George Farid is one of those people who gave up their comfortable life for the sake of
Take a deep breath and get ready for his awe-inspiring
George, how many countries have you been to so far?
George: 36 countries and +90 cities. Just stats figures.
A rather qualitative answer would be the amount of travel invested in one country or the number of trips. I always seek offbeat encounters and distinct experiences.
I may have spent about 1.5 years of combined travels out of the 25 I’ve lived. Some countries I’d like to visit for extended weeks, other for days.
George:
Letting go.
You’re free of worries, normal and ordinary. Your expectations are your own; you write your own story and unleash your own potentials. Everything belongs to you and is a consequence of your decisions. You can sit down to write or you could run, or you could chase cultures, have a walk with a stranger or smile at a local, you could take a nice picture or have a meal with ingredients you have never had. At the end of the day, everything will run to your mind and will put a smile
At the end of a trip, on a long flight back, you are not the same person that left. So, the change accompanied is another favourite thing.
Tell us about what changed you the most when you decided to be a traveller (ex: personality, appearance, concepts).
George:
Appearance is a physical matter, I might have longer untidy hair, a reckless beard, random choice of
Your eyes accept more change, it tolerates more tastes and it gets less judgmental.
You’re open to
And definitely,
You learn to make peace and eventually spread it, the world is a bigger place than your
Which country is your
George: Portugal, South Africa, Cambodia, Taiwan. It all depends on the amount of memories and kind of experiences you claim. It is not about
You may favour a country cause you bungee jumped, an experience, but rather cause you unleashed another level, broken another boundary with yourself. You may
George you actually have been to somehow weird destinations such as Phnom Penh, Laos and the list goes
George: The same way we communicate daily with humans without getting each other. Human minds are mostly the same everywhere, needs and
Just relief this as a worry, one less worry down.
Tell us George, in your opinion, what is the most underrated city?
George:
The ones that are not the capital cities, the ones that are less likely to be haunted by tourists and the ones that got richer local tastes.
You should go touristic if you want, but you qualify to get the same as everyone; tourists rushing to take a picture of the Mona Lisa, have a cliché photo holding the Pyramid, etc. Unless you taken an off the beaten path, get to see other sides of Paris, get creative with your Pyramid photo, walk around different paths of a dessert, follow a river stream, doing something you wouldn’t normally do, anything that challenges you to discover the underrated. Cause it’s not the city that’s underrated, it’s ourselves, underestimating our potentials.
That’s why we visit the same places, that’s why tourists rush to the same sights, we accepted this. You won’t see a tourist skipping the Louvre for the Marathon de Paris, I don’t mean you should skip the Louvre, you get the idea.
“When you are everywhere, you are nowhere. When you are somewhere, you are everywhere.” Rumi said.
How do you avoid jet lags when are travelling to various continents up and down the globe?
George:
You don’t have to.
Whenever you land to your new destination, your whole being will revive again by the enthusiasm you breathe and the smell of new sights.
You are soon consuming new energies that you didn’t know they existed in you. Like a marathoner, that consumes his glycogen stores but his body will start finding new sources to continue providing energy.
Finally, is there a specific advice you would like to fellow
George: It might not be for everyone, but everyone should at least give it a try.
There’s the answer that travelling alone doesn’t mean you’re ever alone cause you’ll meet up with people and other travellers. You can google dozens of articles on solidarity travels, but it is something you get to taste yourself.
It simply pushes you out of any zone, whether your comfort or others’ expectations.
They say travel far enough to meet yourself.
It’s a gift for yourself. An ultimate to your self-indulgence. You get to connect with nature, the place, its people and the whole experience.
It makes your whole journey an introspective one, imagine going on a long hike without the need to talk to anyone. Imagine your potentials of focus and listening to your own thoughts.
No pressures. No necessities. No strains.
It’s just you and yourself.
We have really got inspired. Thank
For travel inspiration, follow George on Instagram: @george_gf
Credits: Yasmin Hossam
We are making interviews with various Egyptian