The map tells us it’s a 15 minute walk from the train station to our Airbnb room. We could take a tram, but that’s more money, and time, working out how to buy a ticket, and where to get the tram. And it’s only a 15 minute walk right?!                                                                        I have 20Kilos on my back and another 10 on my front, so we are taking it slow. We know 15 minutes won’t be 15 minutes. But we like a challenge, and we’ve no deadline, so can take all the time we need. About half way there, we’re chatting, moving slowly forward, and satisfied we are walking in the right direction, and then…. my shoe breaks! Not just any shoe, but my beloved flip flops, purchased in Australia; designed in such a way, they’ve been almost all my feet have worn the last 6 months, no matter what my activity. Other than my walking boots, 6 months is a new record for a pair of my shoes on this trip!

The beloved flipflops in action!

I’m fairly calm. There are worse situations to be in when breaking a shoe. Whilst having 20 kilos on my back is slightly annoying timing, fortunately the 20 kilos does include, another pair of sandals. So I do a quick change and find a bin for my Aussie thongs.

                                      Getting a pair of shoes fixed in India, back in July 2016….

At the rate I go through shoes, I do not feel comfortable being down to one pair of sandals, so it’s fairly high on my agenda to buy a new pair. Having only done 2 weeks of paid work in the past year, and not having any plans to do more any time soon: buying a pair of shoes is not as simple, as it may have been once in my life. I am comforted by a recent piece of knowledge: Primark has arrived in Germany. I can buy a pair of flip flops without it costing more than it would in the UK. I can rest easy!

But then I remember…… I don’t want to be shopping in places like Primark any more…..

Don’t worry this is not intended as a lecture, for why you should stop buying cheap crap, if anything I’m promoting freedom of choice here…..

Many things have led to this ideal for me. I remember being amazed the first time I set foot in Primark in Luton, all those 12 years ago. And just like everyone else I spent more in Primark than I would have in any other shop, because everything felt like such good value. It took me a few years for the penny to drop as to how their clothes were so cheap. Since that time, I have flirted with the idea of giving up Primark (not that they are the only shop that employs cheap labour, but perhaps a symbol of this for me), but have always ended up concluding, if everyone else gets to benefit from cheap stuff why shouldn’t I?

My travels have cemented for me, that I do want to take action that supports greater equality throughout the world. I see myself as a global citizen, far more than I ever did before; having now seen some of economic injustices around the world.

Whilst in India, I made the decision to commit 10% of my salary to organisations working to reduce global inequality. I knew I had to write it down and commit there and then. I knew once I got home, my desire to do so would reduce, and I would forget the importance. However, since that time, a lot has changed about what we are going back to: I’m not necessarily going to have the salary that I did. So if I never have a salary again, will I never give my 10%?  For now, I want to be able to keep travelling: which means I’m prioritising my money for this goal. How do I prioritise between my want to travel and my want for the world to have greater equality? I know which goal is easier to achieve!  I have now decided it will be 10% of my income, however that income comes in, however small… But then when is it going to start from, when does this new way of life begin? If we want something we have to be disciplined with ourselves. I chose that my ‘travelling stopped’ and my new way of doing life began on the 1st of June.

If anyone has any suggestions of organisations working towards this aim, please comment below! For more on can we end poverty- check out this cool video 

So what does this mean for Primark: I get to spend more money travelling if I buy cheap shoes from Primark, but am I letting another priority of mine slip……?

On the 1st of June, I walked into Primark in Cologne. It’s the first time I’ve been in such a big, discounted clothes shop in over 13 months. I’d made a deal with myself; I was only buying shoes. It was a Thursday, but the three floors of the shop were all packed. It took me a good 10 minutes just to find where the shoes were. My backpack is already heavy, so even though I was drawn to the pretty dresses, I was able to resist. It was slightly harder to avoid temptation walking past the bras, as the one I bought in Australia is losing shape fast, but I managed. After searching through the 10 aisles of colourful cheap shoes, I select a pair for €3 and make my way to the tills. As I queue, I enter into a new battle with myself; not to buy the android charging wire, even though it is so cheap, pink, and mine only sometimes works..!

All of this reminds me of the other reasons, I don’t like shopping in Primark. I find the demand on my senses to spend money, I haven’t decided to spend, stressful. I find the bright, colourful, endless things to buy, stressful.

I’ve always found it stressful; but when living in the UK and wanting to quickly buy something in my lunch break, without having the time to weigh up a more costly purchase, convenience always won out over the stress. Now I don’t have to live my life like that.

Our Guiding Compass point #BeKind, started off as ‘do no harm’, taken from Buddhist philosophy, which I’ve engaged with a bit, along our travels. ‘Do no harm’ has become increasingly important to me. A helpful way to think about each action I do and its effect on others and the earth we live on. However, when writing our Guiding Compass, we wanted them all to read in the positive (Do’s not Don’ts), so this became #BeKind.

Coming out of Primark that day, I thought about #BeKind, and how my actions that day had fitted in with this. We need to #BeKind to ourselves, at the same time as being kind to others and the universe. On some days it is kindest to myself not to shop in a shop like Primark. On other days I have more resilience against the attack on my senses and the kindest thing to do, is let myself have some cheap convenience. Okay, so my ideal is to shop-second hand as much as possible.  I see this as being as kind to the universe as I can be. But I’m also OK with the grey, and that I don’t have to make one decision for the rest of my life. I can #BeKind in whatever way feels appropriate at that time.

Which is where #Walkthetightrope comes into play. I want to be a positive contribution to society, and I am responsible for being kind to myself. I want to be myself and a part of wider society. To do all of this we have to make some compromises, sometimes. And that’s OK. #Walkthetightrope is all about tuning in, to how these compromises affect us, and listening to the choices that allow us to #BeKind to ourselves and others. We won’t get it right all the time, balance takes practice, dedication and the guts to know, you will fall off sometimes, but you can pick yourself up and keep journeying forward.

I like maps. I’ve always liked maps. Claire and Gemma would regularly, but briefly, lose me as we walked around the streets of Asia. Probably 9 times out of 10, it’d be because I’d stopped to look at a roadside map, or the map on my phone.

I have realised more than ever my need to know where I am. I need this map of my geographical area, but perhaps also for my life. Geographically, I need to know where I’m going, and how I will get there ‘the most direct way’, but in terms of life maybe not so much. Of course, I’ve also learnt I also need to know where I’m coming from, and where I need to get back to, where is my home?

By the way this app Maps.ME is an absolute must for any would-be travellers out there! Or just people walking in their countries; you can download maps for the country you’re headed to. It often has info on walking tracks, loos, cafes.. And it’s totally free. I’m not getting any commission honest!

My need for a coffee pot – At the start of our trip, after a few weeks of enviously, watching, our fellow continental-European campers, make fresh ground coffee each morning in their variously shaped coffee pots; I decided I wanted my own. So then comes the saga involving my, (less than successful) but very much deliberated purchase of my own ‘coffee pot’, which… turned out to be astronomically bad at making coffee. This was about half way through, our three months budget-camping around Europe, accounting for every cent spent. So it was a big deal.

It turns out after multiple cups of very grainy coffee, that I couldn’t seem to avoid, that it was actually a milk frother.. which may, just have been where the problem lay… So, needless to say, me and the (ahem) ‘coffee pot’ went our separate ways.

I hesitate to add that Claire had asked me why, when it said ‘Cappuccino maker’ on the box I thought it would be a coffee pot; but sometimes when you want something that much, you make it be what you want it to be. Claire obviously didn’t let me forget about that incident for a while!

Well jump to a few months later, and me and Claire are in South East Asia, coincidentally reading Committed. A follow up to Liz Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love , which in part, describes her and her partner’s journeying around the very same countries we happened to be in. Well, we both burst into laughter as she describes her and Felipe’s arguments whilst on the road, resulting in his conclusion “I need a coffee pot”. Now, I think I and Felipe shared a similar sentiment in the need for this; not just literally for the benefit of the good fresh coffee every now again, that’s actually affordable; but also the benefit of having something that is ours, a sense of our ‘home’ regardless of who’s actual home we are in, it’s our creature comfort.

The kitchen sink? Well.. almost.

We essentially have ended up with a mini travelling kitchen. Yes, along with the mini coffee pot; comes a mug each, a mini chopping board, a washing-line, a higgledy-piggledy set of Tupperware, at least one bag of pasta/rice, herbs/spices, a lemon squash concentrate, that’s been going since we bought it in Perth in November, tea bags, a supply of biscuits, in previously stated Tupperware, and 2 forks (recently reduced from 3 to 2 by airport security, who only noticed one of them)!

This has meant, we are not travelling as ‘light’ as we would sometimes like to.  Especially when lugging your backpack on a hot sticky walk.. However, it’s meant we’ve been easily able to feel at home, wherever we are. It also saves us money; we can turn up somewhere for one night only, and be able to cook a simple pasta dish, without having to purchase expensive items from the small corner shop, or eat out, like you might do on a more typical holiday. Not to mention, it can be nice to know the hygiene state of the mug you’re drinking from! Thanks to fellow travellers, we’ve also, often ended up being given freebies (dry foods, tea, coffee, soaps, laundry soap etc), which again saves time and money, and we return this back to the travelling community when we can.

A home – Anyone who’s travelled for any extended length of time, will know about travel fatigue. Not just the actual tiredness from flights, lack of sleep or time changes, but the weary feeling of adjusting to new sounds, sights, places and faces day in day out. A certain amount of change is great, I think its vital. Whether we’re at home doing a 9-5 job, bringing up children or the other side of the world living our travelling dreams. But in any scenario, at least for me, I also need some stability and consistency. And this is where Workaways have really benefitted me. I write about the concept of Workaway and its rewards here: Travel for free? There is such a thing as a free lunch* (sort of!). It means I get to rest my head on the same pillow for 5, 7, 10 even 35 nights in a row, to call it home. Home for me has become having a favourite park or favourite walk, knowing where I can buy my necessities, and having time to hand wash and dry my clothes, or even use a washing machine if I’m lucky!

So what I’ve discovered about my needs over this year, is, in part, why we have decided to find ourselves a camper! To have a travelling ‘home’, a balance of certainty and change is our dream. Watch this space!