Let me explain. When in third worlds, safe third worlds, people will come up to you and want to speak with you. And if their intent is just to chat, and to try out their English, or find out where you are from, it usually is a happy occasion.  This exchange leaves you feeling happy too. And if your everyday existence is like this, you begin to realize this is a cool way to live and you’ll want to keep it going. Move on to the next town, or country and you never know who you’re going to meet and what you will see. Eating the local food is incredible. Then browsing in the local markets, and stopping by for a cup of tea. It can turn into a whole day, and then its dinner time. And you feel good, relaxed…at peace with the world, and with yourself.

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What is the most complex part to these kinds of extensive adventures is arriving back home. Adjusting to the everyday life of work and routine is so anticlimactic. So much so that if you knew how difficult that part of it was, you would never leave in the first place! But don’t let that stop you anyway.
Here’s my situation: clearly I belong in the EEAT category. Or I did. I rhapsodize and reminisce about it so much that my whole life’s goal now is to get back out there. But I did satisfy one part of me that longs to get back out there and just can’t at the moment. Writing OVERLAND.

When you read OVERLAND, you’ll see how much of what I had lived in these travels, is the story. Although there is plenty of fiction and imagination, it’ll be interesting to speak with people to ask me what stories were real. On some snowy Sunday, I may read my book again and actually count how many moments of my travels are in there. If I had to guess, I would say dozens. The scene when the song “Moonlight Serenade” by Glenn Miller suddenly plays in the most remote and random of circumstances, you’ll wonder where that came from.

I heard it in a pub waiting for the ferry to cross the English Channel from Dover to Calais, France. It was a just one of those magical memories that stood time very still. And very inspirational indeed! You’ll find it in Chapter 23.

Please feel free to make any comments on what happy moments made your time stand still.