Roses are red.
Violets are blue.
Candles are boring,
Let’s kiss under the flame
of a hot air balloon.
Yash and I, we are not the romantic type. When we started dating, I couldn’t bring myself to call him my boyfriend because the term felt inadequate. We are buddies – who challenge each other, spit the harshest criticism, make super special gestures, share our wonders; and often, shoulder to shoulder walk into life-changing situations without talking about it. Don’t believe us?
Met the parents. Check.
Moved to a new continent. Check.
Snorkeled in the middle of the sea, without any lessons. Check.
Spent 14 months’ savings on 17 months’ travel. Check.
All of it without a lengthy discussion. Just “I want to do it. You want to do it? Okay.”
Our life is our little adventure – a story of our making – impromptu decisions and laughter from the stomach, hair tangled by the wind, intertwined tan lines, learning new languages and mismatched crockery; it’s us against the stereotypes, including the “perfect life”. We crave the little joys, the grand adventure and everything in between. We believe that life happens while you’re busy planning for it, also, we are kinda lazy, so we live it up on intuition and take chances, what many also call as risks.
When we advocate adventure, we do so keeping in mind that not all people are the same. We might seem equally adventurous, but we are quite different about our approach towards it. Yash is like a professional mine detector. He likes to access the scene, evaluate all probabilities of mishappenings and go for a safe spot. Once he is sure, he lets loose and enjoys it to the fullest. Unfortunately for him, I am wired differently. I start taking off my shoes on the sight of a water body or green grass. The thought of temperature, or snakes or slipping and dying never crosses my mind. I’m no daredevil, just more fascinated than afraid I guess. And because of this contrast in our personalities, our adrenaline is always kicking, mine because I’m me and Yash because I keep him on the edge. But every time our bond grows stronger as we face our fears together, make jokes when we are actually shitting our undies and take disappointments and make them into memories and plans for the next escapade. When Yash said he wanted to learn surfing, I booked lessons for both of us. When I bought a skateboard, Yash helped me learn. We have traveled by buses on the scariest road in Himachal and paid $200 to get underwater pictures of us diving in Bali. There are thousands of stories featuring Yash and me just because we keep pushing each other outside our comfort zone, one adventure at a time.
Do you consider yourself an adventurous person? Here’s a checklist of tannedandhow recommended adventures. Check and share how many of these have you done:
- [checklist-box title=”Adventurous together checklist:” extraTitle=”” extraUrl=””]
- Kayaking
- Hiking
- Swimming in the ocean
- Rock climbing
- Rappeling
- Cycling
- Road tripping without a map
- Camping Safari
- Sailing
- Paragliding
- Hot air ballooning
- Island-hopping
- Zorbing
- Trying local crazy food
