When you decide to leave on this trip, a little bit of planning might be good, or you could do as funny does not plan anything at all. And secondly, when you start traveling, you can decide whether you want to travel alone, or whether you're going to travel with your body. And this is what we're going to talk about. So first, I'm going to start with the planning because as inish mentioned, I didn't plan anything. There's only so much you can do when you're hitchhiking because my case was very random, very extreme. I wouldn't say that everybody starts with HIV, but there was my idea of backpacking, the planning really was involved only in areas where I knew that it was busy and maybe it was a tourist season.

So I booked hostels one or two or three nights ahead, but not more than that because I wanted to give myself the option to be random, because in a holster what I realized is very easy to make friends. First of all, you already filter the crowd. And you have people with common interests, a lot of people are looking for themselves. And if people are going stuff, and I'm going south, and I like them, I want to go with them. But if I have everything planned ahead, that's either not possible or I lose out on a lot of money. So this allowed me to meet a lot of great people and to share one or two or three weeks with them.

And this is actually how we met with inish. We met in Colombia, and it was very random. We love planned just enough of had to give ourselves time and option to meet up again, the only thing that I planned was my flights back home and my flights into Cuba. My first stop was Cuba, and I planned only three nights. And I did it deliberately because I wanted to have this very spontaneous feel. Remember, I left my country because I wanted to get lost.

So not planning was part of the plan. And although For being somebody that really was a bit of a neurotic kind of personality, it was a very big stretch. Because not planning for me meant leaning into the unknown and having faith that everything would work out. Remember I said that I said, limited. Now if I plan everything ahead, then I'm going to limit myself all over again. So for me, the best way was to be completely random.

And also when people tell you where to go, and you shouldn't miss out on something that you couldn't even read or find online, then you need to be able to be random, from our experience, and I think you can recognize this. The less you plan, the more you will be surrounded with like minded people who are taking it slow and the more you will be surprised because you allow yourself to be surprised, because that's the beauty about slow traveling. You can be somewhere you don't know how long you're gonna be. There, but you kind of take it as it comes in how it feels. And as soon as you feel boredom, you just pack up your bag and you leave again, this kind of traveling is really not about what the ice is about how it makes you feel and the things that you learn about yourself and and the beginning I mentioned that we're going to discuss why you travel longer and why I felt that a year was too much for me, because I was looking for answers.

Now by the time a year mark came, I already found enough answers. I felt that I moved too fast for about eight months, and I had to slow down enough so around the time I decided to settle down a little bit and to complete my year I can still call it traveling because I moved around a bit but it wasn't packing my bag and leaving. No if I went somewhere I went for the day or two or three but then I returned to my base. I needed that base was I was exhausted. Because every time you have to pack up and say goodbye no These emotional roller coaster that you're on. It's really exhausting.

What I realized that once I reached Machu Picchu around seven, eight months, that was the time when I felt that I had to stop. Because I've seen so much beauty that I stopped appreciating it. And it became the norm. There was so wonderful. And I thought it was this disrespectful of me to go to a place and just take six pictures for my family. And that's all and not feeling that I'm getting something out of the experience.

So I stopped because I exhausted myself. Exactly. And this is something attract that old travelers will face. We are so focused in moving forward and seeing a lot of things, usually driven by what is written in the Lonely Planet, because you want to see it all because you're there and you know, this is a trip of a lifetime that you sometimes forget to just slow down, sit back, relax and enjoy. Did you grow into this rhythm and that realization Hello me until this day, having my own business now to just have faith in surprises and in experiences, because the unknown really can give you a lot of beauty and magic. So now moving on to the travel buddy or traveling alone section, I started with someone, a friend of mine and we did four months together.

And that was great for me to begin with, first of all, because when you're together with someone constantly, you improve your communication you have to we drove each other crazy. And this was a girl that I didn't know so well at the time. But I just knew that she's going to be a great travel buddy. And she didn't become an excellent friend. But around four months, we both decided it's time to separate because it's too much. Even if we spend a day apart, we still have to adapt to each other.

And we still have to agree on a destination where we're going to go together. But I felt that I was liberated when I was alone. And this does not mean that I didn't like traveling with my friend. I Did I learned so much from it, and I will do it all over again. But when I was on my own, and I'm in quotation marks on my own, because you're never really alone, you're always surrounded by people. You're always in hostels with amazing people, but alone means that you travel by your own standard, and you don't have to adapt to someone else's agenda.

So the way I did it, I went to a hostel and introduced myself and I told them, okay, guys, tomorrow, this is what I'm going to visit anyone wants to come with me. And then in a week, I plan on going there unless something else comes up, if anyone wants to join me, and that's it. So basically presented them with an idea and my plan, and we don't need to move together everywhere. What I liked about this is traveling alone. First of all, I have to be able to talk to strangers, because there's no one else who can comfort me, no one else who can give me company. So making friends is way easier when I'm on my own.

But also, I feel that it's the ultimate Freedom that I experienced when I was on my own. Traveling by yourself really means that you need to show up every day. And you learn so much about yourself and you conquer a lot of fears as well. Because every time you show up at a new hospital, you're by yourself. So you're there, you know, you're going to meet people, but you will only meet people, if you show up. If you get yourself out there, then traveling together is also very useful.

I, for instance, traveled in a van for a month with three complete strangers. We did a hike before and we had a good connection and we had so much fun and then we decided to travel from Chile to one a series that month spending 24 seven with people you don't really know has been massively intense, and I can really resonate with what we find is that I really liked them with being together all the time is sometimes very exhausting, and you feel that you need your personal space, but I learned So much about myself and how others perceive me that I was not aware of that it really is worthwhile to like, try the two outs and see where you land. So just to wrap up this topic, I wanted to share one more experience of someone else that I met on the road. There were these three guys traveling together for years for like, two, three years.

But they didn't stay together all the time, they spent maybe a week or two, they met up in a country. And then after that, they all spread and they went their own ways. And in three months, they got together again for a week or two. And that's it. So they can they could keep going on and on and on and moving towards slightly different directions but always meeting up and this is why they could do it for years at the time. And I think this was also a really, really good technique that I would recommend for someone who wants to go for two to three years at a time.