Chasing the Blissful Travel Mind 🚆

The sun is finally back. It's 18 degrees in the deep of winter. Hundreds of stray cats roam the streets of the city. They are everywhere: hiding in flower pots, sleeping on top of scooters, feeding on food bowls that are provided by the people of the neighbourhood. They look well-fed, happy and taken care of. As I walk through the streets of Kadiköy, on the Asian side of Istanbul, I wait for inspiration to strike.

We had left Austria a couple of days before. Autumn made an effort to sneakily turn into winter. Being in this place felt exactly right. A mere two hour flight was all it took to experience a warmer climate. To be in an entirely different reality. In a way, we were cheating ourselves out of European winter. Cheaters! But hey, that was really the whole point. More than experiencing a different climate, we were experiencing a different reality. In the street-side cafés, the locals were sipping on their chays. Five times a day, the announcements of the imams roamed through the city, as they asked believers to come to the mosque for prayer. As soon as I feel the Turkish sun on my skin, I expect everything to be different.

Leaving everyday life behind, my mind felt wasted. The dynamics of quitting a job, handing over a chaotic client project and the increased density of corporate fog had made me feel miserable. I needed my fix! I was convinced that being in a different place alone could trigger the flow of ideas. A gateway to this special place in my mind. Insomniac for days, but non-stop inspired in exchange.

It's a phenomenon I had encountered years before, as I embarked on a trip around the world. A mental state that allowed me

It felt like we were cheating our way out of European winter. We were returning to Asia, which to me, is a stronghold of inspirational bliss. Even if we had just arrived at the edge of it.

I'm a hopeless romantic when it comes to the borders that make up geographic definitions:

• Seeing the shores of Africa, while kite surfing in Southern Spain.
• Seeing Cambodian islets from Phu Quoc, Vietnam's largest island.
• Crossing the shared border of Albania and Montenegro several times within a few days, while hiking the Peaks of the Balkans trek.
• Or what we experienced in Istanbul—being just merely in Asia, but a 20 minute ferry ride takes one back to Europe.

In the same intensity that everyday life fucked me and made me feel miserable, I expected the world out there to fix me and make me feel myself again.

However, I was too impatient. Just arriving in a new place wasn't enough for inspiration to strike.

Where are you, oh blissful travel mind?

Asia to the rescue!

Days later, I arrived in Southern Asia. The frenzy of the Sri Lankan traffic reminded me of Vietnam. Dozens of tuktuks push their way through heavy traffic. Little plastic Buddha figurines sit in the cockpits, next to little plastic tooths—evidently, in honour of Buddha's tooth relic in Kandy. Everyone's skin is darker than mine. I haven't felt this Caucasian in a while. But the chaos of the streets doesn't impress me. After Vietnam, I wonder if any traffic situation ever will?

When I last arrived in Asia in 2024, I developed a condition that I later coined Blissful Travel Mind. After first experiencing a new reality as intense as the one in Vietnam, I wasn't able to sleep for days. The food was unlike anything I had eaten, the heat was numbing and most notably, the traffic was beyond crazy. Scooter drivers dominate the streets. Many bring their whole family along the ride with them. They transport anything on their small vehicles—from giant parcels to ladders, carpets, trolleys, gas canisters, animal cages, you name it—there isn't anything that you can't transport on a scooter in this country! You see foreigners on the side of the street, desperately trying to cross it but no—not in Vietnam. Little did I know back then, that days later, I'd join the madness by driving a scooter myself.

Experiencing this foreign part of the world stimulated my brain. The way that there's no public transport and if you want to get around, you have to ride a scooter. The way that crossing the street on foot is impossible and zebra crossings don't work here. The way that Grab—the affordable, Southeast Asian version of Uber—was the only alternative to riding a scooter in Saigon. The way that the Vietnamese eat Pho not just for lunch and dinner, but even for breakfast.

I developed new ways to look on things. How people in different parts of the world designed their own reality. Wonderful ideas materialised out of thin air in front of my mind's eye. I was so inspired, it was no wonder that I couldn't sleep for days. I can express my thoughts most clearly, my ideas , writing comes without effort: that' On that trip, that lasted 8 more months, it happened on many more occasions that I became inspired like that, be it on the beaches of the Philippines or the mountains of the Andes.

The Blissful Travel Mind: Redefined

Returning to Asia at the end of last year, I counted on this sensation to return. When the reality of Sri Lankan life didn't do what I hoped it would, I was worried at first. But then I asked myself: is this really what I want?

In a way, when I returned to another months-long trip of travelling, I expected a mind that's racing. I expected an endless stream of ideas, even if it meant having several sleepless nights in return. I did expect this because that's what travelling has been for me in the past years. Then again, I've been wanting more balance in life for quite a while now. The same way that I don't want to be exposed to a down phase that's paralysing me, I don't want the numbing intensity of the Blissful Travel Mind.

This past trip was less intense, because I made it less intense. While travelling for months on end can feel intense, it only does so the first time around. The next time you do, you know what to expect. If you only ever been on vacation, experiencing travel feels really intense. Also, many of the experiences I have made this time around, I had made previously. I had gotten to know the world a bit better.

Blissful as it may be, the Blissful Travel Mind comes at a cost. When I felt most inspired, travelling in Taiwan in 2024, I felt it in such an intensity that I was close to a heart attack and I was just hoping for it to finally stop and let me rest.

In the end, with the way the last trip turned out to be, even though I didn't reach the agitation, I was still inspired. Inspiration was mild, but it was still there. I could write but I could also sleep.

Going forward, I hope that I can reframe what to redefine what The Blissful Travel Mind means to me: less agitation, more balance. I want to experience more grey zone versus only the light or the dark. Fret not as I'm still chasing The Blissful Travel Mind. Just in a different way than what I used to.