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April 2017📍 London, UK

Conquering Inner Demons

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So with my one year trip to London well underway and soon about to end in a few months and potentially my only opportunity to see the world, I decided to apply the Schengen Visa. The Schengen Visa is a tourist visa to the European Union where one submits his entire family history, financial history, geography and what not and is randomly alloted a few days to travel to Europe. Sometimes you get 2 days single entry, sometimes you get 6 months, and sometimes upto 2 years absolutely at the behest of the visa case worker. I believe its an absolute disgrace of a system.

As someone who spent most of his time in front of the computer, I just wanted something to take me away from them before it consumed me because by that time, weirdly the only thing that gave me pleasure was to be on my computer doing Web stuff. It was my solace, my place to escape. It constantly reminded me of my college days when my dad tried his best to make me socialize in the real world.

I have also had this problem where I always needed someone to accompany me in anything big I did. That was also something that absolutely bothered me. He who always needs to be hand held can never be a leader. Leaders go out of their comfort zones and venture into the unknown first, others follow. I wanted to change this follower mindset and take control of my own life where I took the decision about what I wanted, to be bold, to be a risk taker, to come out of comfort zone, to untangle my mind off the gazillion societal shackles it was caught up in.

And so I decided travel solo. For the next 2-3 months, on alternate weekends, taking the Friday and Monday off, I booked 2-4 day trips solo to Edinburgh, Paris, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Rome, Vatican, Venice, Zurich, Interlaken, Brussels (with Tin a friend I made from Australia), Stockholm and Berlin.

It was thrilling in the beginning. Taking spur of the moment decisions, booking the cheapest of flights which flew in the most obscure hours, staying in hostels in the outskirts of cities, sleeping in airports, jumping off cliffs, it had everything. By the end of the tenth trip, I was absolutely done travelling. I made friends Ilo from Germany, Emi and Vic from Argentina, Jen from the UK,

After a successful year in London having made some friends and seen places, having saved a bit of money, I returned back to India. I was thrilled about the prospect of meeting Nat again.