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| − | The world is big and fascinating. And we have decided to see it.
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| − | "Just like that? Where did you get the idea from?" people ask us.
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| − | I never really thought about it. I guess – right, just like that. Though maybe it helped that I got the travel bug from my parents. When I was one they took me on a journey around Poland – by hitchhiking! I had to wait for my own expeditions for a while, but when I started – it was hard to stop. I hitchhiked around entire Europe, often taking part as a volunteer at international workcamps. Having graduated from Foreign Languages Teacher Training College, when I wasn’t limited by short vacation, I set off on a longer adventure – a solo eight month overland journey – through Turkey, Iran, Pakistan to India and Nepal.
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| − | And later… I met Chopin. At that time each of us was dreaming of another great journey. I wanted to circle the Earth in a bicycle Peace Ride. Chopin, having completed his civil service, was thinking of just walking, without any plan, stopping here and there to work for a while, and go on. Destiny, however, had a different plan for us. We were meant to do it together.
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| − | One way ticket, two backpacks, a close to six hundred dollars (all our savings), few plans and lots of dreams – that’s what we had when we landed in New York. It was Wednesday, October 7th, 1998. We knew one thing – we wanted to see the world. The whole world!
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| − | How to do it almost with no money? How to do it to best get to know the people and cultures of the countries along our way? Of course – by hitchhiking!
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| − | We didn’t plan the detailed route – we just chose the general direction. We didn’t study guidebooks – people who picked us up, people we met along a mountain path, or a map we accidentally came across – these were our guides. We just let the events happen and the road lead us through new places, countries and adventures. Thumbing a ride with destiny… We didn’t expect it would take us… five years.
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| − | During those five years, I was keeping a diary, day by day filling new pages of thick notebooks with tiny handwriting. I scribbled leaning against my backpack waiting for a ride in the middle of a dusty Paraguayan wasteland, I wrote on board the boat sailing the Amazon River; or surrounded by a curious crowd of barefoot children in a Laotian village. Whenever there was a chance, I typed it into a computer, and Chopin archived on our website. Now I have managed to share the most interesting fragments of the diary together with the best of the photographs in one book.
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| − | You’re invited for a journey – first with us, and then – following your own dreams.
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| − | Kinga Freespirit
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| − | http://www.ledbydestiny.com
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