Traveller of the Month: Inga from Inga’s Adventures

Welcome to Traveller of the Month! Each month I’m featuring a fellow world traveller and travel blogger so they can share their best adventures and travel tips with you!

Without further ado, meet July 2023’s Traveller of the Month: Inga from Inga’s Adventures!

And if you missed last month’s, check it out here!

Please introduce yourself! What’s your travel story?

I’m an adult “third culture kid,” a term that encompasses kids who grew up living an expat lifestyle. It’s a mouthful, but it comes from a definition that includes the first culture being the home culture (usually the same as the passport country), the second culture being the foreign country where one lives and the third being in a community of other expats who live a somewhat nomadic life moving around.

I got into travel at four years old when we moved from Northern California to Lahore, Pakistan for my dad’s work as an irrigation engineer. Mom had many roles, eventually becoming a travel writer, so I’m following in her footsteps.

Where are you from and where are you now?

Like many expat kids, I get tongue tied when I’m asked where I’m from. For most people, it’s one word. For expats, it’s often a paragraph like this one. How do I answer? Los Banos, CA? That’s where I was born, but I was only there for three months. We moved every 2-4 years growing up and I went to 13 schools before college.

I’ve lived in Pakistan, Peru, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and various places in California with my parents. My husband, Steve, and I have lived in Seattle and several places in California. For nearly ten years, I had a job where I traveled by plane almost every week, so I got to see a lot of the US that had been blank spaces on a map.

When did you start your travel blog and what sort of stories do you share there?

I started my travel blog in 2009, which seems like a long time ago. I write about my travels and outdoor adventures because I want to share what I’ve learned and inspire people to travel. I include a lot of tips to help people plan their own travels. I also write travel essays when I’m feeling more creative.

What do you do when you’re not travelling or writing about travel?

When I was a career person, I worked in health care (as an oncology nurse) hospitals and then, after getting an MBA, in biotech and informatics.

Besides blogging, I write travel books. My first book was “Highs and Lows on the John Muir Trail,” a memoir about my 23-day wilderness backpacking trip in the Sierra Nevada. From that came two books in “The Hungry Spork” series about meal planning for long distance backpackers. When I’m not traveling or writing, I’m often hiking, skiing, or drinking wine with friends. Now that I’m retired, I’m working on my fourth book, a memoir about my life as a child in an expat family.

What’s your earliest travel memory?

One of my earliest memories is Santa Claus arriving on a camel when we lived in Lahore, Pakistan, when I was about four years old.

What’s been your best travel memory of the last five years?

Steve and I were so ready to travel when Covid restrictions were lifted. Last year, I was thrilled when we finally started traveling overseas again. We took five weeks exploring Spain, Portugal, and Morocco.

Spain and Portugal were nice, but when we got to Morocco, I felt this tingle I get when my senses are awakened with the sights, sounds and smells that signal we’re a long way from home. I was in love with Morocco from the moment we stepped off the ferry from Spain. The highlight of the trip was seeing the Sahara Desert, which was magical under the huge canopy of stars at our camp.

What is your most unique travel moment?

I’m not the only one, unfortunately, but I’m one of a number of people who have been evacuated twice out of war zones as a child. Both were in US military operations, though we weren’t connected with the military. In both cases, a cease-fire was negotiated so government and civilian US citizens could be evacuated.

It was so hard to leave Dad behind because the evacuations were only for women and children, but he was eventually able to get out on his own. We were evacuated to Iran, once from West Pakistan (now Pakistan) and once from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and the good people of Tehran helped us feel safe before figuring out our next steps.

What do you want to inspire other travellers to do?

I want to inspire travellers to meet their fears about trying something new. Fear keeps people from experiencing life. I see it when I’m teaching backpacking, I read it in travel groups online, and I hear it from my own friends. Fear can be protective in certain circumstances, but it can also be confining. The best way to overcome irrational fear is by taking baby steps to incrementally expand one’s comfort zone.

What is the longest trip you’ve ever been on?

The longest I’ve lived overseas is four years. The longest vacation-type trip was five months and I loved it. I was able to do this a few years before I retired by taking a break between full-time employment and consulting work. Steve and I traveled through Hong Kong, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Australia, and New Zealand.

By the end, I wasn’t homesick, but I was nearing my capacity to be enthralled by new things and was ready to slow down. If we had been able to keep traveling, I would have started staying in places for a few weeks or months at a time.

What destination would you go back to over and over again?

I never tire of Southeast Asia, but one place closer to home that I return to over and over is Hawaii. It’s so beautiful, I love the tropics, I feel at home there with the blend of Asian cultures and food, and I could be happy swimming in warm water every day for the rest of my life.

What is your unpopular travelling opinion?

I hardly ever say this out loud because people just stare at me like I’m an alien, but Europe doesn’t excite me that much. I immediately add qualifiers like these: I always have a nice time, I enjoy seeing the sights, there’s so much history, the architecture is impressive, the food is great, etc. But to me, Europe feels a lot like the US, only older.

Finish this sentence: Travelling has made me…

Travelling has made me adaptable, but there’s a downside to being a cultural chameleon. I made friends easily at the 13 schools I attended before college, but what was more troublesome was staying in one place and developing the skills to negotiate long-term relationships.

These are the themes I’m exploring in my travel memoir, and it’s something that adult expats and digital nomads must grapple with: how to maintain a sense of community and forge deep bonds if you’re on the move all the time.

How do you cope with travel burnout or bad days on the road?

This is an important topic. We can’t expect every day to be spectacular and life changing. There are those days when nothing goes right: the tour gets cancelled, the weather is lousy, you feel sick, the place you thought would be amazing wasn’t. Sometimes it’s best to cut your losses and find a nice café to read a book, write letters or text a friend. Maybe a nap would help.

On a long trip, I’ve learned that if we have a busy stretch, we need to stay in a place for 4-5 days, do laundry, rest, map out the next part of the trip and carve out some down time. I prefer to not book things too far in advance in case we realize we need to adjust the plan.

One time, we were in Vietnam during a typhoon and after five solid days of rain, we needed a break. All the places we had planned to visit in the next two weeks were similarly affected. I checked the weather map and found a forecast for better weather in Indonesia, a place we weren’t planning to visit. We scrapped the rest of our plan and enjoyed a wonderful few weeks in Sumatra, Bali, Lombok and the Gili Islands.

Who do you most love to travel with and why?

My husband, Steve, is my best travel partner and companion. He’s always up for an adventure and when I propose outlandish ideas, he always says yes.

Lastly, where can we find you online?

• Inga’s Adventures (https://ingasadventures.com/)
• Medium (https://medium.com/@ingasadventures) 
• Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/IngasAdventures)
• Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/ingasadventures/)

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Thank you for joining my Traveller of the Month series, Inga! Head on over to Inga’s blog to learn more about her expat childhood, adventures around the world and upcoming memoir, and stay tuned for August’s Traveller of the Month!