Ruminations of a Rambling Man

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Before hitting the road, I thought to answer a simple question - why do we want to travel? This proved not to be an easy task, trying to explain our reasons for leaving the comfortable privileged life with all modern conveniences we are having behind and embrace a nomadic life of a roaming vagabond for next 250 days. Where to start? To save some virtual ink and spare you from embarrassing psychobabble, I will skip the Freudian analysis, and instead elaborate our fundamental motives.

The dream for embarking on a grand adventure of love and the Orient began to take shape beneath the surface of my mind during the last winter. It was my first winter back in Finland in 6 years and it felt like the damn ice age revisited. More than once, I was thinking of a joke I was told when I was living in Budapest back in the day. When the great Finnish-Hungarian tribe arrived at the border of Europe, they were met by a signpost - Finland North, Hungary South. Those lucky ones who could read chose Hungary... Suffice to say, I suffered during that everlasting glacial season. Voilà, the ulterior motive identified, without any help from good old Sigmund.

After our engagement in April, we were facing some difficult choices, namely, where to live together happily ever after. That choice still remains to be made, however we have now 8 more months to consider our options. At the same time, by being on a mutually uncharted territory will push us out of our own comfort zones to meet each other on no man's land, where no prisoners are taken. This we firmly believe will make us even closer and provide us some essential building blocks for a lasting relationship. Nothing brings more intimacy in a relationship than a jointly experienced near death experience, or in absence of that, wilderness diarrhea.

Finally, let's face the facts. We are now in our mid-thirties and not getting any younger. With the age, one's idea of adventure might change from a pristine jungle to a local bingo hall. That said, we have no kids nor pets, thus we have only ourselves to take care of. Moreover, financially we are in a position we can afford a luxury of being fully independent for a year. Taking all this into account, we came to conclusion that there is no better way to start off our marriage than a seriously extended honeymoon.

Then again, perhaps all above is merely a big pile of bollocks, and we were just born under a wandering star and cannot help our feet getting itchy every now and then.

“If I'd learnt one thing from travelling, it was that the way to get things done was to go ahead and do them. Don't talk about going to Borneo. Book a ticket, get a visa, pack a bag, and it just happens.”
― Alex Garland, The Beach

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