”Some of us choose our travel designations based on the iconic nature of the place. My trip to Peru was no exception.”

Thank you,

Amy, for giving us the opportunity to reflect upon our travels – because everybody travels sometime, somehow and somewhere. It does not have to be to faraway countries – we can also travel inside.

Some of my most intense travels – growing my self – important travels, were those I made as a young woman. Without a camera. I grew up with books, and many of them were about foreign jungles, rain forests, arctic areas and deserts.

My nose was always in a book, and in my mind I longed to see all those fantastic places and animals, meet those other cultures so different from my own.

Never did I guess I would get the opportunity to see so many of those places with my own eyes.

The extensive traveling started when I was 16 and met a young man who had reached the age for a driver’s license (18 in Sweden) – and, had a car of his own. We traveled through the whole of Europe for three summers. Then we decided to take the step over to Asia and a country much dreamed of – Nepal. Annapurna and Mount Everest, bicycle through the Kathmandu valley, Ox cart down in Chitwan. In the mountains we stayed at a bungalow owned by a Gurkha soldier. I had read that an Indian field marshal once stated something like: ”If a man says he is not afraid of dying, he is either lying or he is a Gurkha.” Respect. Still no camera – my fellow traveler had one though.

All photos from our travels for the next 20 years are slides, dia positives. We never look at them.

All those years…Nepal, India, Russia, the Trans-Siberian Railway, Egypt, China, Iceland, Greenland, Peru…Yes, Peru too – now Amy got me wanting to open up those old dia frames again…

But, I have stopped wanting to visit places I have been…you don´t have to wait long before they look completely different and have lost that glory you remember from your first visit…I hate it how we destroy the originality of places, islands, countries, people… And we change ourselves as well, as we grow.

My travels. They started in the 70´s and hopefully they are not over yet. 43 years of growing up on the road, meeting remarkable people, living spectacular moments. The world opened my eyes – teaching me tolerance, patience, love…and how very much we resemble each other, we are the same all over the world, in fact one big family…So, let us work together to make this world a better place! Sustainable. Let love and caring for nature and each other rule.

Let us build bridges – not walls. We are all connected.