Hello Steemit!

My name is Jakub Szwedo and I decided that I will report on my around-the-globe trip here on Steemit.

Not an usual travel involving planes and hotels but a hitch-hiking, low-cost journey with a tent used as my house!

But first things first:

I'm 24, young polish traveler who just graduated master's degree in psychology in Poznań, Poland.

I've been hitch-hiking almost every year since 2010. I visited most of the countries in Europe, much of Turkey and some Caucasus countries. Always hitch-hiking, always sleeping in a tent or at polite locals who invited me, sometimes using CouchSurfing. Always getting really deep into the history and culture of the region I am going to. Reading books, listening to locals's music, trying to really understand the world there. If you know the history and culture you see mych more when you travel.

The Grand Journey

The trip will start in the second half of 2018. By this time I will try to earn as much as I can in order to have money for visas, food and other fees (like bribes in post-soviet countries ;). ATM I'm sending CVs like crazy to countries which pay-more-than-Poland.

Anyway, I won't be travelling alone. I have a companion, other traveler whom I've met in Georgia last year. I love to travel alone, but not for that long period of time. We probably will split several times just to meet each other few days or weeks later in a small bar somewhere in Asia sharing the stories, thoughts and impressions which had happened to us.
I will introduce him later and maybe convince him to join us on Steemit! Should I try?

So our goal is to start from Poland and travel into Asia. From Asia we will somehow get to South America - we will try to "hitch-hike" some ships in that direction from Australia or South-East Asia. We want to stay in that continents for quite a long time in order to really deepen into them. We won't be rushing anywhere. We might stay somewhere for few weeks, maybe we'll join some voluntary service. From South America we'll somehow get to Europe back home :)

Right now we don't know the exact path of our journey, but countries like Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, China, India, Nepal, almost all Indochina (Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar) are a MUST. The same goes for South America - we want to stay there as long as it needs to speak Spanish fluently! So the whole trip will probably take about 2 years!

Why Steemit?

We were wondering If we should start a blog or videoblog about our journey, but we know that there are thousands of traveling blogs out there on the Internet. However, I haven't seen this kind of blog here on Steemit. The community here seems to be very lively so I thought writing here might be a good idea and we should give it a shot.

I don't really know yet what the format of our blog here will be like. I am sure I will write about all the adventures that will happen to us (and I can assure you, there are plenty of them while hitch-hiking!). We will share many photos for sure. As I am highly inspired of Alexander von Humboldt, Tiziano Terzani and Ryszard Kapuściński - my posts will have some dose of very personal thoughts and observations, not only objective descriptions of what we see and hear. My psychology knowledge may give some nice insight while traveling. We may shoot some videoblogs from some crazy places especially for Steemit if the community would want it!

Our travel blog will be exclusive to Steemit and I hope it will root here nicely! Who knows, maybe we could meet Steemians from all around the world to grab a beer or a coffee?

What will you do on Steemit until then?

Until our Journey begins I will share some of cool stories of my past trips, with photos (some of then you can see here) and of course historical/cultural background. Some of them will involve some personal stories. You will hear about how I've met future-to-be travel companion, how I reached Liberland, what horrible I had to do in Kosovo, why I almost died in Albania, why I had to work for free in Baturmi, Gerogia and many more! All the preparations and planning will be also reported here. Maybe Steemit community could help us with it, who knows? I do not know you guys yet, so I don't know what this community is capable of!

Except my past travels I will share with you my other interests. As a psychologist, I am highly interested in depth psychology (especially Jungian) and cultural psychology, so I will probably write some articles on that. I will probably write some articles about psychology of traveling. I am also a (casual) zen Buddhist, very interested in religions and beliefs, so you can expect some writing about that. I am also a libertarian, a liberty lover, so a decentralized community suits perfectly for me :) Since I ran a music blog few years ago, I may also try that again too.

So If you're interested in topics mentioned above you can follow me and I will try to do my best to provide high-quality content! If you want to Ask me anything!

If you have any advice on how I can improve and plan my travel blog here, I would be glad to hear it!

You can contact me if you want by my Facebook profile or here on Steemit!