Yes for those who don’t know yet. I’m about to go on another amazing journey. If you thought that this trip around the world was crazy then you will see that it was only the beginning! 4 posts described in this blog are on the base of my next adventure.

1. Somewhere in the beginning of my life as a couchsurfer I meet Ben in Paris. Crazy guy that became a good friend.
2. Then, a half year later I meet an Eyal a Israeli commando on his old Enfield motorbike in India and  I ‘travel’ with him for a week.
3. Then in Delhi I meet a French couple who cycle the world for 2 years on a tandem making a video about things they do and people they meet. (http://www.planeted.eu)
4. Somewhere another half year later I describe how I drive all the way from Pai to Birma on my Honda scooter having the time of my life and feeling more free than ever.

So these 4 weeks became the seeds of a new plan… in 2 weeks exactly I will leave for India. (no, this has nothing to do with my previous post!)
There I will meet Ben again after 2 years! He will be ’somewhere’ in the South waiting for me with hopefully two good second hand Enfield Bullets.

And together we will cruise all over India with one mission… check out our video blog: http://www.whygetoutofbed.com/blog

Damn, you can’t imagine how excited I am about this

Yes. Indiaaa!
In 2 days I take the plane back to india just for the fun of it! It felt like it was about time. When I tried my backpack on today after it laying 6 months in a dusty corner of my room it felt like Nite Owl from Watchmen wearing his costume again and feeling ready to kick ass.

Yeah after carrying it all over the world you start having a special relationship with it. Just like Batman is just a funny guy in a bat-suit without his bat-belt full of awsome gadgets, I’m just like a regular IT guy without my backpack.

The travel vibes shoot up my spine and I feel the adrenaline rush in my blood. Yeah baby. I feel unstoppable again .

Hey Doug, where are you going in India?
I don’t know where I’m going but I know exactly how to get there!

Ingeschreven! Yup, ik doe mee . Nu nog es uizoeken hoe ik mij ga verkleden.

The end of my journey, my first months home and my impact on the economic crisis.
So when I came back in Belgium everything in my life seemed to go as smooth as a babies ass. First I get an incredible job opportunity, I found a great apartment in Brussels and then I meet an amazingly beautiful, intriguing, travelminded and smart girl from Morocco. It seemed life at home would not be as boring as I expected it to be.
But then, because I had absorbed and used all the good vibes around me for the last year I think I brought the universe a bit out of balance. This had a direct impact on the world around me causing the economic crisis, …of course…   (yes I was living on wall street when everything started)
Yes, me and the world have run out of good vibes and by the end of the year everything goes from seemingly pretty good, to slightly bad, to terribly worse and I end up at the end of the year, single, with no job in Paris.
Yes, walking in Paris in the rain wearing a funky retro psychedelic shirt after partying for 3 days and going back home back to… my Mom… in the Aalter… a place where nothing ever happens. Bonne année 2009? Boah, after the past two years I imagine the best parts of 2009 to be not even close to the worse parts of 2008.

But slowly slowly (shanti shanti) I’m working on gathering some new the good vibes and started wearing my Buddha necklace again. (It helped  during my travels so why would the way of the Buddha not help me through default life. )

Becoming a world citizen?

A few days later I get a phone call from a guy called Stan, a journalist for ‘De Standaard’, one of Belgians best newspapers. He wanted an interview of my couchsurfing adventures around the world. So of course I say yes and one week later I wake up from an sms send by a friend saying I got a whole page in the newspaper and an extremely ugly picture of me. The title says “Becoming a world citizen by traveling“. Whoah yeah ego boost. And then a day later Stan called again telling me he had so much material from our interview he wanted to use it to write another article. How cool is that?

So I restart my life in 2009

- “And now?”

I felt a wind of change for the future en so time passes and in one month I got everything back on track. I live in Ghent now(yes it IS Belgiums most beautiful city!), got some really nice projects to work on, I teach webdesign for one day in Leuven and girls yeah Ghent has by far the most beautiful and cool girls in Belgium! By far!

- “So you are going to stay in Belgium for a while?”

Well, yeah… kinda… My plan was to stay home for a whole year and jump on a bike in 2010 and do an epic bike ride in India with my Australian friend I met 2 years ago in my Paris adventures(see blogpost 2007). But as usual, things never work out as I planned in my life… because 3 days ago I got carried away talking with a couchsurfer about India… and to make a short story even shorter: 3 days later I have booked a ticket to india!

- Whow, dude, back up a minute. What? When? WTF Are you serious? You are just back from a trip around the world isn’t it?

Yep, its serious. On the 5th of April me and 3 other couchsurfers who don’t really know each other are about to do yet another unforgettable trip in (my)worlds craziest country. Indiajajajaa!!! I guess my stories work inspiring on some people around me.

Yeah, I’m eager to see all my friends in Mumbai again. And of course my little miss Bollywood, Shonali

So, stay tuned for more crazy adventures.

Belgian Weather Forecast: October 2008 -> March 2009 ( 95% probablility )

I noticed I have been gone from Belgium for a very very long time. After one year I completely forgot how grey the Belgian weather can be and the impact it has on my mood.

The first days when I was back in Belgium when people asked me how I was doing I used to say “like the weather”. If that was really true I would have hung myself on a weather balloon by now.
I don’t know how long I can take this. Jeez this is so depressing.

Spending quality time with my new nephew Alexander!

‘I hope you don’t mind going to a party tonight’. Zeer rhetorische vraag als je het mij vraagt :p. We gaan dus rechtstreeks van de luchthaven naar een feestje. Het was een CS feestje met mensen van over de hele wereld (tjah wat had je dan ook verwacht huh). Niet slecht voor een eerste avond in NY dacht ik.

Robots in the Metro going to the party

Ik word al snel uitgenodigd voor de grotere “rooftop party” in Manhattan de volgende dag. Het is een verkleedfuif met als thema “robots”. Ok, ik zie dat goed zitten natuurlijk… alleen, ik heb mijn robotpak thuis laten hangen. Geen probleem want ik heb nog burning man spullen in mijn zak zitten. Veel glitter en fluff: I’m dze gay robot!

Back in the metro, to the after party

De fuif is een overdonderend success en wordt al snel uitgebreid van het dak naar het volledige verdiep er onder. Jammer genoeg wanneer de fuif lekker uit de hand aan het lopen is komt de politie opdagen. *Bibbel-krak-piep* vergeet het, geen waarschuwing, gewoon gedaan met de fuif.

Niemand vind het te erg want er is after party bij Seth! Seth, die arme kerel, iedereen kent hem hier wel in CS NY, ligt te slapen in zijn bed terwijl er 50man zijn huis binnen stormt. Seth zijn appartement is blijkbaar “the CS living room of NY”. Hij heeft niet liever zeggen ze mij

View from my bedroom on Wall st

Goed, genoeg gefuifd nu kan ik eindelijk es op zoek gaan naar Shonali en een beetje rondlopen in NY. En ja, NY is de max! I love NY. Al snel merk ik op dat ik een totaal verkeerd beeld heb van NY. De mensen zijn vriendelijk, de stad is niet te druk en stukken minder donker dan ik had verwacht. Elke dag opnieuw geniet ik van de hoge gebouwen, het goede weer en de mensen hier. Ik zou nooit in de VS kunnen leven behalve misschien in NY .
Ik spreek af met Shonali en haar vriend. Die stelt al snel voor dat ik bij hem kom couchsurfen. Hij heeft een vet appartement in Wallstreet…. en dus nog meer feestjes en nog meer ooohs en aaaaahs in het stad.

Shon on the airport *snif*

Gisteren is Shonali terug naar huis vertrokken . Ik zit hier nu alleen *boehoe* in deze grote anonieme stad. Ik werk een beetje (jaja dat doe ik ook af en toe), en spreek nog wat af met CS’ers. Ik ben aan het overwegen om misschien nog een Opeth concert te gaan zien in Philadelphia.

Nog enkele dagen en ik ben terug in Belgie! (Bestaat dat nog?). Eindelijk! Ik blijf deze keer voor enkele maanden thuis (maar ook niet te lang :p ).

The statue of liberty on the left, Manhattan to the right, here I am stuck in the middle with my backpack (seriously needing a haircut)

View from space?

Burning Man was crazy
7 days a chaos of beauty, art and music. no rules, no limits and pure sensation! Impressions and expressions on a scale I didn’t think was possible… here is how it started:

“Burning man”. I heard about it before and read about it in magazines but I encountered a real “burner” for the first time during my travels in India. I remember it like it was yesterday. It was on a rooftop restaurant in Darjeeling where I started talking with a random American who was just like me enjoying the view over Darjeeling. We both agreed that India was a crazy place. He didn’t agree when I said the craziest place on earth. Close, he said, but there is Black Rock City. He talked about Black Rock City as if it was mythical city, or at least that was how it sounded to me. It was the biggest, best, craziest and insane city on earth where anything is possible, really anything. He went on and on about it.

Black Rock City is the city that gets build up in 3 days in the Nevada desert. The City layout is that of a clock with in the center of the clock a big structure called “The Man”. The Burning Man. People make artworks of themselves or put their artwork in the desert or even better, make artcars and drive them around. Every day the party and craziness grows till the man burns. The moving artcars make the scenery surreal and ever changing. Non stop things are happening everywhere. Art, performances, music and people doing their thing collide under the desert sun. Things are happening everywhere, non stop, you can not even imagine but they do. And then, after 7 days, the city disappears again without leaving a trace!

Intrigued by his story but still a bit suspicious about what he said. He was American so of cours its biggest, best, craziest and insanest thing on earth. Americans also say that Budweiser is probably the best beer in the world… not! So yeah, I didn’t really believe him that much

But the more “burners” I encounter the crazier the stories became. And yeah, of course almost all my American friends from CS are burners too. So when the plan was to go to Alaska I was thinking about going down the lower 48 to see SF, Burning Man and New York. I had to see it because everybody said the same thing:

‘I can’t really tell you what BM is like, you have to experience it yourself to grasp what is going on.’

So with that line my story in my blog stops because I simply don’t know where to start about it.

Also, I just arrived in New York and I’m not really in the mood for spending more time online at the moment. I’ll let the pictures talk for themselves. Also I don’t have too many pictures… Strangely I took less than 100 pictures probably because I didn’t want to feel like a tourist hiding behind the camera…

You can find the rest on my flickr account