The Great Escape

It may seem farfetched, ridiculous even.
But I have a masterplan which I am completely prepared to make a reality.

So here I am, in the current, present bubble that is reality. Sitting here, comfortable in bed, yet somehow still bitterly cold from the increasingly ridiculous entity that is British weather.


A more grounded part of me loves my life here in England. I've grown up in a familiar and supportive family that happily provide me everything a person could ask for to live comfortably. I also have some fantastic characters for friends, and thoroughly enjoy embarking on the inconceivable kind of misadventures with them that you do when you're an A Level student sparring with a formidable workload.

This book captures everything that I aspire to be.

Yet somehow, my life has steadily become more and more focused on the beautiful and buzzing universe that exists outside the UK. Less interested in participating in the expected lifelong grind to get a high paying job, spend my whole life working at something I'm not entirely sure I enjoy. All in an industrialized, upper class, and restricted nation. Here, opportunities for adventure and cultural enlightenment are present, but already seeming minimal. Seventeen years here, chipping and grinding away at the school system as a product of society seem quite enough. Call me foolish and misguided, but I'm ready to move on.

I first caught the travel bug at a very early age, when my parents decided to return to Asia (after having lived and travelled there for five years) with my brother and I to visit Vietnam. I was 11 years old and remember vividly every moment of that trip, because it was such a sensory adventure, and so different to anything I had ever experienced before. Soaking in the bustling sense of vibrancy in Saigon made life itself seem so much more engaging and purposeful.

Not to boast, but I was a fortunate child. In later years, family holidays spanned Thailand, India, Morocco, Italy, Spain, Greece, Romania and the USA. I felt like the world was at my feet the whole time we were away.

More recently, I had the oppurtunity last summer to fulfill a driving ambition of doing charity work abroad by being part of a five-man school expedition to Tanzania in order to teach at a school and work at a disabled crafts workshop called Neema Crafts. Travelling so far without my family into such an unknown world was a phenomenal experience, and one during which my masterplan was created. I loved the experience of working with people in a fresh new setting so much that I decided that this was definately what I wanted to do as a job.

I will never forget the rabble of Saigon motorbikes that whole families occasionally piled onto, obeying no  discernible laws of the road. Accidents galore. Being among it is as terrifying as it is a thrill ride.

Team Tanzania at Mikumi National Park. Honestly such an incredible day!

I plan to complete my A Levels, take a journalism course at university and usher my way into work experience at a forward thinking media company, after which I hope to become a travel journalist.

As I said.

It may seem farfetched, ridiculous even.
But I have a masterplan which I am completely prepared to make a reality.