Andrew Hyde - This Book is About Travel: A Modern Manual - 15 Countries With 15 Things

This Book is About Travel

Copyright 2012 by Andrew Hyde

Cover by: Andrew Hyde

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval without permission in writing from the author. Default legal jargon is funny, no?

ISBN-13: 978-0-9857015-2-9

Book Website http://thisbookisabouttravel.com

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1

THE ADVENTURE STARTS

I really like what youre doing. I didnt understand it before, but getting off your butt and actually doing something for yourself is important for all of us. And although I cant say I wont miss you like hell, and wont worry about you often, I can say that what youre doing is great and I love you for it. Its important that we leave each other and the comfort of it, and circle away, even though its hard sometimes, so that we can come back and swap information about what weve learnt even if what we do changes us and we risk not recognizing each other when we return.

Robyn Davidson

People sure like spinning that globe, the shopkeeper said to me. I cant get them to buy a damn thing in this place, but they go to that globe and spin putting their finger on a random place to stop it. They dream about traveling to that place. It happens every day. We lust after the dream, but here we are.

I was in the store, spinning the globe. It would be nice to travel. I spun the globe and found a place Id never been on the map just like the thousands of others before me. I thought travel was for the lucky. The rich. The elite. For those that had more time, connections and resources than little old me. It was for the outrageously brave that dove off cliffs, the extroverted few who stood on bars to dance or those rare people whose lust for adventure is never satiated. I had read the books and browsed the photos, painting a picture of who could be a traveler and none of those felt anything like me. I spun the globe again and stopped it with my finger, which landed in the same place I was in.

I wanted to get on a plane and away from life as usual more than anyone I knew, but travel was for the elite, right? Not for me or for you.

After years on the road, I look back and laugh. I was dead wrong. It doesnt take family money, a ridiculous salary or luck of any means. It needs you. Travel needs you. It needs you to decide to go someplace in the world and stand with a proud intention that perhaps there is a different way to look at the world that everything you know could be just as wrong as the thinking that travel isnt for you.

Modern travel, at its core, is opening your heart to possibility. Possibility that can be both dreamed and lived.

It is not an adventure of extravagance or wealth. It is an adventure of constraints and character. If you have been thinking of taking a trip and are just looking for permission, take this sentence (and book) as the needed kick in the ass. You have permission to look at the American dream (or the equivalent in your country) as a suggestion that now includes swimming in waterfalls in three continents, learning to dance on a beach under a full moon with someone that doesnt speak your language and scaling a peak so high and beautiful it takes your breath away (twice). There has never been a better time to travel and the only thing stopping you may just be the looks you get from your family and neighbors when you say you want to.

How do you afford it? is the most common question I am asked when I tell people that I travel every day of the year.

I decided it was important to me, is generally the answer I offer back. And it really is that simple. Notice I didnt say family money as there is none, nor did I say I worked an amazingly high paying job as Ive never earned more than a modest salary. I made it a goal and I worked my ass off to make sure that I was able to do it. I got my first passport in 2003 and it took until 2008 to take my first international trip. Travel and those that seek to enjoy it isnt a get rich quick scheme or an overnight cleanse of the soul. Its a goal you work toward. You are going to act on your own and do something remarkable, for you.

Airfare is the cheapest it has ever been and perhaps ever will be. You can get on a flight around the world for as low as $14.31 per hour of travel time (NYC to JNB, $780 for 54.5 hours of travel). One hundred years ago that same journey would have placed you you amidst the top travelers in the world. Today, you can save up for that trip washing dishes.

I met hundreds of waiters in the worlds most interesting places, but didnt run into too many doctors or lawyers. It feels like the world painted a picture of what success looks like and there is a massive movement now saying nope!

Technology has never been so supportive of finding friends, opportunities and itineraries. You can research every street you will walk down, price check every hotel, and book every portion of a trip in your living room. Hell, you can book an entire island from an iPhone app. It has never been easier to research a trip.

You could rent a nice cozy apartment or rent the world. Dont limit your imagination on where you can go and what you can do. Perhaps the best part of the modern travel opportunity: you dont have to ask anyone permission, well, besides yourself.

I share these stories out of a desire for you to dream and travel and less for me to boast. I dont see myself as an iconic traveler (or writer, for that matter). This book is written as a friend sharing a story at a coffee shop or bar and far from a formal declaration. Ultimately, the goal is to get you to think a little bit differently about this world we share.

This Book Is About Travel is a collection of essays and experiences from 20 months of living on the road with only a backpack to my name. At times, this leads to very difficult experiences. Other times, it is an amazing mental escape. It was written on the road from a hut in the high Himalayas, and a balcony with a view of the Alps. From a backyard fort in Nairobi, and a beach on both sides of the Atlantic. From a loft in NYC, and a coffee-shop in Melbourne. As a result, this is a travel book written while traveling. It is my own attempt to explore some of the stresses, joys and complexity that make up modern movement.

Just as our cultural assumptions around travel being all leisure and luxury are off base, so too are our assumptions that travel is only this blissful adventure where you step out of the worlds problems and into a process of self discovery. For me, the two have been inseparable. The world is a very complex and confusing place, and traveling through it can also be a difficult and complicated journey. Maybe what I am saying is that it should be a complicated journey.

Part of the modern dilemma is that the issues and problems that plague one part of the world are connected to problems that another part of the world faces, in both resonant and contradictory ways. Following our dreams of travel helps to assuage the isolation, dullness and emptiness so often felt in the Western world, but in so doing, it also changes landscapes, displaces people, and creates new sets of possibilities and problems.

Travel is deeply personal. I cant stress this enough. Your experience, by design, will be drastically different than mine or anyone elses. Your lessons, activities, destinations, insights and goals will have their own unique color and flavor. When the cost and logistics of travel get out of the way it makes space for even more incredible, personal experiences.