Belgium And Beyond

We quit our jobs. We sold our clothes, pos­ses­sions, com­puters and ste­reos. We shaved our heads, said good­bye to friends and fam­il­ies, got on our bikes and cycled off one Sunday after­noon with the mother of all hangovers.

We left everything we take for gran­ted behind in pur­suit of some end­less quest for intrigue and adven­ture, some kind of ideal­istic mis­sion to find mean­ing in the world. Now, 2 weeks after we left, how does real­ity stand up to the idea we spent so long pre­par­ing for?

Mind-blowing. Excru­ci­at­ing. Joy­ous. Frus­trat­ing. An immense men­tal chal­lenge. The cyc­ling is turn­ing into the easy part. The decisions we have to make are more dif­fi­cult — what food to buy, where to camp, which door to knock on for water? And the most dif­fi­cult thing I’ve had to deal with so far is the gut-wrenching feel­ing of home­sick­ness. I’ve never felt it like this before and I don’t like it. I know that I’ll see my friends and fam­ily again but it’s so far off!

I set off know­ing that I was leav­ing behind a memory of Tom Allen at 23, embark­ing on a jour­ney round a world he knew pre­cious little about. I let go of oppor­tun­it­ies and bur­geon­ing friend­ships that can only con­tinue, for the time being, in the intan­gible world of the inter­net and email.

We’re all in the same boat, feel­ing the same lost feel­ing and each deal­ing with it in our own way. The famili­ar­ity of this part of the world doesn’t help.

On the first night we found ourselves eat­ing cheese and bis­cuits and drink­ing red wine with my primary school teacher from 18 years ago. Another morn­ing, we ate scrambled eggs laid the day before by hens in the animal sanc­tu­ary we were camped at. We were given as many straw­ber­ries as we could carry, invited to sleep in a huge boat house, and given free entry to a sum­mer fest­ival in rural Belgium.

The home­sick­ness is sub­sid­ing but the adven­ture has barely begun. I look for­ward to every day’s unpre­dict­ab­il­ity — this is the most ful­filling thing I’ve ever done with my life. Let’s hope it con­tin­ues that way.

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