One Year

A slideshow of Tarynne’s photos from the first year of our trip around the world.

Jan. 17, 2013 to Jan. 17, 2014.

Seattle, USA to Goa, India.

It took 365 days to create this video.

Over 2,730 photos attempt to illustrate what travel means to me. To forget familiarity, reassurance and dive into adventure. To be thrown into a million or more scenarios that remind you how small you are in this universe, but somehow with tough love remind you its okay to do big things, to dream big. That you are capable of exactly all that your mind is capable of.

Travel is the voyage of discovery. Discover what?

Whatever it is you are looking for. To realize what makes you you, and equally as interesting, what makes others other. To be in someone else’s home and resist the urge to rearrange the furniture and just to let their home be exactly that, theirs.

To learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable. To entertain yourself watching how you grow, adapt, change. To watch your own opinions change, preferences shift, tendencies, values, goals and ambitions more appropriately align with what it is you genuinely want from your life. You’ve removed anything and everything that has ever made you you. Your home, social support, career, clothes, things, car, and any residue and reputation of yesterday. You have no history. Tomorrow is a blank slate. All of these ‘permanent’ qualities that make you you are all changing.

Incredible. It’s an opportunity for anything and everything. To look at every place, person and situation for the very first time.

To travel is to play with your imagination. You dream of what a place and people should be, may be. Travel accurately throws it back at you and tells you straight up how it is. Travel gives you the opportunity to see it how it really is.

I am grateful for my camera as it has helped me to capture what my own eyes see as what is. The moments of humility, gratitude, frustration, abundance, joy, expansion, resistance and growth have been frozen for a fraction of a second and I am so excited to share it with you!

Enjoy. Travel.

 

A Look Back at Italy

Tarynne

Thumbs up:

1.  Playing lovestruck tourist in Amalfi & Sorrento

2. Quitting my job at a cafe in Cinque Terre

3. Having the best summer of my life on Lake Orta/Lake Como/Lake Maggiore

Thumbs down:

1. Ostello del Plebiscito- Babysitting barfing drunkards at 4 a.m and then having to mop up the bathrooms.

2. Not being able to go for a run without being stalked by the male cast of Jersey Shore and their great grandparents.

3. Having to say goodbye to Eddie Jr., Bianca and 7 Kilos.

James

Thumbs up:

1. Centro sauna sessions.

2. T’s birthday weekend.

3. Sitting on the coast with Tarynne and a bottle of wine.

Thumbs down:

1. Nothing is ever open.

2. Slow walking Italians.

3. Eroding and vandalized history.

Lake Orta From Above

Last week we took two hiking trips up into the hills surrounding Lake Orta to get a panoramic view of the place we have called home for the last five weeks.

Our first destination was Madonna del Sasso, a church perched high on a cliff on the south west side of the lake.

In order to reach Madonna del Sasso we had to take a short boat ride from Orta San Giulio to the town of Pella.

From Pella we had a grueling 45 degree hike to the church, but when we finally reached our destination we were rewarded with truly stunning views of Orta, the Alps and even the city of Milan, 80 km in the distance.

Having seen Lake Orta and its surroundings from the western side, on our next day off we decided to make the intense three hour climb to the summit of Mottarone (4,895 ft).

Mottarone is the highest point between Lake Orta and Lake Maggiore and on a clear day one can see seven of the Italian Lakes. The summit is home to a small ski resort with 21 km of downhill skiing.

On this particular day it was only clear enough to see six of the lakes: Lake Orta, Lake Maggiore, Lake Monate, Lake Comabbio, Lake Varese and Lake Lugano.

The hike was pretty exhausting, but the view from the top was well worth it. If you ever make it out to Lake Orta in the summer, hiking to the summit of Mottarone is a must.

Of course if you’re rich and lazy and stay in a five-star hotel in Stresa on the Lake Maggiore side, then there is a cable car to the top. But that’s cheating.