We carry within us wonders we seek without us.

I am happy to say that my friends and family have been incredibly supportive of my eccentric travel plans. My parents kindly kitted me out with invaluable equipment, and Tasha's family have been equally enthusiastic. It is an encouraging thought, that when you set off halfway across the world with nought but a backpack on your shoulders, you have the blessings of your nearest and dearest.

However, the one question most strangers ask when I tell them my wife and I are going to travel around South America for an indefinite period of time, with no set route, is why? Or rather a veiled "why?", lurking behind some innocuous question or statement.

It is a question that I cannot answer, and have no reason to, but I often offer them some perfunctory response. "Why not?" I sometimes blurt on my more irascible days. Or, feeling pretentious, why not fire off a quote from wiser men than myself. "i was not born for one corner; the whole world is my native land," said Seneca. Or Byron, "the world, which is a curious sight, and very much unlike what people write." I believe wholeheartedly in both these sentiments, but neither answer the question: why?

There is no answer to that question that can be pinned down in one eloquent sentence or fixed in the permanency of words. Every day I have a different reason to go. Sometimes I have no reason. The reason is impulse, desire, wanderlust, a hunger to see new things, speak with new people, retrace old steps from 5 years ago. It is the desire to see alien landscapes that set off sparks in the imagination. It is selfish and selfless. It is wanting to experience poverty and luxury in a matter of hours. It is the Sun, the sky at night with no street lights, where galaxies swirl above. It is humbling oneself, making the world big again, and learning patience. It is new food, new thoughts, new dreams that could not be born at home. that is why we travel. If you have to ask why, you do not understand. This does not make we who travel aloof; it just makes us different.