Today on one of my ambles by the Thames in the glorious sunshine that is miraculously becoming the norm this summer in London, I stumbled across a sign that read:

“Those who search most are the ones who find most” Anon

It struck a chord with me as just yesterday I was given two invitations that I couldn’t possibly refuse. The first was to go and stay with some friends that I had made when I was in India last year. They live in the apple growing region of Himachal Pradesh in the foothills of the Himalayas, where they have recently set up their own chutney and jam making business. The prospect of seeing them again, inspecting their fledgling business and staying again in such a beautiful village of which I have such fond memories as well as other lovely friends, fills me with great joy. And right on cue I began to feel that itch on the souls of my feet again as I wondered if it would be too reckless an idea to go back.

Later that day I was invited by a Radio 4 presenter – who one fateful day landed in Nepal on a BBC assignment and fell in love with the place – to join him on the back of his Royal Enfield motorbike traversing the country as a ‘recce’ for a photo tour that we are going to run together there next spring. Those two invitations from neighbouring countries have combined to seal my fate and I have no option but to start looking into flights.

I know that neither of those ridiculously wonderful invitations would probably not have taken place if I was not an explorer. Life doesn’t happen by sitting at home watching terrible TV or scanning Facebook. Once you make the effort to get out there and do things then other opportunities just seem to present themselves – it’s the domino effect in rewind I guess.

I know that not everyone has the  freedom to do the things that I do, so I’m not saying that you all need to travel to far-flung countries in order to be fulfilled. But I thoroughly recommend that we all keep searching – whether that is through reading a different genre of book, listening to a new musician, learning a new skill, taking a different route home from work or giving someone the time of day whom we wouldn’t normally bother with. By doing so we will keep discovering not only more about this world but, more importantly, about ourselves. And believe me, we will be rewarded for it, many times over, in ways that right now we can only imagine.