When travelling, many people may regard you as someone who has opted out of dealing with the responsibilities of everyday life. It is assumed that one must be gleaning a living from the government or perhaps one doesn’t want the hassle of a landlord or mortgage; perhaps we have never “grown up” or perhaps we are people needing to escape some aspect of our lives. This may be true for some people and for them, I am happy that they found the open road rather than the bottom of a whisky bottle, whilst simultaneously hoping that there are relatively few that found both.
In fact, my own travels take time and planning. Always returning to a base means that the homestead must be maintained in our absence; that responsibilities do not simply ebb away, but become unwieldy and hard to manage through geographical distance.
So much more preparation than I expected is needed to spend anymore than a night alone with one’s bus and the stars… simple considerations such as curtains for the vehicle in which we will sleep and storage for our worldly belongings, are practicalities that have frankly come at the cost of the little sanity which I have left.
Safety is a great weight upon my shoulders as my four young children’s reliance on me on the road is far more than when we are holed up in our middle class suburb in the city. Furthermore, means to travel comes straight from my pocket and that of husband and young family and no, in our case, the government does not subsidise our adventures. Insurance, health and safety, which are all fairly straight forward when stationary, become mammoth concerns once the bus you ride in becomes your home. But for all of these mundane details and that of learning to wash, cook and eat well on the go, the reward becomes all the more sweet. Because regardless of the planned out nature of the adventure, or the whys and wherefores as to why we have left our comfortable “everyday” in the first place; we get to taste the fresh, unadulterated slice of life many people will never know.
The taste of that which wise and not so wise men alike, describe as “freedom”.
