Quite often I got asked, when I tell people that I have travelled non-stop for four years, "how did you do this?"

My answer was the standard, "where there is a will there is a way". And when I started telling them about the nice places I have been, and the amazing people I have met, I saw the same distant look in their eyes, and I knew that I have lost my audience...

This is when I met with "normal" people. People that go on holiday once or twice a year. With travellers, it was different, we did not brag about the stamps in our passports, or how many of the Seven Wonders we have seen, or the remotest places we have been. We understood each other. We knew that for us it is a lifestyle choice and for the normal career orientated person, we could be talking about life on Mars.

I am not trying to re-kindle the age old debate of traveller versus tourist. All of us has been travellers, and all of us has been tourists at some point in our lives. It is unavoidable. One also does not have to travel to the ends of earth to distinguish yourself as a traveller. One does not have to be a billionaire to travel for four years non-stop.

Where there is a will, there is a way.

I think it has to do with what the heart wants. As a kid, I used to get on my bicycle, and cycle trough the neighberhood, and adjacient forrests and I was free, I was travelling. As I grew up, I got roped in to the normal white-picket-fence-lifestyle of building a career, get a mortage and life insurance. I always knew in my heart that I was going to travel. I just did not know how. On weekends I would pack the car, fill up the tank and hit the road, without maps or ideas where i was going to. I would get to an intersection and flip a coin, heads left and tails, right. It was an amazing way to see my own country.

As the years went by, I grew my engineering company to the extent that I had the financial ability to go anywhere, and buy what I wanted. But I could not go when I wanted, because to have a successfull company means one has to look after it, and work 70+ hours a week. Catch22. I took some risks in bussiness and some paid off to amazing profits, and one day, a big risk sank the company. I was penniless. I was free. I was for some strange reason, happy.

I sold off my motorbikes, aeroplane and pick-up. I just kept my old 1957 Land-Rover and a few clothes, tent and sleeping-bag. I gave my furniture and TV to a friend's son, because the youngster had started an unplanned family, and could not afford a TV or  furniture. Besides I thaught that the TV would help to prevent more unplanned additions to the family...

I had a bit of cash, and a lot of time, so I got as far as Malawi untill the money ran out. This was 5000 miles from home. Not that I had a home to go back to. I did some work on a game-ranch for food and shelter, and when my visa ran out, filled up my Landy with backpackers who had their fill with African public transport. I said to them, "here is the Landy, put in fuel, and here is me, put in beer, and I will take you where my nose is telling me to go!" It worked a charm. I got to travel, and the backpackers got off the beaten track, and off the overland truck routes. They saw Africa like the normal tourist would never see it. Some backpackers even stayed on for a very long time. The record was set by a Swiss guy, NINE MONTHS!!!

I got to realise that I could carry on like this indefinately. I made a lifestyle choice. The irony about all this was that I always thaught that I needed to be very rich to do it. The reality was that the money bound me and I was not free, untill I got poor...

I met my girlfriend while roaming around Africa, and we are currently in Sweden, her home counrty, but she is a traveller like me, and we are currently planning a trip to Arlanda airport. From there, we have no idea...