There is no greater pleasure than travel. Travel on your own terms is tenfold better.
TRAVEL ON OUR TERMS
Traveling has always been an essential part of my life. Before I even started traveling, different cultures, languages, and natural wonders inspired me to go through numerous books and magazines. Adventure stories kept me awake all nights long. On Sundays, I was glued to the TV exploring the undersea world with Jacques Cousteau.
My obsession with travel directly influenced my future career. I wanted, I needed to travel on my own terms. Desperately trying to escape being stuck in an office, I decided to major in German Culture and Intercultural Communication.
A few years later I moved to the US. My limited English at that time prevented me from finishing my degree in Intercultural Communication. However, I was convinced that I had to have a degree. Math related subjects seemed to suit well with my basic English. And thus, learning, adjusting, and figuring everything out along the way, three and a half years later I graduated with bachelor’s degree in finance and business management.
With this career path that landed me in a couple of banks and a few accounting offices, traveling was put on the back burner. If before traveling on my terms was quite an issue, I could forget about it now. However, dissatisfaction and a feeling that something was missing never went away. At that time, even my daily reading consisted mostly of business books with occasional travel memoirs. I knew something had to be changed.
Travel Once Again
Traveling was the answer. Together with my husband, Roshan, and son, Dylan, we started traveling. Out first travel attempts included only short, weekend trips in the US. Eventually, we expanded our territory and started traveling abroad.
Road-tripping through California, deciding if Moroccan street food was appropriate for a toddler, sitting for hours in front of Capilano Suspension Bridge in Vancouver waiting for a baby to calm down didn’t make our lives easier. But it certainly added excitement that seemed to be lost. Moreover, this little adventures made that “corporate life” look less dreadful and lethal.
We definitely don’t all the answers. We travel on our terms and enjoy exploring the world, different countries, and cultures. Surely, nothing is perfect and we don’t even try it to be this way. Traveling is a very personal thing. Whatever works for us, might be out of the question for somebody else. But this is out travel story and this is what makes us happy.
Travel on Our Terms
Traveling hasn’t changed our lives completely. We choose to travel on our terms whenever we can, but we didn’t quit or changed our jobs (not considering the fact that at some point I was laid off). Our weekdays are still filled with taking care of the baby, cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, and going to work for Roshan.
What have changed are our weekends and those two weeks allotted for vacation time in the US. This is the time when we put that “travel on our terms” plan into practice. We plan in advance and use this short time to travel locally and abroad. Exploring our home state, California, and nearby places is on agenda for our short weekends. To travel to faraway destinations, we wait for longer weekends (thanks to those federal holidays that fall on Fridays or Mondays) and vacation time.
Is it enough time to travel the world? Honestly, we’d love to spend a few more days to explore this or that destination. But you can’t always have everything you want at the time you want. So, we use all the recourses on our hands to make those travels happen.
This that being said, we travel kind of fast. Our journeys and travel terms can be exhausting for somebody else. However, we know our limits and don’t push ourselves beyond them. If we need more time to travel through one city or country, we plan accordingly. We prepare our own itinerary based on our interests and time. In the end, what matters is our ability to travel on our terms, which not always means having everything laid out and work out perfectly for us.
