Author Archives: jose

Luxor, Upper Egypt

by jose

There is a reason if I travel. Or, I should say, there is a reason if we travel. Once I arrived in Egypt, I found I was not the only one who wanted to see things before I would die.

— What do you want?
— I wanna see beautiful places in Egypt before leaving it… I mean, I’m on a round-the-world trip. I can’t stay for too long in Sharm. I need to move.
— Yeah… Me too.

And so it was decided. Yes, it is the curse of the traveler to part from people they love, to put an end to beautiful things they just built up, to leave when everything in the world tell them to stay. Maybe not everything, actually.

Our passion for discovering the world and its wonders, our passion to jump into the unknown so that we can live our life to the fullest. Perhaps our fear of getting trapped in constraining bonds too. But, most of all, our dream of expressing both our freedom and our joy of living in this so, so beautiful world.

These are the reasons why we kept moving. And why I keep moving. Moving forward, without ever forgetting, but moving forward still.

Always forward, and never stopping, Inshallah.

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Sharm-el-Sheikh, Egypt

by jose

By simply looking at this picture, an overwhelming flow of memories assaults my mind. From the battle to cross the border in Taba, bargain transportations to Sharm, rest in a sketchy hostel for one night, and finally find this place, the mighty Shark’s Bay, thanks to the Lonely Planet (I love this book), to the epic days and nights we spent here with Ragab, Haram, then Julia, Karim, David, and in the end Lars, everything comes back in my head, as if I was living these happy days once more.

And again, finding such a haven was unexpected. We only knew that we would go to Sharm-el-Sheikh, this touristic destination on the coast, to join Karim and maybe other friends from Cairo. So we headed South from Jerusalem, doing everything we could to get to that “city” – in fact only consisting in an immense network of resorts and hotels so dense it created a town; and after our road trip in Jordan and Israel, we all wanted to chill out, but had no idea of where to go in Sharm.

By some kind of miracle, our guidebook had the answer to all our difficulties. Thank you, Lonely Planet, for transforming a harsh trip into an unforgettable time of my life.

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Jerusalem, Israel

by jose

— Crap, they dropped us in the middle of nowhere – we’re on the highway!
— I love it. This is freedom, Ant!

Freedom. This is the intense feeling that grasped me a few seconds after I jumped out of the minibus with my backpack between my arms, following the Donkeys that had just woken me up. I took a look around us, and yes, we were in the middle of nowhere, on the side of a highway, with no clue about where to head. We only knew we were in Jordan, somewhere not that far from the Dead Sea – we only had to find it.

Getting lost in a country you had not even thought you were going to, getting lost with your backpack on your back, getting lost with friends you basically just met but already know you are going to keep for your whole lifetime. Getting lost and decide to walk in the general direction you want to go to, with all the equipment you need, which means you never have to look back or go back to wherever you came from – simply walking in this breathtaking landscape, in this unknown territory, just because you heard that a place you need to see is somewhere ahead of you.

Welcome, freedom, this feeling I had never experienced before. Take a seat somewhere in my heart; I will keep it for you forever, so that you can come back and chill out here whenever you wish.

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Petra, Jordan

by jose

I used to hate taking pictures of people, and even more of myself. After all, if I am traveling, the purpose is mainly to discover places – not show my face with a changing background behind, as if to yell to the world “I have been there and not you, and look at me, I am smiling, I am happy.” Holy crap I hate tourists. No, what I prefer is to show my friends incredible landscapes and places. “C’mon guys, check this out, you have to come here and have fun with me, it is so awesome – travel more, it is worth it!”

It is worth it.

I used to hate taking pictures of people, until I met these guys, our travel group formed in Cairo and Dahab. Until I found that the ultimate happiness in traveling was the human adventure, the sharing, the joy of simply being with friends, doing things together, and sometimes facing hard times together. Let me thus introduce our happy Middle East party: the Donkeys.

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Dahab, Egypt

by jose

To be honest, I was not expecting anything like Dahab when I thought “I am going to Egypt.” Okay, actually I did not make any research on places worth a visit before taking off from Paris – no, I am not reckless, I just hate planning. Or at least I hate planning a round-the-world trip. No way I am going to do research for every single country I will visit. Too much effort and less pleasure in discovering unexpected places. And meeting unexpected people.

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Pyramids

by jose

People tell you that you haven’t succeeded in life, because you don’t have a wife, a house, a car, a successful career… “But man, have you ever seen the Pyramids?”
John Y., 61 years old, traveler

Now I have. Thank you John for being the first person I ever met to have exactly the same philosophy than me. The one in which I do not want to spend my whole life working to only have a few weeks of real life every year just because everyone else does like that, in which I refuse to spoil my short stay on Earth by following everyone on the path of “work to get money – consume to spend money – work more to consume more”, in which I would rather prefer to discover what is on this planet with my own eyes instead of seeing misery at the daily TV journal and tell myself that my house is safe and that the best choice is to stay in it until I die.

Thank you John. I am not alone anymore.

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Blase

by jose

Pour une fois que je prends pas le CX260… Non, mon vol, c’est celui juste au-dessus : BA315 pour Londres. Première escale pour aller au Caire.

À vrai dire, je n’aurais jamais imaginé prendre un jour un avion entre Paris et Londres. Pour quoi faire ? Après tout, on a l’Eurostar… M’enfin vu que c’est compris dans mon billet tour du monde, je vais pas me plaindre, hein. Même si c’est pas trop ma tasse de thé de me comporter en privilégié. C’est donc parti pour une heure de vol. Une heure. Comparé à ce que je me tape d’habitude, j’ai l’impression de prendre l’ascenseur.

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Here we go

by jose

Here we go!
(Mario, Italian plumber)

This is what I would say if I were a video game superstar with a hysteric laugh and an infinite number of lives. In my case, I am just wondering if this idea of a round-the-world trip was a good one.

I am just starting to get used to that feeling. Two, or just one day before taking off, this is what is happening in my mind. “Are you freaking nuts?”, “What was that idea in the first place?”, “Where on Earth did I put my socks?” and “How are you gonna only survive alone in a country you never put a foot in when you barely manage to properly cook a meal?” are some frequent questions I ask myself before any travel.

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