Exploring the world again
It hasn’t been a year since my last long trip when I got the travel bug again – I wanted to leave my home for a while again. I didn’t think a lot. I am the happiest when I am on my motorcycle. It was clear that I’m going to drive somewhere, I only had to pick the destination. I was browsing the internet and soon it was clear that I’m going on the southern hemisphere, to
Madagascar. The only obstacle was my holiday leave at my job but it was quickly solved when my boss approved my holiday.
May was coming and so was my vacation. The day before I left I dragged a big rubbery bag into my living room and filled it with moto gear, some shirts, underwear and socks. I went to bed and the next day I had a flight over Turkey and Mauritius to Madagascar.
It was a routine flight. I was watching movies and imagines how the life in a country with chameleons, lemurs and happy people will be.
I landed and the moment I’ve been waiting happened. For the first time in my life someone came to pick me up at the airport and saved me the search for a ride to the city. The daughter of a man who lent me a motorcycle was waiting for me with a big writing “Bostjan” in the front of a crowd. Only a shook of our hands took us to become chatty and to ask each other a lot of questions. Chatting kept going all the way to her home where her father was waving at me and my motorcycle was also waiting. Then the “manly debates” began.
I didn’t want to waste time chatting and sitting. I left the next morning – my goals were remote places and villages. Experience made me that way and I know that it is more interesting, calm and quiet there.
I will never be disappointed if I go to the countryside. All cities are the same. People pass each other, they don’t know each other. Even in the capital of Madagascar, the cars are really outdated, old junk from France. The island is a French colony and beside the cars, they also adopted their language. They talked French, I talked English. Great! Madagascar is an extremely poor country, people are left on their own to survive. A lot of them are farming or breed cattle. It’s enough to survive.
The capital city was soon behind me and I started to see some villages. There were little stalls on every path I took. People set up a stall with their houses and sell something to eat to people passing by. Fruit, roasted meat or, my favourite, roasted bananas. I really liked those. I don’t want to talk about how I waved to the barefoot family or how we communicated by using hands. The remote villages are really something special. The whole village is so connected. They work by hand, with animals, there aren’t many machines. Children play, the elders talk and take care of the children. I’d rather tell a story than write about things that you can find on the internet.
Let this be only an introduction to the stories you’ll be able to read in the next issues of Globetrotter. These will be the stories, which I thought that I will keep for myself, because they’re so special. But a person sometimes changes his mind and that is why you should read my article in the next issue of Globetrotter.
