Fuck yeah, hitchhiking

Officially homeless

hikehitcher:

The first step has been taken. On the 12th of April I will be starting. I’m pretty  unprepared, my pack is overweight, and I’m pretty scared. So this should be pretty intense on the “Leaving comfort zone” scale. I don’t want to be unprepared! At the same time I don’t want to be lugging around 50 pounds of unneeded crap.

Guess I’ll learn on the road. I’ll figure out what I need and don’t need. Right about now I’m wishing I was a boy scout at some point. I feel mentally unprepared. But I got safety measures. Some camping supplies. Some clothes. A few comforts. Worst case, I toss some things and pick up whatever I may need on the road!

Anyways, yep. Homelessness. Its pretty manageable when you’ve got plenty of friends to help you out. I just couchsurf from place to place. Seeing everyone before I go off on an amazing life changing adventure. Its freeing, too. I’m no longer working, allowing more time spent with my friends. I have money saved, and I’m not living the same grindy ‘go to work-come home-play on computer-see friends sometimes’ situation that was starting to really bring me down!

“How long will you be gone?”

“When will you be back?”

“Where are you going?”

“Don’t get raped!”

Lets clear the air here for all my loved ones reading this:

I don’t want to put a timeline on this. This can’t be rushed. If I find some remote town where I work at an amazing little place for a month or two, cool! Who knows what’ll happen! Gotsta gotsta gotsta keep an open mind.

I’ll be back later. Or, in internet terms: bbl.

I’m going anywhere and everywhere that might interest me. The Grand Canyon. Carlsbad Caverns. Hopping trains from east to west. The Smithsonian. Wherever I goddamn please. I am free to do what I please!

“What if you die!”

Its not a matter of what if. I know I’m going to die. One day. I figure its more of a “How will I die?” I’d much prefer dying trying to do something amazing than living a hollow life and taking no risks until one day it sneaks up on me.

So, there we have it. I love you all. Hope I can see you before I depart. 

INTO TURKEY

tacoleman:

I woke to the sound of a donkey and trap passing within feet of my head. I realized i had slept next to a small dirt path. I started off on the day’s journey bright and early, with the hopes of entering turkey by around midday.
I walk to the road i had decided was the one i should take, it was quite (little surprise,  i was yet to see a road i would call busy by British standards). I tried to get a lift for many hours, but to no avail. A man on i bicycle stopped and asked me (in Bulgarian) where i was going. I replied saying “Tutsiya”, the word i had over heard many Bulgarian truck drivers say and assumed it meant Turkey. The man shook his head, and gesticulated that i was on the wrong road. He drew me a map (one that i still own), this was the most crude map i had ever seen and in a foreign language. I took an even smaller road on the left and walked a few miles. The landscape was flat, like nowhere i had seen at home. The grate expanses of level ground where hemmed in by large mountains away off in the distance with large power plants bellowing out clouds from large chimneys.
I stumbled across a little village where the locals watched me meander through,  i thought how strange a lone traveler waking through this village in back county of Bulgaria would seam to them who had probably never seen a foreigner their entire life.
I came across a road at a right angle to the one i was on, the one the map drawer had told me would be busy, with many trucks going to Turkey on. It was not so. I did get a some lifts, few and far between, and they would not take me far. One lift i got was with a man who would accelerate to high speeds and then turn his engine off (I can only guess as an attempt to save full), another was from two young blokes with some poor English and a boot filled with bottled water. I took many hours but i soon arrived at the base of one of the previously distant power stations. The land was blanketed by numerous pylons a cables that snaked away from the giant smokey chimneys. I was told by the water carrying youths that they called this place Gypsy city and that the place crawled with Gypsies that would rob me as soon as look at me. I would have beded down for the night had it not been for their words of warning. So i decided to walk. I crested a hill, and on the other side stood large blocks of flats in the middle of this barren waste land. There were a patch work of DIY fixings. Slums in the middle of the wastes. I carried on walking in the direction i could only hope was the right one. Gypsies would pass on donkeys and traps and scary half domesticated dogs would bark. The experience made me feel very vulnerable, and looking back on it, that was probably because i was. I would stick my thumb out when the occasional vehicle would pass, and keep my head down when a donkey and trap would pass me by.
To my surprise two gypsies on a donkey drawn cart stopped for me and offered me a lift. Having decided to take opportunities when offered i accepted. I sat atop the back of a cart pondering the distances i had covered. I was left at a bus stop and given the bus fair. I thanked the men and they went on their way. I was very uneasy alone in this place and i did not know when the bus would come. I decided to walk instead. The vehicle that passed was the bus i was supposed to have got. I had managed to hitch a lift with them and one person who could speak a little English had managed to find someone who could take me a little closer to the Turkish border.
It had started to get dark and the man who had offered me a lift on the bus dropped me off on a motor way lay-by. The next car to pass stopped and picked me up. He was Turkish and had very basic English. This man had offered to take me over the border. He had dogs hidden in the foot wells of the back seats. On the way to the border he asked me my name, he scribbled my name down in an EU dog passport, and told me that i now owned one of the dogs on the back seat, and laughed.
As we passed through the border he was very edgy and was obviously trying to keep the dogs out of view. I was now in Turkey. After we got through he was very pleased and told me he was smuggling the dogs over the border as he didn’t want to pay the fees. He took me and the dogs to a small house in the middle of nowhere that had lots and lots of dogs in cages outside. He then sold the dogs to a man there and got back in the car. He asked if i would help him smuggle some more over, but i declined. He gave me a pack of cigarettes, and got me some chy tea. I fell asleep next to the road just passed passport control and surrounded by the stray dogs that patrol the borders of countries of eastern Europe.
And so i spent my first night in Turkey. 

Anonymous asked: how did you prepare for such journeys? is it very expensive? maybe u can show us all the gear you have - i want to hitchhike around the u.s but dont know where to start