Some funny things has happened these past two days.
I went out for a few beers with a friend the other night and we were talking a lot about my upcoming trip, him giving me advice and tips about travelling, seeing that he has been back-packing a few times in different parts of the world (the longer trips being south-east asia and central america).
We were talking about my budget and he said that you will need more money than that to be able to actually have a life during those ten months. My budget is at the moment about $5000 which is survivable given that I’m planning to visit people and work in Australia for food and shelter, but it won’t give me that much room if stuff shows up. Anyway, the nice part is that he at the end refused to let me pay my part of the bill. He said, just save that money for the trip, you will need it. That was quite unexpected.
Another unexpected thing that happened was that a woman at work, that I haven’t really talked too much with started asking me about the trip (it’s kind of official at work that I’m going) and it turns out that she has travelled alone quite a few times.
She said that India wasn’t really her kind of place, but sent me an e-mail with links to domestic airlines that she recommended there and then she also said that she had some rupies left that she wanted to give me.
I have also had three people interested in renting my apartment while I’m gone. Don’t know if anyone will work out, but it suddenly feels easier to find someone I know that might want to rent it.
In a sense, it feels like all the pieces of this puzzle is finding it’s place in the whole picture much on it’s own.
Sure, I probably need about $2000 more than I’m about to get together, but it feels doable somehow. I don’t want to say no to everything that happens just to save a small amount of money, but I’m cutting back on all the luxuries I don’t need and think hard before I buy stuff (except for the chai latte I just discovered at “Espresso House” that is making me a bit of an addict), so we will see how it turns out.
When I look back on my life I realize that this trip started already back in february in 2007 when I visited India the first time. The person I was then is just a figment of my imagination, but all these changes since then was needed to get me to now, and I would never have been ok with doing a trip like this back then. In that sense the preparations has been long, but since a few weeks back when things got sorted at work, I can really feel the excitement and joy of it all and it is not just a trip that will start in february, but a trip that is going on right Now, and has been going on for quite some time. It just looks like there is going to be a change in scenery in a few months time. Like a movie with no beginning or end, just different scenes playing on the screen.
