By telling us your country of residence we are able to provide you with the most relevant travel insurance information.
Please note that not all content is translated or available to residents of all countries. Contact us for full details.
Shares
345 days since I left home. I’m on a cheap train in Northern India, sitting on the junction amongst wagons where wanderers and stowaways meet, I start writing down my thoughts… "The heat and desperation force us to make poor and impulsive decisions, but offer life lessons and new ways of appreciating life. Ironically, those made by the lack of satisfaction of physiological needs result in the most valuable lessons and hence, the consolidation of ourselves. This is the most important “reality” I discovered when I was 18 and left my country with a 20-euro budget per day for a Eurotrip. One with little structure, sleeping anywhere I could, eating a baguette throughout the day and learning from strangers’ hearts. A trip where entropy, stoicism and asceticism described my day to day, inspired by hunger, weariness, and the self-inflicted sense of limitation. I constantly thought of myself as Fogg, from Auster’s Moon Palace, who by own decision lived on the streets and internally criticized any other that was not on the same situation, generalizing them as bourgeoisie. Misperceptions like this and new feelings came up to the thinnest layer of my skin, I was envious and self-centered. These feelings and hunger, made me accept leftovers, take bread from restaurants, and even think of robbery. I got to know a new part of me, the inner yet latent part of everybody we need to know to appreciate life by itself and grow happier. And here I am, proving that formula to discover new “realities” and build upon them…pushing myself to grow." After 25 hours, I found myself in a van with reduced sitting space, the heat made me sweat from all pores, the dust entered the windowless van and sticked to me, with a driver not familiarized with breaks, only with a nepali-themed honk. My mind was overwhelmed and I couldn’t control the negative thoughts and feelings, but suddenly, I felt in peace. Ironically, I had never felt so fulfilled, calmed and happy, maybe my focus on minimizing all the factors which got me fed up made me use that strong energy in my favor to create a peaceful state of mind, one I didn´t know. I closed my eyes, felt the wind, the dust, I stopped hearing and stopped being there…I was conscious of my-self, my body and my thoughts. For me “that” is the outcome of any situation that pushes us to the edge, we need to slow the pace, breathe and wait to keep growing, learning and unlearning from ourselves. “That” was the start of my life, a nomad one.