“I want to travel, travel, and travel, and die, somewhere.”

 

That was how I answered Kirsten. We were all together, our group of Egyptian, Canadian and Australian Couchsurfers — plus myself — , sitting at a sheesha café, not that far from the now infamous Tahrir Square of Cairo. I can remember it as if it were yesterday.

I can remember all my days of traveling as if they were yesterday. All the places I have been to, all the wonders I have seen, all the people I have shared bread with, even if I might fail to grasp their names today. I will never forget them.

Of course, I was being a bit melodramatic. (But it did sound cool, I hope.) I genuinely dreamed of never stopping to travel, to discover, to learn, to be struck with awe, to fully feel alive, though.

That was before I met Ladina.

I remember it as if it were yesterday. We were sitting on the roof of our beloved hostel in Santa Marta, Colombia, and, at some point, she asked me if traveling around the world was as amazing as people imagined; she was herself planning to do the same. She was only trying to sound cool, though, as she told me later. Sadly for her, I failed to grasp that subtelty.

So, here we are. On our round-the-world trip. My second, and her first. Has it actually started yet, though? We still are to take our first plane, from Paris, France, to Capetown, South Africa; but we already have left Switzerland, and said goodbye to Ladina’s family and friends.

I think now that I will never get used to departures. It is a strange thing to wish farewell to all the people you will not see for the years to come, to fear the worst which could happen during your travel, and to rejoice at the prospect of being on the road again — all at the same time. You end up asking yourself why on Earth you are doing this, and knowing fully why, simultaneously, over and over again. A sweet-and-sour, seemingly neverending feeling of doubt, rooted deep inside yourself.

I have no idea if it is possible to experience such a feeling without doing it yourself, though. Without living yourself all the goodbyes and farewells, all the discoveries and epiphanies, all the fears and exhaustions, all the new friends and little joys — a hot shower after five days in the wilderness, a surprisingly comfortable bus for your next journey, a bit of Parmesan cheese offered by a fellow traveler.

And this, the sheer amount, the stormy maelstrom of emotions that traveling brings into your life, is one of the many sides of it which make me love it. For feeling emotions is, I believe, what makes us truly alive.

That was how I answered her, on the top of our beloved roof.

“It is not always joyful, no; but it is always, always beautiful.”

Like the previous time, a small caveat before starting this blog: posts will be published whenever we have time, inspiration and energy (the last being the most scarce), in whichever language we fancy (mainly English, German or French, but why not Swiss German or Spanish?), hopefully with beautiful pictures from the far side of the world, which will be clickable (meaning you click on it and it pops out big on your screen, only for your eyes). I do not plan on writing the whole trip down here, though. We will probably only write about small excerpts from our adventures.

And yeah, I will try to keep it up past New Zealand, this time.