I hit the road again
About a month passed since I came to Korea for a ‘break’ from travels. The reason for visiting Korea was simple. When I was in Brazil in August this year, my father either wrote or spoke to me, “I miss you.” and that was when I knew I needed to see my family and I booked flight tickets right away. It had been 1 year and 10 months since I last visited Korea.
Some of my friends wished me that I had been able to ‘recharge’ myself while I was in Korea. When I think about it, I don’t think I had any great need for recharging myself either physically or mentally, and I’m happy to realize that my way of traveling has probably been healthy.
But I was happy to be able to review some initial parts of my travels, which happened around the same time a year ago. Thanks to having access to stable infrastructure, i.e. my own room with a stable heating system and fast internet, I could organize and review some of my notes and photos that I took during the first months of my travels last year. Reviewing the past always seems to be a rich source of learning about what I thought I knew then and the uncertainties that bugged me, while giving me lots to smile at, at the same time. As I am about to start the next year’s travels, this experience of reconnecting with my past traveling self will help me remember why I do this and the types of attitudes I want to maintain towards whatever is out there that I want to ‘listen to.’
A note on next year’s travels. I plan to be backpacking through Lebanon – Jordan, Egypt towards the end of February. From March onwards, I plan to overland from Spain to Mongolia for about a year.
@ Incheon International Airport, Korea, December 28, 2018
