On Christmas day of 2009(I think) I decided I want to see the world, at the time I had grown tired with the way things were going and needed to get away. I looked into my future and saw exactly the same thing I was doing now, working a dull office job for average money without anything exciting to show for it. I imagined being as old as my parents are now and being asked by my kids, nieces, nephews etc. what cool stuff I did when I was younger and I couldn't provide an answer for this imaginary future generation, this disappointed me immensely. I think I had waited too long, to long for something to find me. On that Christmas day I realised that wasn’t going to happen, I had to find it myself.
I decided on that day that I wanted to do the sort of travel you leave on and only return from when you’re ready, a trip measured in months and years, not days and weeks like most. I watched a documentary called ‘A Map for Saturday’ by Brook Silva-Braga, and it blew my mind that such travel was possible to accomplish. I had the passion to see this through, I told friends about it, I created a (now gone) website about it and planned my destinations, but I ran into problems. I lacked the willpower, a trip this large requires a lot of money, at the time I estimated a cost of $20,000 – $30,000 a year, without having to work, and up until now I hadn’t been known as a person that can save much at all. Two years later I hadn’t even started saving for this wondrous trip I decided to go on, I resigned myself to the fact that short of winning the lotto I wasn’t going to accomplish this huge goal I had set for myself.
That all changed one day in September of 2012.. I saw the Tomorrowland aftermovie, a 20 minute long showcase of the greatest dance festival I had ever seen. I paused the video half way through, stormed into the housemates bedroom and proclaimed ‘We’re going to Belgium for Tomorrowland 2013!’. The spark for travel had been reignited. This time was different, I was devoted to this goal, I watched the Tomorrowland Aftermovie every day for a month as the ball started to roll, I paid off the debt I had and started to save money, this could be done.
I wanted to fly in to Paris, party in Belgium at the festival and see everything, I wanted to stay as long as possible. This time was different however; I had a time limit this time thanks to my sister and her fiancé, which greatly reduced the amount of money needed for this trip. Lena and Matt get married on the 22nd of September, I knew I had to be back for that, or else I’d have to spend the majority of my adventure afterwards attempting to beat Osama Bin Laden’s hide and seek world record as I hide from my sister. So Liam(my boss), if you’re reading this, you can thank her for the fact I’m only going for two months.
Finally, In January, I locked everything in when I close my eyes and pressed the go button on the Singapore Airlines webpage, booking my flights to Paris. At that point I knew there was no turning back now, from the 15th of July till the 17th of September I’ll be living out of a backpack. Now, with 73 days to go the days are slowly ticking away.
Unfortunately I never did get tickets to Tomorrowland, they went on sale at 2:00:00 AM on the 17th of February, sold out by 2:00:01 (seriously). I didn’t care, the rolling ball had become too big to be stopped by such things now.
Dean
