Get to know a little more about me and why I wanted to become a travel writer. Read on to discover what my Walk Wild posts are about and what I hope you can get out of them.
- Who Am I?
- What is Adventure Travel?
- Why Am I Doing This?
- What Am I Writing About?
- What Are my Goals?
1. Who Am I?
I’m a travel writer with a passion for adventure. I initially studied Biology at university and then went into marketing at a company dealing with climate solutions. Unfortunately, I was miserable. It was a lifestyle that just wasn’t for me. I’d been travelling on and off for the five years preceding and I wrote creatively in my free time. Despite this, I hadn’t considered pursuing a career in travel writing until I realised how out of place I felt in the corporate world.
For a long time I knew I wanted to be a writer, but I never took it seriously or as an absolute priority. It was only once I made the decision to leave my job that I started pursuing writing professionally. I wasn’t sure if I would be a screenwriter, novelist, or short story writer and at first I was quite confused. I spent a great deal of time pursuing these interests without much to show for it. It then occurred to me that a beautiful harmony between my two passions lay in travel writing.
With this in mind I started Walk Wild and have been working away as a travel writer ever since! This new path allows me to travel the world, to go on adventures, and to write about the places I love. I sometimes share my adventures through blogs, travel guides, and travel stories. But primarily, I focus on writing travel books and magazine feature articles.
2. What is Adventure Travel?
“An unusual, exciting, and daring experience.”
Definition of “Adventure” – Oxford English Dictionary
Growing up, adventures always thrilled me. Being outside, exploring nature, and doing crazy activities in the wild was everything to me. So it’s little surprise that I’ve transferred this sense of adventure to travelling the world when I grew up.
For me, an adventure is an experience that’s out of the ordinary and in some way challenges you to do something daunting or even scary. It’s not a holiday, nor it it luxury travel (which I think is a ridiculous concept as it’s essentially a very expensive holiday). It’s even a step above regular backpacking and travelling because it’s more isolated and there’s a smaller safety net.
It’s got to be a trip that’s off the beaten track, challenging, and one that takes you out of your comfort zone. The attraction being that because the stakes are higher, the experience is that much more unforgettable and liberating once its complete.
Things may not go your way. In fact, the whole point of an adventure is that things likely won’t. But it’s about how you handle yourself and what steps need to be taken to navigate out of a tricky situation. Each decision you make will teach you something about yourself and indeed the world around you. You will find yourself discovering the sort of life lessons that could never be learnt anywhere else.
Ultimately, adventure travel means different things to different people. For some it can be simply stepping out your door and doing something small away from your comfort zone. For others it can mean flinging yourself out of a plane at 20,000 feet, hiking across an active volcano, or wild camping in the gobi desert. Luckily for me, I’ve been able to do all of these things. Because of this, I write about the experiences I’m most accustomed to – the extreme adventures – which is hopefully something you can enjoy following too!
3. Why Am I Doing This?
So there I sat, slightly delirious with cabin fever, and only 30 hours into a three-day train journey. Looking out the window, I couldn’t help but be impressed by the enormity of Russia. I was captivated by the seemingly endless number of grass fields and pine trees that flashed by, mile after mile. I’d already spent many hours on War and Peace and was feeling sickened by the combination of black coffee and instant noodles. No one in my berth spoke English and I had no computer or phone signal.
I struck up conversation with a Russian man laying in the bed next to me on Google Translate to try and pass the time. After a brief back and forth of pleasantries he asked me why I wanted to do the Trans Siberian and why didn’t I just fly?
Why indeed.
I knew why I wanted to do it. Because I felt it in me, as an urge and a yearning. It wasn’t a question of why, it was a question of how. I always knew with certainty that travelling was something I wanted to do. What was less clear, was how I should vocalise this feeling to others.
Why do we want to travel? What is it about long uncomfortable journeys, being away from home, sleeping in hostels with no privacy or personal space, foreign cities, and stepping out of your comfort zone that is so appealing? It was a question I had been asked before, but when I lay on my bed that night in the rocking and shaking carriage I couldn’t turn the thought from my mind.
The next morning I began to make some notes about what travel meant to me, and why without it, my life would feel so incomplete. I felt a frantic desire to shout those notes out and tell those around me what I thought. But instead, I waited. I finished my trip and headed home. After a while, I got tired of thinking and started to act. I opened my laptop and began to type.
And just like that, Walk Wild was created.
4. What Am I Writing About?
“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”
J.R.R. Tolkien – The Lord of the Rings
Although this quote from Bilbo is meant to be a warning, it fills me with a little trepidation and a lot of excitement. When I first stepped out my door to go travelling I was afraid. There’s no two ways about it. I was 19 years of age and embarking on a solo backpacking trip to Australia and New Zealand. Since then, with each trip and every journey, my knowledge has improved. All this information I’ve acquired, often by getting things wrong, I want to pass on to you. I’ve made the mistakes so you don’t have to.
Whenever I’m on a trip I find myself filled with inspiration and brimming with passion. When I travel I am living the happiest version of my life. In my articles and blogs, I aim to reflect those feelings, in the hope that I can inspire my readers to experience the same joy as I do.
People often ask me questions like:
“Are you afraid?”
“How do you know where to go?”
“How do you know what you’re doing?”
Through Walk Wild, I aim to answer these questions and explain a little more about how to get over the pre-travel nerves and what prior information you need to embrace the adventure. Some of my adventures may be too extreme for most people and that’s okay. That’s why I write travel stories and books to entertain and inspire others with my adventures instead.
Even though the world may seem like a scary place, you will never regret getting out there and conquering your fears. You will likely find the experience to be far less terrifying than you had imagined, and all the more rewarding because of it.
Take that step, get out there, and let’s explore the world together.
5. What Are my Goals?
I recently finished a two year journey on the Pan American Highway. On this expedition, I bought a campervan and drove from the Canadian Arctic to the bottom of South American. This adventure took me overlanding 50,000 kilometres through 15 countries. I’m busy writing the books for this journey and doing speaking events about the adventure.
In the future, I’m interested in driving the Silk Road (inspired by my Trans Siberian Railway journey); over-landing from Cape Town to Cairo; hiking the highest mountain in every European country; walking the Pacific Crest Trail in the US; or exploring multiple long-distance hiking routes and wild camping trips in national parks the world over.
And those are just my ideas at the minute.
As you can tell, I have a lot of ideas and many travelling dreams I hope to achieve. But there lies a problem. How can I afford to do this? How can I live such an extreme life? Well, the short answer is through my travel writing and speaking events.
The first step involves me becoming a sort of digital nomad. This involves writing blogs, freelance articles, and in general making money off Walk Wild through the content I produce. It takes a lot of hard work and there’s no easy route to the top, but if you want to travel as badly as I do, the effort is always worth it.
My ultimate goal is to write books. Not just articles and travel guides, but short stories and novels. I write every day, to continuously develop the skills required to produce a whole book. But, these sorts of things take time to learn and perseverance to succeed from. That’s one of the reasons I read so much and produce all my book reviews, to learn about the craft and to make myself a better writer in the hope that I can reproduce it in my own work!
So now you’ve got an idea about my inspirations, dreams, and all the things that make me want to work on Walk Wild. You’ve seen what makes me tick, now see what I produce! Follow the links below to read about everything to do with outdoor adventure travel!
