Dear traveler, I call you this way because that’s what you are even though right now everything is in your imagination. One thing that I learned about my drawing skills, is that everything that I can draw, I can do for real! you have also started to draw in your mind the idea to travel which is great!
My curiosity to travel comes from such simple things. My parents never took me on a trip, we just used to go to a family ranch with a beautiful river, that’s all. This situation made me think that “when I grew up and I’m able to pay my things, I’ll travel on my own”. Whenever I did homework, I loved to see geography books, maps and flags of the world, I closed my eyes and I thought in any country and imagined how amazing it would be to visit it in real life. I always prefered to imagine the winter landscapes like the North Pole. Other things that I was interested in about the countries, was all about the traits of the people, the food, the dresses, traditions and beliefs.
My idea about traveling was to grow as a human being in a lot of ways, to get away from the “normal things”, to face new problems, laugh about it, and to see how we react to simple but unknown things. When I was 13, I yelled to my mom ”When I grow up, I’ll live alone and travel on my own and you won’t stop me…” you know, the rebel daughter.
My first trip was to Mexico City in a Van car with my peers from the radio station where I used to work when I was 20. The first time that I took a flight was when I was 22, to go to a Radiohead’s concert. The first time that I took a flight to another country I was 24 and I went to Houston Tx, to a Queen + Adam Lambert concert, but my first trip really far away from home was to San Francisco, a team school trip where I learned two things: 1) I lost my fear to get lost in an airport. 2) It was the first and last time that I traveled in group. I thought “I’m ready to go to Europe on my own…” and I did it!
I decided that each year I’d take a sabbatical month to travel to the most beautiful places that I wanted, this idea come from one of my favorites designers Stefan Sagmeister who takes a sabbatical year for every 7 working years with the idea of “advancing their retirement,” this idea connected with me, I wasn’t willing to give the best years of my life to a 9 to 5 job, adding my projects as a creative person.
You’ll find out you’ll get lost, you’ll discover new survival skills which you didn’t know you had, you’ll learn to solve troubles in many ways that will make you more creative, you’ll feel like a child because every day you’ll find everything as something new, streets, food, flowers, buildings and people. I think that we came to the earth not to find ourselves, we came here to build ourselves, so, if you travel, you’ll build yourself with a broader panorama of knowledge, feelings, flavors, friends, experiences, landscapes, visions, ideas, etc.
I travel on my own because I’m building myself as one of my favorite persons and I enjoy a lot to be in my own company and getting to know myself. It allows me to be a friendly girl with other people, to share experiences with people I love and with new people. When you travel on your own, you’ll feel mighty because you’ll owner your own time! I have been up to 7 hours at some museum, or 3 hours just seeing and listening to the sea, writing or drawing. The people give themselves the things they wish during a trip.
Traveling alone makes you meet new friends! I have known amazing people! I have an egyptian friend from NYC, a friend from Estonia and a german friend who both live in Barcelona, a friend from Madrid who I met in Norway, some polish friends that I met in Dublin…All of this enriches us and makes us able to know to stories that we would never have heard.
Traveling alone it’s like a kind of meditation because it takes you away from everything that you know, from that which worries you, to make that you can feel your body and your presence in other landscapes, talking with yourself, breathing new air, getting emotional until you cry just because you saw amazing buildings or nature, it makes you appreciate that you have come so far.
I once heard “make your decisions through love, not through fear.” Travel because you love the idea about the new person you will become and for all the things that you will learn. Please don’t stop traveling because of the idea that “if something dangerous happens to me…”, I think that it’s more dangerous not to travel. My suggestion is that you be discreet, with the confidence in yourself, that you can almost look like a local person, don’t wear the “tourist costume.”
At last but not least, I suggest that you make a record of your trips, my personal way is to write my deepest feelings in my journal travel, because it will become my treasure when I get older and because I want to remember that in the best years of my life I traveled to the places that I dreamed to visit. Take pictures of yourself to remember your youth and your beauty and come back if you rather loved life in these places. I promised myself to return to NYC every year, be it on my own or with someone else. If you ever decide to travel with someone else, try to find someone who has the same interests as you or someone who understand that maybe you want to stay on your own for a while.
I think that traveling is the only thing that you can buy that makes you richer.
Leyda Luz — August 2019
