It will be graduation and then work in another 2 years. What to do (kathmandu - note my clever alliteration), loans have to be repaid, and then i will sit down and review my future again. At current estimation (and market conditions) it will be 5 years (plus plus) before i am a free man. And then i will give some serious thought to what i want to do with my life - be an aid worker in Darfur? Busk in a Prague streetcorner? Throw my passport into the Ganges and be a saddhu in India? Sell roti canais on a Malaysian kerbside, starting afresh somewhere in the north where i have not been - Kelantan, Kedah?
Who says that we all have to get our diplomas or degrees and slog it out for the rest of our lives just to pay off that SUV, house, washing machine, dental plans and all that lot? What, is it written in the stars? No - no one says you have to do that, and i have made my decision - i am going to live.
How time has passed since i first started this blog - back then as a first year (naive) greenhorn, would-be (pseudo) vagabond churning out writings that are the literary equivalent of stale cups of tea. Maybe i still do, but so many things have already changed. I found myself (in the backstreets of India, besides the Ganges), who i wanted to be, who i was. What i wanted to do, what i wanted from life. My whole perspective had changed. Travel is a great teacher - it opens you to so many cultures, so many different peoples, so many perspectives, the ideas, great religions, civilisations, politics... And throw in challenges and moments that really test your Zen-patience.
As i told my friend the other day, i would not, never, sell my memories, whatever the sum even if it were humanly possible - it is so much a part of me, who i am today.
Fingers crossed i will be in the Middle east this summer (a month away, Insyallah), and then maybe save up for Indonesia in december - somewhere warm, maybe Bali to Timor Leste. And then its work - my professional internship which will net me a princely sum of some 600 plus dollars a month... After that it will be, virtually, my last big trip. Hopefully, i will go out with a bang on this one. South America is on the drawing board, if i can somehow get enough cash. That would be a sweet end to Year 3. And then final year - winter break on whatever funds i have left over would probably be spent somewhere nearby - was thinking of Burma encore, or maybe the Philippines.
I am hoping that i will be able to make one final trip - where else but back to India, again, before i go for my convocation and step out into the working world. This, in the sense, is my true convocation, my real graduation. After so many invaluable lessons and experiences on life, going on to another phase in life, from carefree backpacker to semi-tied down office worker (who can't wait for the day he has paid off his loans (and throw off his shackles) to be a vagabond, a world nomad with all his real estate on his back again, and no loans, no mortgage to pay...).
Of course, i am not forgetting the great travel axiom that goes: Make grand plans and make God laugh. But in the meantime i am still secretly eyeing a Silk Road journey into Central Asia from China, or the trans-Mongolian. And Pakistan, once the politcal impasse gets, umm, passed.
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