These were the words my favourite Biology teacher and mentor told me at the age of 15. He later went on to do a Masters degree and take a new life and adventure in Australia – I wish I kept in touch…I still hope to reconnect.

Now by the age of 6 I had already been taken to my ancestral home of India and lived in Kenya for 2 years (above is the very old picture of me as a 4 year old in Nairobi, Kenya) also visiting Uganda and Tanzania. I was too young to remember much of India apart from my Mum’s amazing family. I also remember being so bored that I read the only book I had about vampires at least 20 times – my literature and grammar went up a whole level that summer. Add to this the numerous sickness bugs I suffered and being tortured by my sister replaying Madonna songs on loop, India was not so nice as a 8 year old. My best memories of Kenya were the stunning safari’s, motor rally cars and Mombasa. The worst were of the horrendous schooling experience and the car crash that almost wiped out my family and me.

Fast forward to 19 years old – a young dumb and broke University kid. University was a drag even though I was acing everything in sight but uni and academics in general never matched my potential or ambition. What it did do was make me grow up and  develop my social skills. I needed the latter to keep calm and figure things out in my first wanderlust American travel adventure.

Teenage love can make you do crazy things and it opened the path to my first solo international trip to the USA.

Now taking this leap of faith was mad…I booked the ticket thanks to my late father’s kindness – I think he knew I was selling him a humdinger of a fib of why I needed the tickets…yet the biggest problem was I had NO passport – wwhhhhaaattt.

My best friend from school had nothing better to do on a  lazy summer day so he came with me to get an emergency passport and we then met a uni mate of mine for who thought I was crazy to make such a surprise trip. Truth be told…I knew I crazy – the idea of going to a foreign land with no plan scared me but my adrenalin was on defcon1 and I knew I had to do this for me and the lucky girl I was about to surprise.

The night before I flew…i was watching Shawshank Redemption with a friend and the end scene of escaping and freedom somehow resonated with how I was feeling.

As the plane took off from Heathrow Airport and sat on a Sabena Airways plane I had the moment of what the hell am I doing mixed with the drug of excitement that has stuck with me since. This journey was to test me in more ways than one.

On the plane I was lapping up the experience of plane food and all the goodies they don’t give anymore unless you fly 1st class. Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean a young American girl sat next to me moving from a bad seat. So damn friendly I thought…fancying me?…my 19 year old over-hormoned self probably thought so. She filled me in about growing up in America and what struck me was the open arms attitude she had and how schools in the US compared to the UK sports-wise.

So I landed in Chicago…Wow it really was like the American tv shows I grew up on. I navigated to the cab stand and showed the driver the address. Before I left the U.K. I was told it was a 15 minute ride to the address so was a little puzzled by the taxi drivers chuckle and invitation to other taxi drivers to chuckle with him. ‘Are all English people stupid – you need about $4000 to get to this address’. My body went cold in the searing heat.

Rewind a few days – So the travel agent back in London booked Chicago, Michigan and I blindly booked not realising Chicago was in Illinois!!!! Fuck – I was young, dumb and broke – in the wrong damn state. With no money to buy a ticket to fly to Detroit I was told I had to catch a tristate bus to Indiana state and ‘possibly’ catch a Amtrak or Greyhound to Detroit. I had a few hours so I went to downtown Chicago city to check out the vibe and crazy tall Sears Tower.

No panic just the adrenaline rush of a totally unknown adventure that was igniting a part of my brain never opened before.

Stay tuned for part two in the coming days to this crazy but unforgettable adventure that accelerated me from a boy into a man in a matter of hours…and how I experienced the amazing kindness of an American family.