As good a question as any, why do I travel? Perhaps a more insightful question might be ‘what are you running away from?’. Because I am. Running away that is. It was getting to a stage where I was long out of university and I’d been living independently in London for a few years and there was always the pressure of what to do next.

I didn’t have, or want (still don’t) a boyfriend, I  certainly wasn’t ready to settle down. Although I had a good job and a nice sideline as a fashion blogger, complete with awards, I was pretty skint. It wasn’t that I didn’t earn enough money, it was that I lived in London which is cray expensive,  so the vast majority of my wage was immediately swallowed up by my huge rent.

Mostly though, I found myself thinking, ‘these are the last days of my youth’. Dramatic, sure, but on a real – they totally are. So it was either plod into adulthood feeling totally unprepared and like I had unfinished business, or run into the sun.

I chose to do the latter. It was weird because I’d never expressed any interest in seeing the world, never had any wanderlust, I certainly hadn’t done much travel prior to buying  a round the world ticket. My decision to do long term travel literally happened in the space of two hours. I was deciding whether or not to take a new job after I’d already handed in my notice at the old one and I thought, why have I self-sabotaged myself? Obviously, deep down, I wanted out. As soon as I told the first person (my Mum, obvy) I wanted to go travelling, it felt so right. Although it was one of the most off the cuff choices I’ve ever made, I have never once regretted it.

So really, there’s no deep and meaningful reason as to why I travel. I just want to – life is too short and I’m not ready to do what’s expected of me. I know I’ll have a family of my own one day and a career of sorts but there’s no need to do it in a conventional way, or rush into it. For now it’s just me, my backpack and thefashionablebackpacker.com 

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