The feet that are crossing the world

Mome’s feet traveling by train from Jodhupr to Varanasi 2012

To those who are fulfilling their dreams

Nine years ago

It was in the summer of 2003 when I met them. They were a charming French couple. We were on a diving cruise in the Great Barrier Reef near Cairns Coast in Australia. They were newly weds that had decided to celebrate their honeymoon by doing a round-the-world trip for a year. That story seemed to me to be so romantic and surprising that I have commented it in several occasions. Don’t you think that this story is impressive? I never asked them how they had organized their trip. Maybe they were a pair of young bored millionaires, or maybe they had won the lottery. Whenever their story caused me doubts I was feeling sorrow for not having asked them anything else about it, as to me it seemed like the most interesting thing.

How I discovered the truth

All my doubts were resolved several years later in Nepal. I was on my way to Kathmandú's airport with my heavy backpack led by a motorist, as this day there was a transport strike. There I met Mome, she had been in this small airport since 5:00 am, and she had come from Backtapur in Kathmandú's valley. Mome was a  lady form Cataluña. She was on a ten-month round-the-world trip and was on the verge of taking her next flight to Delhi. When she told me what she was doing, instead of asking her about her motives or how she had organized it, I jumped in to telling her my famous story about the French couple. My surprise was enormous when a great smile was drawn on her face. She asked me about the date that I had met them and made clear to me that she knew this story very well, as this couple were two of her best friends. Mome had been the godmother of their wedding.

Mome was a unique person. A woman who, in full economic world crisis, decided to do a parenthesis in her life to fulfil her dream of traveling around the world for a year. With her 37 years of age Mome was neither a millionaire nor bad off. Mome had asked for an extended period of time off from work after 19 years in order to fulfil her dream. The main goal of her trip was to discover different cultures, and educational and artistic projects around the world. But Mome's position was amortized during the trip while she was in Australia.

Like Christine and Marc, she had the courage to fulfil her dream in spite of the apparent difficulties. Like Christine and Marc I knew that Mome would be OK. In fact during the trip she found another job that placed her in a better professional position to the one that she had. No one knew if some wizard of Cuba, some Shaman of the Amazon or the Montserrat Virgin hadn´t left her to fall down. Maybe it had nothing to do with that; maybe it was her attitude that had helped her to solve her problem.

Experiences in India

I was lucky to share the journey through Rajastan with Mome. Traveling with her allowed me not only to take a few good photos, but also to live through experiences and meet very interesting people. We met a Japanese girl who had rented a old motorcycle to travel through the north of India, a dancing girl from Valencia who had moved to Pushkar for four months in order to learn typical dances from the Indues region, Agra's family whose children pleaded to learn Spanish during our trip by train, and a monk photographer who was travelling to Veranasi in peregrination.

The story of the French couple or that of Mome are interesting stories of people who, in spite of the difficulties, have the courage to live their dream. If you are interested in discovering more about Mome's trip you can do so by visiting her blog, it is written in Catalan but the translators in Internet have worked really well.

Never lose your dreams

It is very stimulating to be so lucky in coinciding with incredible people in this life. The famous couple are parents of three children and live happy in the south of France. They invested all the money that they collected in their wedding in fulfiling their dream. I still remember when Marc was telling me that it was not turning out to be too expensive, he was saying to me that there were countries such as India where you can travel for small amounts of money. He was so right. After doing a parenthesis they returned to their previous life but with an exchequer in their interior. For Mome there awaited an interesting project as director of a famous music festival in Catalunia, but she still has to continue dreaming, she still has new experiences to discover.

There are a lot of awesome people, maybe you are one of them, or perhaps you will be.

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