What inspired your first big trip or put the wanderlust in you?

In response to: Msg #151082 Awww! I love it. Anastasia78 you are a very lucky girl! Happy 16th Anniversary to you both. Reply to this

I first travelled when I was 19. My cousin was coming to the end of his ‘round the world’ trip and he invited me to join him for the last six weeks in Asia. We did Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. By the end of it, I couldn’t wait to step on that flight home. The heat, endless breakdowns, constant moving about, ever-present fear of the runs, Bangkok; I thought this isn’t for me.

But then, I watched the Top Gear Vietnam Special and realised something: that I wanted to go back.

When in the Philippines, we were fortunate enough to be featured on television. The messages we received from Filipinos afterwards all expressed an interest in travel; how they dreamed of one day doing it. It broke my heart knowing that most never would. Reply to this

in 1997 I hiked the Appalachian Trail (from Georgia to Maine in the US - a 2200 mile 5 month backpacking trip) and the homebody in me has.been.broken.ever.since.

to be on the move and pushing yourself and experiencing life in full color is an addicting state. so too does it make you appreciate the comfort of Home.

shortly after my '97 thru-hike I went with a fellow thru-hiker to Thailand and Nepal for a month and a half and that was the end. now there are few corners of the world that I don't want to set foot in. The list grows slowly but thus far I've managed to also get to Costa Rica, a return to Thailand, Cambodia, Morocco, Portugal, Spain and Ireland; every time I travel it makes me need it more.

Now we're standing on the precipice of dragging the kids (8 and 3) along with us - it will be a whole new world. 😊 Just need to get that money tree growing faster. Reply to this

I wish I could 'like' these stories.

There is no "Like" button for each post, but there is a "Like" button for this thread. It appears near the top right corner of this page. Reply to this

In response to: Msg #151516 Yes Dave! That is EXACTLY the question I had when I started this thread. Before I discovered TravelBlog, I hadn't written a blog or much less even read a blog. I did a google search when I returned from India last year for "travel blogs" wondering if anybody had written anything on their adventures overseas...... and what do you know? Only about a million people have.

In my little community of friends/family I guess I'm considered somewhat of the eccentric one. But traveling to the distant corners of the earth felt so...normal. Why wasn't EVERYBODY doing it?

It got me wondering. What led us all to this place? In talking to people I found there was usually an "incident" or a "moment" in their past that ignited their passion. Of course for a lucky few it was a birthright so it seems. Either way, I think it makes us an interesting group of people if I do say so myself.

The stories of how we got here are sometimes better than the adventures that followed.
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Wow. What a great thread.

My Dad had wanderlust and, before the 1939-45 War, hitch-hiked around much of Europe. After the war, he used his role in the army to travel around and would take my mother and me with him whenever he could, so travel was in my blood right from the beginning.

In the early '50s, he managed to get a job teaching in new Zealand, so we all moved over there. Every summer the family (now 6 of us) would pile into our family car and explore a new part of NZ until in 1959 he and Mum decided that they would go back to the UK.

I spent my teen years growing up in London but every year during school holidays we would all travel through different parts of Europe, sometimes camping, sometimes staying with friends, sometimes staying in cheap hotels.

I was 14 when I was first allowed to travel to France on my own to stay with a family arranged through my school. I did this the next two years staying with different families and then, when I was 17, took off on my own to hitch-hike around the south of France and Spain. The next year, I got a job in a circus for the summer holidays and travelled all over Normandy and Brittany with them (I could speak reasonable french by then).

When I left school at 19, I decided to volunteer to work for a charity in a small west african country that no longer exists but, the day before I was due to leave, there was a coup there and my visa was cancelled. I never did get to go.

My own travel bug was roused by now, though, so I decided to go and visit a girl I had stayed in touch with in New Zealand. along with a cousin who had also grown up in NZ I took off down the hippie trail across Europe to India via Iran and Pakistan and eventually ended up in Thailand where I ran out of money. Managed to get a job selling vitamins to poor Thai people in the country but quickly came to question the ethics of what I was doing. Finally got a job teaching English and French in a high school and tutoring at Chulalongkorn university. I was trying to get a permanent visa to stay there when I must have payed off the wrong person and got deported to New Zealand.

Arrived in NZ in 1970, met my friend for her 21st birthday party but couldn't get any work so came to Australia where I have lived since. I did little travelling apart from a couple of trips back to the UK to see my family until I met Sylvia in 1994. She had never been out of Australia and wanted to see the world.

We took off in 1997 and have never looked back. We have travelled through SE Asia, Sri Lanka, the Middle East (we were in Aleppo on 9/11) and Egypt, Turkey, Europe, UK and Eire. We have travelled through China, Mongolia and Russia on the trans-mongolian express. We have taken slow boats around Scandinavia and trains all over the place - love trains!

Our next great trip will be around Australia. We already have a camper-trailer and have done a couple of short trips around Queensland (three months) and NSW (two months). I have just been made redundant so I guess I don't have any excuse now 😊.

John
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While I wont talk for Sofia, my beginning is similar to Shane.

1. The Beginning
Dad from New York we lived in Southern California and he was afraid of flying so 2 road trip from Cali to NYC and back by 4 different routes (1 by way of Toronto/Montreal) started my interests in travelling. Like Shane stated, just a new town on the map was a cool thing at age 7ish and then again at 11 or 12

2, The Catalyst
A trip to Costa Rica to study Howler Monkeys at a private reserve on the Nicoya Peninsula for one month during the summer after my second year of University.

3. The Addiction
Got into medical school and was granted a 1 year deferral to travel (probably one of the best decisions of my life), and after working in a restaurant for 6 months, travelled and volunteered in Costa Rica, Venezuela and Brasil. There was no turning back. Reply to this

My parents grew up in Small Town, USA. They were relatively poor and they didn't travel much as kids. My mom was a big reader, and when she realized that no one she knew had visited the incredible places she was reading about, she made up her mind that one day she would be a big traveler.

My siblings and I reaped the benefits of our parents' mutual passion for travel. By the time I was 10 I had been on numerous trips by car to two states outside my own (to visit relatives) and by plane to five more, all out west, and to Canada. When I was 13, I crossed The Pond to visit Italy with my family; at 14, we went to Scotland. At 16, I took my first trip without my family for a European Humanities course, spending 3 weeks in Western Europe on a lightning tour of the great masterpieces of European history.

By the time I went to college, I think it's safe to say I was hooked on travel. I don't remember a time when I haven't traveled, but now I actively pursue it myself. I went to Tianjin, China in my junior year with my sister to start studying Chinese, and I made the big leap of traveling to Inner Mongolia for work a year after graduation. All that aside, the credit goes to my parents for showing me how big and amazing this planet is, and instilling in me an insatiable curiosity about other languages and cultures. Reply to this