China, October 2008

It is hard to define a date for when my travel addiction started because there are many moments (and life choices) that contribute to it. However, the discovery of me as a backpacker dates back to 2008. 

I was studying in Shanghai and during the Golden week, together with other classmates, we decided to go explore a bit of Yunnan, a remote region neighboring with Myammar, Laos and Vietnam.

We made an expedition to the ‘fake market’ to buy robust backpacks and we delegated the planning to one of us (when traveling in group, it’s always good to have one person in charge of the planning, with the others proactively following, than to have a clash of too many minds).

There are several moments of that trip come to my mind quite often:

The red lights and the first dinner in Lijang. 

Meeting Dr Wu in his remote village. 

Taking a sleeping bus north to south thinking it would take 10 hours while it actually took 16.

Being chased by monkeys in the elephant jungle, which actually had no elephant, but was still awesome.

Getting mad at each others while playing competitive UNO (yes, that group was a bit competitive).

We came back satisfied of what we had seen and lived and with a long list of to-dos-next: Tibet, Sichuan (which is still on that list and is considered from many Chinese the best region of their waste country), Guilin, the Great Wall, the Terracotta warriors in Xian, …

The more you travel, the more you want to travel. Isn’t that an addiction?