­age with some sort of big reward at the end and the mean­ing was to chase that reward until you caught it.  Hence I went from school to Uni­ver­sity and then into work and that led me to the city as the junior mem­ber of an IT depart­ment and up until becom­ing the man­ager in 2005.

But now I see it a little dif­fer­ently and have real­ised that it is a musical thing and the mean­ing of life is to dance along the way. So, that is what we shall be doing.

No doubt after a year in smelly back­pack­ers’ hos­tels I will rue that thought!

So, please join with me and share in the upcom­ing highs and lows of inter­na­tional travel; the delays, the sights, the smiles, the tears, the thoughts and feel­ings, the new friends, excite­ment and amaz­ing vis­tas!

If you have ever wondered if drop­ping out of the rat race would be more fun, this is your chance to find out without leav­ing your seat!

Regards,

Basho

Related Posts

• Palaces of Hue, Viet­nam. Lost in time.
  What is left after the Amer­ican bomb­ing of Hue is not much, but it is still beau­ti­ful. Th…
• Out­side Con­text New Zea­l­and art­icles now on iPhone
  The most com­mon ques­tion I have been asked by people after return­ing home is, “which was your favour…
• Goa: The Beach Life
  I lay on my back and tried to relax. The sound of rolling waves crashed back and forth in the distan…
• Varanasi: City of Gods – A Basho Film
  How does it make one feel to be in one of the most “holy” cit­ies in the world?…
• San Fran­cisco
  24 hours in “The City!” …
• James’ Travel Pack­ing
  What do you need for a year long adven­ture?  Don’t ask me, it’s my first time!  Nev­er­the­less, I am t…