CROSSING BORDERS: A Globetrotting Odyssey

Life Within a Cubicle: A Recap

travelens — Sun, 23 May 2010 23:19:00 GMT

So, what’s wrong with the life that I am having now? In theory, there is nothing wrong with my life now. The only thing is it is not quite the kind of life I really wish to live! I don’t deny that I am enjoying a life that within the common social criteria is considered to be a very good life. A life many would believe they wish for. And I understand that. To me, it would have made sense only if really such life is what I aspire for. And it is not. 33 years had past since I have been playing it by the rules; doing what I should do rather than what I would love to do, walking the path of my own life but only within the boundaries of what is defined to be acceptable by the others, and racing after what others would expect me to achieve or become rather my own goals, dreams and vision of who I am as a person. 10 years have passed by since I have started climbing that renowned career ladder as a full time employee and I have reached long way ahead since then.

At 33 now, with a senior-management-level position as a R&D specialist in a market-leading organization, I am right on the right track looking at it from the society’s one-size-fits-all perception of happiness. When I look at it, I see 10 years passing by without me reaching the full of my capacity to make a value of my life. A value that is measured on a scale beyond the number of bills stashed in my bank account, a value higher than what would the title on my business card would imply or entail. Looking back at those 10 years down the road, the distance covered and the success achieved suddenly seem more like a little detour in the wrong direction. In other words, the journey was fruitful in the sense that through all of the experiences that I had to learn from along the way, I have became the person who I am now but I ended up in the wrong destination. Now it is time for me to get back on the road and head towards living a life of value (from my own perspective) by adding value to life itself. How am I going to do that? Now this is the million dollar question. To be honest, I will be lying if I said that I know exactly how. All I know for sure now is that I is definitely not what I am doing now…not within the walls of my cubicle anyway. So, I have decided to start following the sound of my heart and pay little if any attention to the voice of reason. I decided that I need to challenge myself, go out of comfort zone and challenge my own boundaries. And that’s how Crossing Borders became really alive.

Most of people have this recurrent day dreams of having the chance to just leave everything and travel the world for a while. And I am no different. I have always had this travel bug provoking those urges up my spine every now and then, but I have never took any serious steps towards making it a reality. Most of us, keep delaying embarking on such a trip either indefinitely or until they are retired –and even then, most of them end up not actually doing it. Now that I am following the beat of my own drum, I have decided to dance to the first tune on the list and make that long life dream a reality! I have traveled a lot during my life, mostly done independently constructing my own itinerary as I see fit for my needs. So, traveling in specific is nothing new to me but I have never done it for a period longer than 2 months at a time. This time, it will be different. This time, it is not a vacation or just a get-away kind of trip. This time, it feels more like a new chapter of my life is ready to be written. It feels more like an adventure of a life time. I admit that, for many people, this might sound unreasonable, crazy, extreme, and just scary. I agree. But to me, it is all part of what makes this trip even more exciting and more fulfilling. I am challenging myself beyond the borders of my own limitations to grow better and bigger as a person. I have decided to quit my day job, get out of my cubicle, sell all of my belongings (except for what I will take with me on the road), say goodbyes to my old life and use my savings to go on a journey that I have been only dreaming about for so long.

It is not necessarily a must for everybody to engage in such long-term traveling plans. To me, however, being exactly that is what entices me. For traveling to become my lifestyle rather than just a short break from reality (a vacation) is what allures me towards such trip. It feels somewhat like pursuing a master degree in the art of being alive! The only difference is that the whole world will be my campus, the different places and countries will be my classrooms and the people I will meet along the way will be my professors and teachers. Not quite a bad deal!

“What will you do when you are back from your travels, 1 year from now?!” People keep skeptically asking me. The truth is, I don’t have a solid answer to that question. And frankly, I don’t care what I will be doing then! I can do whatever I want to do, then! I have many roads in mind that I want to further explore and interested in venturing in. so no matter, what I will end up doing then, I know it will be something that I would love to do and enjoy doing rather than what I should or expected to be doing, period! The starting point now is to head outside on the open road and experience first hand the different cultures, ideologies and traditions around the world and get up close and personal with mother earth absorbing as much knowledge as possible for me to formulate a better understanding of my place within this world as a human being. Only then, I will be able to add value (however trivial it may be) to my life here on this planet.

Prelude: The Big Plan

travelens — Wed, 19 May 2010 14:50:00 GMT

BACKGROUND:

Vagabonding is all about taking some time off from your day-to-day routine and embarking on an adventure of a lifetime; parting yourself away from your normal life and out of your comfort zone for an extended time to engage in a first hand experience with the world on your own terms. It could be from 4 weeks to 5 months to even 6 years. Vagabonding is by no means just a plan of action; it is rather a lifestyle, an attitude that accentuates discovery, creativity, and the growth of one’s spirit.

With this information ages that we live in today, access to any kind of information has never been any easier. Everybody can cultivate their curiosity about the world through the various and widely available media channels and publications. But there’s nothing quite equivalent to actually seeing, touching, feeling and smelling the world through an up close and personal encounter outside of the classroom, TV screens and written pages. A statement that I once read never ceases to strike as a profound truth; “The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.” My dream is to read the whole book –from one cover to the other- one day!

Typically, most people in the Arab world do not harbor positive thoughts about the vagabonding travel style. Unlike some other foreign cultures (as in most of the European countries, Canada, Australia and many others) where taking some extended time off from study or work to travel overseas is carried out in masses, widely perceived as culturally acceptable and, in some cases, even encouraged, in the Arab communities, it is often viewed as a waste of time, money and one’s future. Furthermore, most view these vagabonding travelers as homeless bums, uneducated, eccentric, and some even argue that they hold no values. From my previous humble backpacking experiences I have learned that many of these travelers come from a rich or educated past, but, for one reason or another, simply decided that it was better for them to live day by day and in freely constant movement around the globe.

This kind of traveling is commonly characterized by various terms such as independent travel, budget travel which and/or backpacking. The traditional elements that evidently differentiate vagabonding and backpacking from other forms of tourism include but are not limited to the length of the trip vs. conventional 2-week vacations, use of a backpack instead of traditional travel luggage, preference of hostels and guesthouses to traditional fancy hotels, use of public transport as a means of travel, a keen interest in meeting the locals, a genuine curiosity to engage in the different foreign cultures as well as seeing and learning about the touristic and historic sights. Nonetheless, this form of travelling also has its own characteristic problems which can be derived from being alone on the road and away from family, friends and daily routine for a long period of time, to problems arising from the continuous sudden change of the trip itself moving around between different cities, from one country to another, and in between continents.

CROSSING BORDERS:

Crossing Borders is a journal that will follow the journey of one solo-traveler around the world. An ordinary guy, who –similarly to millions of others- went to school, graduated with a certificate and had peacefully embraced the secure and stable arms of his corporate cubicle undertaking the 9-to-5 routine job day in and day out -with a good pay-cheque at the end of the month- and then decided to fulfill his long-awaited dream of absenting himself from ‘home' for one full year and start an adventurous journey crossing one border after another around the world; crossing the borders of his mind, the borders of his society and the strings of the materialistic life to experience what mysteriously lies beyond the next frontier.

This journal will:

Attempt to accurately record the various adventures and experiences that I will come across during the course of the trip,
Contemplate the details of the emotional and psychological effects that might be caused by such long-term travels,
Tap into the stereotypes/impressions about the vagabonding and backpacking lifestyle (the lifestyle of the long-term traveler) and present the advantages as much as the disadvantages of a very different attitude towards travelling than what the majority of the people -in my part of the world- are accustomed to.
Shed the light on the difference between being a tourist –which is the commonly used approach of travelling during holidays in our part of the world- and being a true traveler.
Educate the readers with rich information related to the history, culture and the people of the countries that I will explore along the way.
And introduce a different form of exploring and understanding our world and our place/role in it as its citizens.

Being an emotional and intimate experiment, this journal will document and analyze my life as a vagabond/backpacker. It will be told subjectively rather than objectively. It's more of an exploration and a performance rather than journalism. It is more a journal/diary than an essay, more an autobiography than a report. Its strategy is to enter the world of the backpackers rather than observe and report on it. The Journal will try to find answers to the questions: “Who are those vagabonds? What do they want? Why did they decide to adapt to this lifestyle? Why did they decide to embark on such journey? And what did they dig up out of such experience?” the objective is to reveal the feeling, the attitude, and the position of the life of this community.

THE ROUTE:

The story starts and ends in Amman (The Jordanian Capital). The route will be chosen to take me overland (mainly using public transport) around the world crossing all continents (ideally, including Antarctica).

The ideal plan is to spend duration of 2.5 months in each major continent (Europe, Asia, Africa and South America), 1 month in each of North America (including Central America) and Australia (including New Zealand) and around 1 week in the Antarctic.

The route across countries, however, will be shaped along the way to facilitate, in most parts, the fulfillment of my personal wish-list of things to do and places to see. Of course, this list will only form the broad outline of the trip’s actual route. It will merely act as the foundation of the trip’s skeleton. This approach shall leave a fair part of the route to materialize spontaneously and inadvertently to enhance the elements of thrill, tension and mystery to the overall experience.