The beauty of traveling

“Whereas the tourist generally hurries back home at the end of a few weeks or months, the traveler belonging no more to one place than to the next, moves slowly over periods of years, from one part of the earth to another. Indeed, he would have found it difficult to tell, among the many places he had lived, precisely where it was he had felt most at home.”

― Paul Bowles

My friends would joke about me in Goa (India) last season: “Hi my name is Hannah Sophia, let’s talk about life.”

Seven years ago I started traveling, indulging myself in other cultures, nature and the thrill of ‘getting lost’.

To experience why I am here.

That year I slept in cheap dorms, lost my care about bras for a while, went skinny dipping in the ocean, went diving, got lost, found my way again, was extremely stoned in Cambodia, got arrested in Laos with my friends for smoking weed, paid and left, got scared and lost it again. I was often the only foreigner in busses going to the next spot. That way of life, changed my life.

I laugh about those memories, but that year they were so real. I felt rejected, tired, scared of everything and saw myself repeating the same cycle over and over again. I will never forget the thrill of driving to the border of Mali, not knowing if we can get out.

The joy of sitting on the back of a motorcycle in India, sleeping with scorpions around you, snorkeling with manta rays, understanding life by watching the wildlife. Seeing and facing death, meet real and poor people, discover back allies with amazing restaurants and getting sick to find strangers to take care off you.

I will never forget saving a life in Bangkok, feeling the realness of ‘nothing is a coincidence’.
It’s not, I tell you.

Even though I don’t believe everything is planned, I see that things are here for a reason.

This traveling was a portal to a deeper understanding, this transformation could have never happened if I did not go again. Facing the being this time, not the doing. What a ride, it still is. A sunbeam catches my eye while the Dutch fall kicks in.

What will happen will happen and for the first time I actually feel that is okay. So yes, let’s talk about life and it’s hidden beauty in everything, how it’s wrapped in the most unexpected moments of a day. How your hell created demons that I never saw and how love is the only thing that connects us all.

Time makes us vulnerable. Time is everywhere. You can speed it up. You can slow it down. You can even freeze a moment, but you can’t rewind time. You can’t undo what is done. The clock is the enemy. The basic rule is this: the more you look at the clock, the slower the time goes. It will uncover the hiding place of your mind, and torture it with every second. This is the basic art in dealing with the trade of your time.

I tried, almost everything to ‘feel’ this life that was given to me. I got up at sunrise to climb peeks for the view, I swam next to turtles, watched the milky-way while floating naked on my back in the Sri Lankan sea.

The real beauty of traveling is that all the questions you have when leaving make you feel alive and confused.

And then to discover in the following moment of arrival;