INITIAL REFLECTIONS

 

In 2017, I completed a 7-year university degree in Architecture and Urban Planning. Like many, I found that I didn't want to pursue a career in the field even before I graduated. At 25, I was not living the life I expected.

 

A few weeks later, I boarded a plane to the Netherlands to rediscover myself and try something new. I had been to over twenty countries in my early 20s and lived abroad once. Traveling has never been a recent passion, but something that has been present in my being since I can remember. When I was a child, I used to read books voraciously. I would read page after page and obsess over faraway lands. Since a very young age, I used to travel with my family all across the country. I have memories that goes from experiencing real winter for the first time in the south of Brazil until swimming at the Amazon river in the north of the country while I was only a baby. My grandparents taught me and my sister that, before we start exploring other countries in the world, we should know our own country first.

 

The year 2018 living in Amsterdam was transformative in every way and I was in contact with all kinds of people and new experiences for the first time so intensely. It was a year in which I learned a lot, created great bonds of friendship, and mainly, a year that I changed a lot. This year, I moved further away from architecture and closer to social work.

With the money I was able to raise this year,, I traveled through Southeast Asia to meet friends, strangers and creatives whose personal travels inspired me. I wanted to understand how other people found their callings and how they were trying to improve the world, in their own significant ways. I wanted to see that there are other lifestyle alternatives that are not based on the traditional one. During this year 2019, I find myself in an intensive course of cultural immersion, discovery and liberation from the comfort zone.

 

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FINDINGS ON THE ROAD

 

Along the way, I noticed two things in silence.

First, our world is no longer able to support the tourism we are creating. I saw it on beaches littered with plastic waste in Cambodia, or on the crowded island of Koh Phangan during the Full Moon Party. Overtourism is a reality and a problem.

Second, many people have no idea of ​​the real impact their actions have on their daily lives, whether at home or exploring a new place. Information exists, but for some reason is still poorly known or disseminated. And I couldn't understand why this happens.

I strongly believe travel can change the world. Done in a conscious way, it expands people’s minds, fosters understanding, makes you a better you, and provides an economic boost to local communities. Concerning overtourism, we are very much part of the solution as we are part of the problem. And I know there are ways to mitigate your impact and create a mutually beneficial relationship between you and the local population. This is a problem that can only be solved by residents and tourists together through the awareness of a more conscious living and travel culture.

And this is how The Global Paths concept was born.

 

THE GLOBAL PATHS PROJECT

 

I decided to create a Blog where people could get together and share transformative travel moments. Stories that would make you understand how you can get to know and explore this world further by leaving something good behind every place you go.

The Global Paths was named I chose for this journey. And I hope to make of this, your platform to find out more about being part of a conscious lifestyle and sustainable travel community. Here I try to create an informative space where conscious travel and conscious living meet and guide you to achieve a positive impact on the world and on your daily life.

 

I believe that travel has the ability to change one's life course. It has not only the ability of changing someone’s world, but of many others as well. I want your help to create a more sustainable relationship between us, our planet and one another.  I want to hear your stories and share it, so more people will know it takes only a small step for them to do the same. 

At the end of the day, for me, it always comes back to creating a better world together and storytelling is one of the most powerful tools we have for this.

 

This is my story. This is The Global Paths' story. What is yours?