India - Walkabout

After trying a couple of months at the new school, and feeling that I didn't remotely fit in, I decided to leave.

To my parent's chagrin, I ended up traveling around India on my own or with friends for the next eight months. Not many parents would allow their 17 year old daughter to travel through a foreign country without an adult, but my parents had faith in me and loved India, so they let me go. Either that or they had lost control of me... Low budget travel in India was always intense, often rugged, physically challenging, intriguing and beautiful, and often dangerous for a young single girl.

My parents believed that travel was educational and generally encouraged it. Both my brothers were now exploring the world. Alex headed off to Central and South America where he spent four years traveling on and off, between University courses. Nick explored Europe and Asia in a one year long roundabout and then went back to University of Toronto. In subsequent years I continued to travel between school terms (having returned to Toronto the following year to finish high school) and then University, returning to India, other parts of Asia, and exploring much of Europe.

Our family was truly scattered yet we were never conscious of being that far apart.