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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

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