The Accidental Traveler

The Accidental Traveler -

I can all the places one hand I count visited before I was 23 traveling, was not part of my upbringing. It was not something that my family outside the occasional road trip has to visit my grandmother in Florida.

In college I skipped studying abroad, because I was afraid I might miss something. I went twice to Montreal, because if you are under 21 and not spring break in Cancun afford, Montreal is the next place to go if you live in Boston. It was not until I was 23 that I left North America to visit Costa Rica, and I only did it because that's what I thought, what you should do when you are working. With two weeks of vacation a year, you should go somewhere and have fun, right? It was not that I had a burning desire to travel; it was just something I thought I had to do.

But the trip to Costa Rica changed my whole life. After that I was hooked. I was in love. I was hooked. I needed to travel in my life.

A few months ago I told this story during an interview Radio and the host called me a random traveler.

I liked this sentence. The accidental travelers

I never thought about before, that way had thought, but it is apt

At the beginning I had no burning desire to travel, ..; it was just something that happened. Tourism became a part of my life only as an afterthought. I woke never nomadic wanting to be up. Has to be

a random traveler called me think about the trips we take as a people.

Are they intentionally or pass them only? How often do we discover our travel only while we are in the middle of it?

I think about the journey that I have met. It began as a simple desire to travel more, then changed to a stronger desire to take a year out, and then to travel forever been wanting to. I fell in travel literature as a way to make that happen.

Now I can not imagine doing anything else with my life me.

Every step, every twist and turn, happened without prior planning or thinking. In the words of Robert Frost, "leads to fashion to fashion."

I have found my way only while I was there.

My mind goes back sometimes when I was 23 and Costa Rica. What of Costa Rica was so special that I showed it my life on my own terms can live. Travel allows me to do what I wanted when I wanted. It was Saturday of each day and filled it with endless possibilities.

I think of my friend Chris Guillebeau, who recently completed his journey in the world to visit any country before his 35th birthday, and as he described his journey as one that evolved over time. :

you want to see

a few countries then a few more

one day you wake up, and you're on. To see a striving every country in the world.

Just like you wake up one day and you realize you have become a world traveler.

Do not know how it happened. You can not really the exact moment you identify or changed your life.

But it did.

turns your one-year plan in the 18 months, then for 36 months, and then, suddenly, you are celebrating five years on the road.

You're a traveler. It's in your blood. It's who you are.

And you sit and write them in NYC in your favorite coffee shop, think about how you got here, think of all the other great moments in your life, and realize that the best that all happened as accidents.

And how you can get back ready to travel, you realize noticed that sometimes only in some the best thing that can happen to you.

One day, set out on a path, and the road twists and turns, and you think you are on the same path still, until you stop and rest. Then you look around and you do not realize where you should be, but somewhere even better.

Then, in this new world as you ready to party yourself another year older, you come to the conclusion that no plan could be the best plan, and you're happy to pose for life accidents the way.

Share this post