So it's 01:41 and I've finally found some time and ambition to start something I've really wanted to do for a long time. I'm completely new to the blogging world, and I've never written anything like this before, but since I've finally had some time on my hands, I thought I'd give it a go.
I'm aware that the internet is currently occupied by thousands of travel writers, eager to share their experiences of the world, so whether anyone will even read this seems pretty ambitious right now, but it would be really cool if the needle you found in that haystack was mine. All I really wanna do is share how amazing the world is, through my eyes, even if that means one person reads this, my goal has already been achieved and I will be one happy bunny! I'm only 19 years old, and I know I have a lot of travelling and learning ahead of me yet, but I'd love to share my travel experiences and if someone even liked a small aspect of what I wrote, that would put the biggest smile on my face. Some constructive criticism would be amazing. I have no idea what angle to take with this yet and I am completely new to the blogging/travel writing scene, so go easy on me!
Before I actually start writing any official posts, I thought it would be best that I wrote a sort of 'introductory' post, in order to explain why I've decided to write a blog sharing my travels in the first place...
Ever since I can remember, I've always loved to travel. Starting from a young age I was really fortunate to have the opportunity to travel to some amazing places all around the world. Most of my friends in school hadn't even ventured outside the little town we lived, let alone to a different continent. It's not until lately that I've realised how lucky I was to have had those opportunities, and I feel it's definitely made me a more confident and open minded person today. My memories of these earlier holidays are vague, however my experiences, of what to me were the most notable countries I'd visited, I remember very well. Rastafarians, reggaeton, the dutty wine and the sweet taste of sugar cane. These people with funny looking hair, dancing oddly to music I'd never heard. It was all new to me. We filled our suitcases with that sweet tasting sugar cane, "better than sweets" the big Jamaican lady said. She sat preparing the plant on the side of the road outside our guarded Holiday Inn hotel, dressed in rags. She asked for what was pennies to us and we bought the whole lot. She couldn't have had a bigger smile on her face and we had sugar cane to last us weeks. Hookah pipes, the dead sea and sand, lots of it, comes to the mind when I think of our travels to Egypt. 10 years old, and I couldn't believe my mother was letting me smoke! They were of course tobacco free, fruit hookahs, but nonetheless, I felt badass. I'd never really saw a fish in real life, apart from a couple of goldfish we'd had, so when we snorkelled coral reef with thousands of different fish swimming around our feet and I swallowed a load of sea water in awe and threw up, I shouldn't have been surprised. This was the first time I saw a rainbow parrot fish, the most colourful living thing I had ever seen. The whole reef seemed like a rainbow to me. I feel these earlier travels to such interesting places with such interesting, different people, had a massive impact on how my passion for travelling and Geography developed. Being a white, young, British female, coming from a predominantly white area, seeing and meeting people of a different colour was a new experience to me, and I was instantly intrigued to learn how these people from different countries lived. Forget glaciology and the geomorphology of rivers, the main reasons I chose to study Geography at University is because I love learning about different countries and cultures, even the most smallest of tribes in the most obscure of places.
*Here is where I'm supposed to provide you with one of those terribly cliched quotes on how travelling broadens the mind.*
As amazing as my earlier travel experiences were, looking back I felt something was missing, like I wasn't getting the full experience and that's when I came to realise that these experiences were just holidays where we were guarded and gated both inside the hotels we occupied and inside ourselves. I don't want to have the tourist experience. To me, the tourist view is boring, benign, buying into false representations of how native people live. I want to experience these places as the native people would, and that would be the only real way to truly gain any sort of true understanding of how these cultures live. I want to drink authentic mint tea and eat homemade lamb tajines in Morocco, drink from coconuts and eat homemade jerk chicken in Jamaica and handpick and eat fresh, homegrown figs in Croatia. I want to experience their world through their eyes. I want to taste not only their food but the richness each culture has to provide, and so, here I am today, either out there, experiencing the world or sat right here, writing about it.
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