Tashki the Travelling Bear §1: How It All Begun

From the Series "Tashki the Travelling Bear and Other Stories"

I was always travelling a lot. Since I can remember my days, since my early childhood, I have been regularly on the road, and not only. Travelling by all and any means, car, train, planes, large commercial vessels, whatever.

My early travels I have to thank to my dad who was a maritime captain on cargo vessels, thus spent most of his professional life at sea. He started taking me with him as soon I could walk, thus already as a kid I had the privilege to see different places, meet different cultures, people, hear various languages in their native context. I spent several months each year travelling the world with him, accumulating great life experience: already in my teenage years I could say to have seen most of the continents and quite a respectable number of places. Growing older, I took all chances at our travels to extend exploring places we have been visiting by going around on my own as much I could, merging with locals, getting taste of daily life without cosmetic cliches wherever we went.

That chance to see the world early, given to me by my father is probably the most important gift I ever received, and I am eternally grateful to him for that. Experiences and wide view one gains when actively moving around the World are priceless.

My early life travels formed an essential part of me myself and made me feel truly a Native of this Planet. I feel no borders. My blood went into nomadic mode for life. Moving is THE essential part of me and my life. I HAVE to move, go around, travel, meet people and see places. And the more I do, the more I am hungry to see and learn more about this wonderful planet and the variety of everything it has to offer: cultures, nature, arts, places, etc.

The transition into my professional life was a major step-stone, as it meant no more such abundant travels with my dad, but rather with immediate effect on my own. As a fresh out-of-university aspiring professional, time for extensive or regular travel was very much restrictive. And the money was scarce. But my nomadic nature was ready to push me very much forward to look for such assignments and jobs where travel was a part of it. Cutting long story short, I quickly discovered that I was a bad employee. I could not care less of hierarchy and it disturbed me to the max sometimes having a boss with narrow views, and intolerant on top of all. Fairly quickly I came to understand that I am actually an entrepreneur by soul. Someone, who needs to act very much on his own. Sometimes following guts more than brains (which impacted my personal economy a number of times...). Of course, being young and ignorant in business matters, it took many years and a lot of work & failures, to truly profile myself, to create my professional universe and link all of that with travel. I created my own international business doing what I truly like, and moving across the planet thus satisfying the nomad in me.

I am not living with a backpack. I am settled down, I do even have a fix address and a house 😊. I do have a family as well. I have a cat. Always had a cat. My family understands my nomadic nature and we found a mode to have time together and for me to pursue my business and travels. My cat understands my travels somewhat less, though: always when I am back home she plays being offended for an hour or so ....

A few years back, as homage to my father, and to pass some wonderful personal experiences further, I started travelling with my daughter, whenever she had her university holidays. Doing so, we both discovered a completely new level of understanding, or “bonding” as some may say. What a wonderful experience!

Currently my “little” grown up daughter is a business professional in a hi-tech corporate setting, travelling now professionally and privately very much on her own … thus joint travel time came to be much more restrictive... unfortunately...

In all these travelling years I collected thousands of photos, which I will selectively post followed by a short story.

These were the roots of a nomad, in short. My small travelling companion, a teddy named Tashki, will introduce himself in the next story to follow.

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