From long-term traveler to published Author

With the help of the pandemic!

I’m Amit, a long-term solo and budget traveler, published author, originally from England and somebody who really struggles to conform with normality.

Just a quick stopover

It was meant to be a short trip back home to England and spend Christmas in December 2019, with the family after traveling in what was becoming a second home in Portugal.

The plan was to head over to Cuba in 2020, and then onto Australia.

Australia was where it all began in 2010, the nomadic life was born, so it was quite fitting to return for my tenth anniversary of roaming the world. However, my plans rarely work out, how I managed to travel the world for so long is sometimes beyond me. Life has a habit of messing with me. This time though it took it to another level, a world pandemic bought the world to It’s knees. We have all lived through it but the timing meant I was stuck in the one place I never wanted to get stuck; home in England.

But if there is one thing traveling has taught me over the years above all else, especially with all the set-backs along the way, that was to find a silver lining. And that is exactly what I did. Yes, it was very tough, being forced back into a box I resented, caged in a sense, mentally it was straining.

Since 2010 I had done everything in my power to stay out of the box but here I was.

The silver lining

I had started it in Portugal, a memoir series, chronicling the near decade around the world, but once back in England there was a change in direction. Instead for my first book I ended up writing a long-term solo travel help book titled: You, Yourself & the World answering 100+ questions, concerns and fears about solo travel.

Writing just like my traveling life fell into place without much planning behind it. In-fact until I wrote my very first blog post back in 2017, there had never been a single thought to write.

I created Forever Roaming the World. A blog for solo and long term budget travel, providing unfiltered real life advice and tips away fakeness associated with traveling life. Over the past few years I became a bit-time blogger. Contrary to what people saying blogging requires so much effort, time and pandering to the correct people to make a success in such a saturated market; at times it was disheartening. But I found a passion in writing, I enjoyed it.

So when the pandemic hit, while trapped in the box, my motivations shifted, writing started again, a rebrand of the website, and the start of the new book.

Adventures and misadventures

While becoming a published author was great, the world was still rocked, new variants, more lockdowns, and much more uncertainty. My mind needed to travel more; another book was planned. This time I dove through my memories and started to write about my own traveling life.

The idea was to create a book highlighting my near decade solo, budget backpacking life through independent short stories. However just like my traveling life, plans don’t always work out how they should do.

While the book through the drafts maintained the collection of short stories, an overarching story line started to grow naturally and took the book in a new direction. It started to show something unexpected through all the adventures, misadventures, setbacks and conflicts that ran all the way to my last trip to Nazare, Portugal in 2019.

Who is the book for?

Anybody who loves to travel, are armchair travelers or for those like to take enjoyment out of other peoples misfortunes. This book is a journey through both my internal and external journeys and how it seems like I live a parallel life.

The author

To learn more about Amit Vaidya the Author, his debut book; You, Yourself & the World or the new travel memoir head over to Forever Roaming the World’s Author section.