Hola amigos!
I am Spanish, born near Barcelona (Kingdom of Spain).
I am writing in this site because I love to travel and want to read about other travelers’ experiences and share mines. Like many other young boys, when I was 18 years old I travelled around several Western European countries, hitchhiking, sleeping in youth hostels or in the nature, and finding occasional jobs in Paris, Brussels, Lausanne, Genoa, or in the Isle of Wight, to earn enough money to keep on travelling, until I had to return to Barcelona, in my dear Spain, to be enrolled in the then compulsory Army. When I got a litle bit older (in 1982) I gave up everything and devoted my complete life to travel full time, working in anything in any country (Japan, Australia, Canada, Taiwan... etc.), hitchhiking, using third class trains, and walking, to learn about the essence of life and the reason why I am here. I adopted the Way of the Traveler to develop myself, from featherless biped to full man, using travels as an instrument to learn, searching for knowledge about the human nature in remote monasteries; I made of the whole world my university. I crossed most of the borders of the world overland, on foot, like the real traveler, almost never using the planes, and I have got a lesson from every place where I have been contacting their people, I have never been in a country or territory just to tick off the place from a travel list, as a beep beep traveler, like the roadrunner, but always as a real traveler, taking my time in the places, learning from the local people, its museums, local markets, monasteries and religious buildings, etc. You can see by my reports in this club, where of every place where I have been I have a story to tell. Up to now, I calculate that I have spent no more than 100.000 US Dollars in all my journeys.
In 192 out of the 193 countries of the UNITED NATIONS I have spent at least 24 hours, or one day and one night (only missing Tadjikistan, where I did not sleep, only visited the country during the day, but I plan to travel again there during the year 2016).
Since then I have been on the road, abroad, 30 years net of my life, so far. Today I do not feel a tourist; I do not even feel a traveller either, but rather a monk in constant pilgrimage around his temple, the beautiful planet Earth.
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If somebody wants to leave his condition of being a travel aficionado and to become a real traveler, a connoisseur of our lovely planet Earth and not to fool himself, he has to pay the price for it. For me that person has to meet these seven requirements:
1 – To make in his younger years (from 20 to 40) an around the world journey, lasting at least 1 year, calling in the 5 continents (Europe, Asia, Africa, America and Oceania), being self-sufficient, learning with virility to survive on the road, working when necessary.
2 – Learning at a good level (reading and writing) at least 4 out of the 6 official United Nations languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish), and to have a fair spoken knowledge of the other two.
3 – To spend a minimum of 20 years net of his life on the road.
4 – To sleep at least one night in every one of the 193 countries registered in the United Nations.
5 – To spend at least a whole year in a great region of our planet, for instance South America, India and the Far East, Central Africa, etc., getting to know in depth the cultures of the people living there.
6 – To cross the following four continents overland, without taking planes, as a real traveler, only using trains, buses and boats. For instance Europe from Ekaterinburg (in the Ural Mountains) to Portugal, Asia from Turkey to Vietnam, America from Alaska to Tierra de Fuego, Africa from Oran to Swaziland. If crossing the Pacific Ocean in cargo boat or sailing boat, still better.
7 – To visit a minimum of 100 inhabited islands in Oceania.
My web page is: www.jorgesanchez.es
jorge's visited Countries and Provinces
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