Serious travel blogs?
What’s that supposed to mean?
Well, I guess it means ‘serious’ in the sense of exploring the issues which I’m inevitably confronted with when I travel. I’m an issues person and I´m also a sceptic, never taking anything at its face value.
One of my great passions is to meet strangers and hear their stories. To question them, to dig deep. At the same time, travel encourages me to be introspective about my own cultural background.
My travelling began as a child when my father was in the Royal Australian Air Force and was continually on the move, from Europe and the Mediterranean to remote places in Australia.
But it really took off after I met my Dutch partner Anya in Indonesia in 1980 and we travelled overland across northern India.
Our life together has been rather unconventional. We both have dual citizenship and passports. She is Dutch-Australian, so to speak, whilst I am Australian-Dutch. In some ways, she is more Australian than me. She loves her AFL and cricket and picks up Aussie expressions quickly. In some ways I am more Dutch than her. I have written a PhD about the Dutch political system and am enthusiastic about the Dutch ‘middle way’ capitalism and the liberal freedoms which have made that country unique in the world. We are different people who hardly ever agree with another but enjoyed our differences and have many things in common, such as a love of classical music and, travel.
We live alternatively in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, and Adelaide, South Australia, moving back and forth and in between, spending long periods of Somewhere Else. The journeys we have been on have varied enormously. For over 20 years we regularly went trekking in the Indian Himalaya, carrying all our own equipment and supplies and following villagers’ traditional trails. When those trails disappeared (due to mass tourism, Indian as well as foreign), we began doing long bike rides in Europe and Australia. And in between, innumerable bus and train trips in Asia, Europe, and Northern Africa. Sometimes our journeys were short in terms of distance – a bike trip to Belgium for example – but the distance was irrelevant. It was the act of moving, of experiencing a different place and different people, of changing our environment, which was important for us.
In Serious Travel Blogs, I focus on relating travel experiences which have made a deep impact on me for whatever reason.
But there are many levels of experience – in life as well as travel – and so recently I have started a new blog ‘Wandering Pete’ – my aim here is to record my experiences from a day to day basis or in other words, to keep an online diary.
Check it out!
https://wordpress.com/view/wanderingpete.com
