My travel life began when I fell in love. I’m not talking about love for the road or love for travel. I’m talking about love love. Romantic love. I-will-go-anywhere-with-you kind of love.

Before I met him, I never traveled anywhere. Neither did he, before he met me. I don’t know what happened or how, but one day we just decided that since we had never gone anywhere, we should go somewhere for a change, some place we had never been before. It jolted awake a passion in me that I never thought I had.

And now, travel has taken over my life. Travel has become my day job and past-time; my weekdays and weekends; my long-term commitment and whirlwind romance; my life. Travel has become my life.

Sometimes, at night, I wonder what would have been if our paths didn’t cross. Would I be doing the same thing? Would I be this happy?

These are empty questions I just like throwing into the air, but questions I don’t really want to know the answers to. And I hope I never will.

Because years ago, when I hit rock bottom and when everyone around me made me feel worthless, all I wanted in the world, all I ever dreamed of was to be happy. Not to get rich or to succeed or to be powerful. Just that. To be happy. This may not be how I pictured it exactly, but this is how I imagined it to feel. This is how it feels.

Sometimes, all it takes is a reason to get up and move. I was stuck. I was going nowhere. And it changed because I met somebody who’d never been anywhere, but with him and for him, I would go everywhere.