One Year of Traveling
Exactly one year ago, we left “home” with the smallest backpacks we could, our hearts beating fast, and the minds full of energy and expectations. Time has gone by flying and as we travel across Russia in the Trans-Siberian train, we struggle to believe 365 days have passed. We have lived so much, learned so many human and cultural lessons! We visited 19 countries, made amazing friends in the most unexpected places, ate as much as our bellies can handle, hiked as many mountains as our knees and backs allowed us, taken hundreds of pictures of the millions of moments only our souls can capture forever, borrowed few words from foreign languages that now sound so familiar, cried and felt hurt for so many tragedies that have happened to way too many nations, loved so many people, wrote so many stories, thought so many things…
The more we travel, the more we want to keep going! The tiring days are paid off by the smiles of beautiful children from different races everywhere we go, the love of mothers, fathers, grandparents, families of all sizes and religions. The challenging days are nothing compared with the joy of sharing a few signs or words with strangers in other corners of the world. The moments we are missing back “home” are rewarded by priceless living experiences we couldn’t have anywhere else. Life has giving us gifts by placing kind people along our way, many of them have given us a hand, their home, food, and life stories. Many strangers have shared everything they could with us and taught us where the richness of the spirit resides. Where the sense of humanity that we sometimes have felt has been lost is still living. They have given us our hopes back when we question the goodness of our own kind. They have strengthened in us the sense of responsibility and ownership towards our mother earth, a land where borders are fictional and the idea of being a foreigner is a strategy to keep us apart. We have so many differences and yet so much in common. Underneath our barriers our hearts function pretty much the same. We are all striving in the ways we know best to pursue no other thing than happiness.
And when we think back, when we think about the people we were when we left, we can’t deny that we are still the same but with more clarity. Our values have grown stronger, our feelings have come out with greater honesty, our pleasures are now simpler, and our concerns more real. We appreciate: that things costing less make us happier, just like we did before, but now more than ever; the moments where we have worked the hardest to achieve our goals; the longer walks, the bumpy roads, the two pair of pants we carry and change back and forth, the smell of a clean towel, and a good shower after days of dirt; the uncertainty of the day to day; never knowing where we are going to sleep tonight, tomorrow, or a month from now.
The longer we go, the more we have learned to trust each other, to trust the process. We have become liberated by the false anxieties or our pity worries. We have questioned ourselves irrationally about the future and decided to enjoy the present we have. We have wondered many times how our lives will be like by the time we reach an end to this journey, and we are learning to let the trip itself guide us to the destination we are meant to arrive at, because life itself is a journey from the time we are born to the time we die.
Along this trip, we have collected many instances and memories of happiness. Many smells, tastes, and textures of the world. We have seen ourselves reflected on the lives and faces of many other people and we have seen their lives and wishes just as similar as ours. We have missed our families and friends and appreciate them more than before. We have fallen in love with each other more deeply, argue less, laugh louder, and take care of each other in a better way. We have been dreaming higher, pushing ourselves further, and questioning ourselves more often. The world has become our home, the trip our living, the adventure our strength. During this trip our conversations have gone deeply, our judgments lower, and our enjoyments purer. Our desires of meeting new people and places are greater. Traveling is the only addiction we know and the only one ambitious to keep. We believe now that the road will continue taking us where ever we are supposed to go and that this journey is the most precious reality we have today and the most memorable story we will have to tell and share with others for a long time.
