Steemit's First Long-Term Travel Blog!

Hi Steemit community. My name is Donovan, aka donnymurph, aka the Red Pilgrim, and I am, for all intents and purposes, a bum. I derive stimulation and joy from slipping through the cracks of society on my open-ended excursions across the globe. I also happen to be pretty decent at writing, and I'm here to share my stories and my inspiration with you. Welcome to Steemit's first long-term travel blog.

To begin, here's a picture of me so that you know I'm a real human.

This year in June, I found myself in Hyderabad, India, with nothing but a backpack and a dream: to smash my feet apart on a Berlin dance floor, without using a plane to get there.

Just to let that sink in, I'll say it again. India to Germany - without a plane. Here's a map of the route I took.

Along the way, I made a cameo in a Bollywood film in Mumbai, spent 3 days in a filthy Indian hospital, and a night sleeping at the aptly nicknamed Golden Temple, the holiest pilgrimage site of the Sikh religion. I stayed in a shepherd's hut in Pakistan's Hunza Valley, built a makeshift fjord to cross a melting glacier on a rusty, creaky bus, and celebrated Pakistani Independence Day with the locals in Peshawar. I entered Iran after a gruelling 3 day border crossing, sat in on a boardroom meeting with the Iran Tourism Development Corporation and a couple of surf instructors from Costa Rica, and wandered the desert in search of the last remaining survivors of the Asiatic Cheetah.

In Iraqi Kurdistan I came face to face with Saddam Hussein's atrocities, and witnessed the still-smouldering remains of a former ISIS stronghold. I was chased by dogs along the Armenian border in Turkey, couchsurfed with locals that didn't speak a word of English, worked in a carpet shop, fell for a local beauty, and was scammed for about a third of my savings in Istanbul. I partied until sunrise in Tbilisi, Georgia and Thessaloniki, Greece, played video games with a long-term internet friend in Bratislava, Slovakia, and finally, after a tumultuous 6 months on the road, I set foot in Berlin.

There are few pursuits that put you in a more vulnerable position than cutting off your source of income, buying a one-way ticket to a faraway land, and letting everything sort itself out. Through this vulnerability, I have gained invaluable life lessons about the human spirit, about unbridled kindness and ice-cold callousness, about the desperation of poverty, about resourcefulness and resilience, and the truth about the Middle East.

At the end of it all, I just wanted more, so I signed up for an English teaching course in Guadalajara, Mexico, which is where I'm writing this post from.

In this blog, I solemnly swear that I will entertain you with my irreverent and self-deprecating writing style. I find far too many travel bloggers to be a touch stiff, and many are plagued with a holier-than-thou attitude. That's not me. I'm a sinner. I'm a hedonist. I swear an awful lot. I do naughty stuff. You will experience the world through my eyes. You will feel what I feel. Every eye-opening cultural revelation. Every hangover. Every excitement and disappointment. I will write in the present tense, because it's more fun and engaging to read. I have a beautifully positive message to share about the world we live in, and I will share it in the most candid way possible. I also do photography. It's mediocre as hell, but it's photography nonetheless.

Along with my storytelling, I will be sharing hard-won advice about life on the road, country guides, opinion pieces, and many more valuable pieces besides.

You will be able to find all of my posts by searching for the tag redpilgrim.

The story begins tomorrow, as I am thrust headfirst into the chaos of India, with a travel virgin as my companion. Don't miss it! It is now available to read here.

And finally, if this post is more than a week old and you would like to reward me, please find and upvote my most recent post!