And there we have, 100! 100 days have passed since we turned our back to Lisbon and our safe and stable life!
So far we count with 6 different passport stamps, 44 different beds, 15 flights, 13 buses, 10 trains, 3 motorbikes, 2 ferries, 2 travel boats, numerous tuk-tuks, rickshaws and taxis, countless miles on our legs and an unprecedented number of people, smiles and stories to tell.
The more we travel, the more we believe it has 3 distinct moments.
The first one is the entire preparation process. During this stage you visit your destination from Internet blogs, postcards images, YouTube videos and stories from others you meet along the way.
Imagination makes the brain fly and the closer it gets for the departure date more nervous and enthusiastic you become.
The second moment is the actual travelling. Be there yourself, live it, meet new people, create stories, see unparalleled and unbelievable places, wait long ours for every and anything, mingle with local communities, taste new flavors and start to understand a little by little the good things your home has.
Nonetheless, opposite to the first traveling moment, there are also some hard times that seem even harder due to the fact that you are surrounded by a strange environment.
Finally, the third moment consists in revisiting all the moments and memories you created during your time away. Mature your past and create lessons for the future.
Now, this moment has the particularity of being accessible in the strangest times and with no cost whatsoever. It might appear while having a conversation with friends, or even by listening one song you, not so far in time, once danced on the other part of the world. An accent from someone you have just met can make you travel back in time and space.
We believe travelling can get into your blood and even be felt as a loop.
We will briefly explain the rationality behind this thought.
If you take the time and patience to do your absolute best during the first travelling moment you will shorten most of the unpleasant experiences during the second travelling moment, which will allow you to take the most of your time while travelling.
Instead of being constantly looking for accommodation, overpricing the majority of the things required and waste considerable amount of time looking for things you could have searched from your laptop, you will be too busy enjoying your trip, creating new memories, meeting new people and visiting astonishing places.
Of course everyone one has a different idea of traveling. It can be reading a book on a paradise beach, trekking a mountain to have that amazing feeling while enjoying the sunset on the top, or even drinks and good food with others.
Every traveller has it own preferences, but at the same time, he/she will, for sure, take the most of those realities if the first travelling moment was conducted accurately and with precision.
In our case, the reason why our trip is constantly going so amazingly and according to plan is entirely Sara’s fault!
Our advice so far is: do your homework, preparation makes all the difference. Nonetheless leave some room for the unpredictable as it has a tendency to create amazing stories!
To help with the preparation read some of our travel guides or travel tips.
Let’s take the assumption that both the first as the second travelling moments were conducted correctly and not only did you travel greatly but you also did minimize the unpleasant parts of it.
As time passes by, you will notice that something changed in you. It might be a small thing or rigid personal trait, but being in contact with different realities, enriches your horizons, tasting different food might change some dish you usually have as a family dinner, seeing how others live their live, so differently from the reality you know, can change the way you want to live yours.
You can create a new hobby, make new friends, learn new languages or even find out things you do not like at all.
Do not get us wrong, we do not share the opinion that a stable life does not evolve or might not maximize knowledge and life experiences, but travelling allows a wider multiplicity of episodes and fastens the life learning process.
It allows condensing experiences and intensity on a shorter time period, making every small component of your life to be lived in a more deep and remarkable way.
Finally, travelling allows the ultimate human interaction.
In a world where technology, social media, and screens play a bigger part on our lives, people are starting to neglect the power of constant human interaction.
Travelling forces you to speak to others, to meet others and most of the times in situations out of your comfort zone. To be constantly surrounded by different mindsets, opinions and cultures leveraged by a fewer contact with technology, makes, in our opinion, all the experience far more enriching.
Technology is amazing and its potential is endless, but more than read about is to live it, more than chat with is to laugh with, more than videos is the feeling of the fresh breeze and different smells.
As we said above, traveling changes people.
However, every learning process takes time. It requires remembering from past experiences. And this is exactly why we believe the third traveling moment is so important. It matures the learning process and allows individuals to grow with the past experiences.
The main reason why we created this website is to have a dynamic, organized and constant place to store most of our trip.
We are somewhat obsessed with the third traveling moment and its capacity to repeat, like a loop, every experience we are getting along the way.
This is why we believe traveling can get highly addictive but at the same time to be felt repeatedly.
In our case, after 100 days, two amateurs with zero experience on social media, photography, filmmaking, writing and sharing, created 5 articles, 3 travel guides, 3 travel tips, 2 financials guides, 4 videos and almost 300 photos published.
Let’s see what the future has saved for us in the most valuable life lesson we have ever had.
We cannot wait to revisit this experience in 10 years time!
Maybe, if we are lucky, we will be able to influence our (future) kids to step on our footprints and live wildly and travel free!