A Little Travel History

Before beginning to post about my upcoming trip, here’s a rundown of my “travel history”.

North America/ “Home”

While growing up, I have had the chance to visit each province in Canada, either with my family or with school trips. I road-tripped with my family out to Vancouver, BC and back.  I traveled all around the Atlantic provinces with my family over the course of a few summers.  I could go on and on about the beauty that this country has to offer, but that’s not the goal here.

I spent a fabulous week in Ottawa with girlfriends for Canada Day, and have visited family throughout those fantastic provinces in the middle.  So yep, I’ve got Canada covered.

I went to Disney World when I was twelve, which was also a great right-of-passage.  I road Splash Mountain so many times I lost count …

St. John’s, Newfoundland

Elsewhere in the World

In 2009, while I was completing the second year of my Bachelor of Education, I was invited by a friend to her brother’s wedding.  In India.  Wow.

So, during reading week (it ended up being a 9 day trip) myself, my Indian friend and another “white” friend took off with the family to Jalandar, India.  This was my first real international trip, and it was the most whirl-wind, chaotic, colourful, exhausting and exhilarating experiences I have ever had.  Once arriving in Jalandar, we followed a strict sleep-one-night-stay-awake-the-next-night routine.  Of the 6 total days in India, we slept 3 nights.

Me the night before the wedding in India

Having the chance to experience the true awesomeness that is a Sikh/Hindu wedding (the bride was Hindu, the groom Sikh, they blended the wedding) was too incredible for words, and so sparked a fire for travel in me to experience so much of the world.  The experience of being in a foreign country, where you don’t speak the language, and fumble with hand-signals to shop keepers and salesmen was invigorating–and highly addictive.

Finally, in December 2011, I had a chance to meet up with my boyfriend in Costa Rica, and travel on the back of his motorcycle through Panama and Colombia.  Long story short:  I was still in school, he was on a 10 month long motorcycle trip from Saskatoon through South America with three of his closest friends.  Check out his blog Simply Living on a KLR to read about their adventures along the road.

While India was my first real international trip, my time on the bike trip was my first real experience with backpacking.  For India we packed huge suitcases and did a load of shopping while we were there.  On the bike, I had my backpack, the necessities, and that was it.  And I fell in love with the lifestyle.  I couldn’t believe how simple it is to live with just what you need.  After returning home from the trip, I missed the ease of getting dressed in the morning and the simplicity of it all.  This was definitely the trip that I fell in love with backpacking.

Ready to ride through the rain!

 

Off to Anywhere

So that takes us up to now.  I’ve done bits of shorter-term travelling, but have always wanted to do more, to really commit to a long-term trip and just go.  So, in a little over two months, that’s what I’m doing.  Taking off with Braydon (my man) to Tokyo, Japan.  From there we plan on mostly letting the experience guide our decisions of where to go and how long to stay.  I’m so excited to get going and see what the world has to offer, and this trip is just the beginning.