I was born in a small town in the province of Andhra Pradesh in south central India. My family moved around a lot. My three elder brothers went to boarding school and I hardly saw them except during summer holidays. By the time I was ready to go to Kindergarten, we had lived in five different cities in three different provinces in I don’t know how many different houses. I have some vague and some vivid memories of those early days.
Then for the next six years we were relatively settled in one place. We lived in the last of the three houses for four years. When I was 11 years old, my dad decided to sell everything we had, pack our bags and move the entire family to Pakistan. We left on the first of May 1965 and traveled through India, East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and finally arrived in Karachi, Pakistan on the 25th of May. We traveled via trains, motor boat, buses and a huge passenger ship, that circumnavigated the Indian Peninsula in seven days.
What a trip that was. I met so many different people that looked different from the people I was used to seeing in south India and spoke various different languages. I learned that if you live a good life and are good to people, you can build relationships that last lifetimes.
I remember when we arrived in Khulna, East Pakistan, we went from the train station to the place of worship for our community. It was 4:00 AM and we joined the morning meditation and services. At the Jamat Khana (or community center) as it is known, we ran into one of my dad’s acquaintances from the town where I was born. That means it had been at least ten years since he and my dad had seen each other. This was 1965 which meant they weren’t exactly Skype buddies. As a matter of fact they didn’t have any contact with each other whatsoever in that time period. He insisted that we stay at his place while we were there. Every place we went someone knew my parents and took us in for a few days as we moved along to the next leg of our journey.
It is no wonder that I have wanderlust in my nature. As a child, I remember playing Monopoly (Indian Version) with my brothers and talking about all of us (five brothers and a sister) traveling the world together some day.
While we haven’t done that yet, all of us have been to several different countries. I have two siblings currently living in Pakistan, but most of their children live overseas. One of my brothers lives in Uganda, in East Africa. Three of us live in Houston, TX and some of our children are attending colleges in other cities or countries. My daughter spent a year in Turkey last year as an exchange student is always talking about going overseas every time I talk to her.
When I got married, my wife and I talked about living a nomadic life and making a living using my photography and writing skills, but it didn’t quiet materialize that way. Now, my son will be graduating and going away to college next year, and I am planning on hitting the road. My wife hasn’t quiet decided if she want to be a full time nomad or not, but that is not going to stop me, and she knows that. If she doesn’t want it full time, then she’ll do it part time, and we’ll get together as a family for holidays.
I have already been to 34 out of the 50 states and have visited Canada. My goal, initially, is to visit all 50 states and visit my hundreds of relatives and friends who are scattered all over the USA and Canada.
In the last year and a half, since I started this blog, I have made friends with a lot of good folks all over the world and have met some other nomads in person as well, both on the road in their towns, while they were in Houston, or when all of us were on the road and crossed each others’ paths.
Two of those people are Chris Dunphy and Cherie Ve Ard of Technomadia, whom I interviewed last year and then had the pleasure of meeting them in person earlier this year when they passed through Houston on their way to Austin to attend the SXSW Interactive.
They have been living full time nomadic life for several years now, and what I like about them the most is that they are not like your typical technomads who use their blog about nomadic lifestyle to generate all their income. (not that there is anything wrong with that) No sir, they have a “real” business of consulting and tech support that they are able to operate from anywhere in the world where they can find a high speed internet connection. Currently they are living on the island of St John in the US Virgin Islands.
Over the years, whenever they met people who were envious because they themselves wanted to live the life that Cherie and Chris were living but told them why they “couldn’t”, they wrote about how that is just an excuse and how they or others handle similar situation.
They have been writing these articles as people gave them new excuses, and they have been doing it for couple of years, at least.
Recently, they were selected to make a presentation about their nomadic lifestyle at the SXSW Interactive 2011 in March of next year. This created a need to cover expenses that are beyond their “normal” everyday life. So, they took all the articles they had written in response to the excuses on why people are not living their dream life of being nomadic, added a considerable amount of research to it and created a product that shatters the myth that it is impossible to live a nomadic lifestyle if you’re not rich or retired with a considerable retirement fund. Click here to view more details
The best thing about this product is the price. I have seen products with much less information and value being sold online for $47 to $147, but, they are offering the product on a “you decide what it’s worth to you” basis. Like I said, they have their regular income that covers their lifestyle. This is to fund their SWXW project right now, so they can share their lifestyle with others and be an inspiration to those who maybe riding the fence. When you visit the shopping cart, it suggests a price tag of $15, which I believe is way under priced, but you can change the price to any amount you like. Heck, if you feel like investing in another e-book is the last thing you want to do, you can even download to review it as a gift from them, and after reading it, decide how much value you derived from it and go back and make a payment accordingly. How can you go wrong with a deal like that.
Click here to view more details
