Even if some pictures may want to convey the opposite to us: God knows that adventure does not only consist of beautiful encounters, romantic evenings and great freedom. That’s why I am writing no classic travel report today, but an insight into my current emotional state:

Travelling is terribly exhausting!

We have already described in one or two of our articles that not everything runs smoothly. Of course, it’s these mishaps that make the journey so exciting. But what is often not mentioned: the everyday battles that have to be fought.

How many days have we wasted, for example, with the procurement of the simplest things! How often have I exchanged a warm bed for a cold, hard floor, a lavish wardrobe for this one dirty trousers, a generous breakfast for a growling stomach.

The world demands! Sometimes with relentless colds (crying in bed), sometimes with incessant rain (clothes that don’t dry for days), sometimes with stifling heat (pushing 240 kilos out of the sand at 40 degrees), sometimes with oppressive narrowness (with ten Peruvians in a small car), with vertiginous height (when the head almost bursts at 5000 meters), with burning feet and a painful back (because you’ve been carrying the same backpack for a week). So much for the physical strain.

Also the soul must withstand: Always asking a dozen people, in order to get a correct information. Hearing hocus-pocus again and again. Always having to explain yourself. Get up every time you fall. Always (!) watch your things. Hoping that it is nothing bad with the motorcycle. That the bus will pull back on its track in time. Every day you see (and smell) the garbage, the miserable barracks, the beggars and the homeless. You can try to ignore them. And treat them as if they weren’t human. Or you can faint.

A house, a monkey, and a horse

Don’t get me wrong, I really don’t want to complain. After all, I decided for this life myself. And there are many, many more absolutely great things that I experience every day on this journey. To enumerate them all would go beyond the scope, but I will certainly do so at other occasions.

I just want to explain why I sometimes feel worn out and then that feeling comes up: I am homesick. But not the classic “yearning for the familiar home”. I don’t miss this home, but the feeling of having A home. Wherever this may be. I don’t know it yet myself!

Nevertheless, I wish I could get back to a place where I don’t have to find my way around first. Because I know the ways. To know how things work. And to be able to take a deep breath: on my sofa, which belongs only to me.

There is also another wish that was always far away. But at the moment it’s getting worse, especially when I see others with them: children. Even though I love my life exactly the way it is. Instead of immersing myself completely in it, I catch myself dreaming. Of a family and the sedentariness. At least occasionally.

The grass thing

So there it is: the damn grass on the other side. Rich green. Again and again, I feel guilty when I look over because it couldn’t be more exciting here, where I’m standing right now. And I also get on Moe’s nerves with it, he doesn’t want to know anything about all this yet!

But it looks so quiet compared to the violent winds blowing here. So comfortable.

It’s just one of these stupid habits of people to often want what you don’t have right now. Or to want everything at the same time. But if I am honest with myself, then I know that I would regret giving up this vagabond life. No, I would hate to trade it for the deadly routine, the melancholy of everyday life. Sitting behind a desk, waiting for the weekend, at best dreaming of holidays where I have to see everything within two weeks. Where everything is so unpleasantly predictable. Where there are no secrets and no surprises. Nothing that reminds me how wonderful this life is. Here and now.

It’s just not the time yet. So, I practice enjoying the moment, to reconcile with the anticipation – indisputably one of the most beautiful pleasures – and ask myself from time to time at what age you can actually put a child in a sidecar?