I’ve always liked to pack. Even though I just arrived late the night before and only had time to unpack a t-shirt. I’ll still be able to repack my entire backpack once more. The feeling of setting off to a new place, to new experiences, to some place unknown. Until your journey is finally over and you pack your stuff for the last time, before going home to everything you love. Places, events, people.

Not for the last time though. For as well as you know that you’ll return home when you set off, I know that I, once again in the future, shall pack my backpack and head for new adventures.

When it’s at its best, traveling between places can be the greatest joy of the entire trip! I’m not talking about the light feeling one have when opening the free pack of peanuts on the plane (even though that feeling can bring great joy with slightly VIP-feeling it brings because you are not treated like that at home).

Let me give you my purest example from my travels here in Mada. The overland trip from Tamatave up the east coast to Soanierana-Ivango:

I start out from the minibus station at 6 a.m. driving north along the sunrise. I’m on the front seat. The driver to my left and a fellow passenger to my right. Backpackers call this The Dead Seat, even though it’s the most comfortable seat in the whole bus. Why? Because it’s the only of the three front seats that don’t have a seatbelt (and it don’t seem to have it anywhere in the developing world). You would defiantly like a seatbelt when racing 90 km/h on a ‘road’, which is more a long line of potholes than an actually road. An accident will, at any time, smash the person sitting in The Dead Seat up on the front window like an insect!

Happy not being in my place the fellow on my right, a local businessman, decides to introduce me to local folktales and ancient believes, and as we go along the whole bus is filled with cheers and laughter.

Every time the bus makes a stop, it’s surrounded by street vendors trying to sell us all kinds of foot, and the local businessman buys me something at every stop. Anything from boiled corn over exotic berries to fried fish. I, on the other hand, are not allowed to buy anything! The six hours of driving passes as two, and when we reaches our destination we share farewells and whishes of good luck and safe travels, before setting off in different directions, probably, never to meet again…

Bonus info: Even though I’m in the other end of the world the minibus driver still had a cd with Aqua’s Baby Girl on it!

No. of bath Ask had have since the 16/7: 2