2024-04-22 12:06:42
He walked through Nepal, went to Georgia by bike and is now editing a film about how he rode a tuktuk across Africa. Tomáš Vejmola has been traveling for eight years, he started because of a broken heart. “I wanted to stop thinking about my ex-girlfriend and experience something that would hurt me even more,” he says in the interview. In it, the adventurer talks, among other things, about how he experienced his ritual death and what he does to prevent his wife from running away with the postman.
You have been traveling for eight years. For the first time, you went on a two-month trip to Nepal and India. How did you come up with the idea of packing up and leaving?
I was heartbroken then. I wanted to stop thinking about my ex-girlfriend and experience something difficult that would hurt me even more. I bought a one-way ticket to India, where I thought I was going to be killed. I’ve never been this alone, I even took out life insurance. Along the way, I suddenly began to discover that it was completely different than I thought. I returned to the Czech Republic overgrown and barefoot because I sold my shoes for a violin. Maybe it was an escape in a way, but it allowed me to step out of my shell and see that the world was suddenly different. It’s great, safe, and has good people.
Today you are 34 years old, you have a wife, a four-year-old daughter and you are still traveling. More than a year ago, you set off on a three-month trip around Africa in a tuktuk and organize weekly group trips to Morocco, Georgia or Sri Lanka. Do you hear from those around you that you should grow up and do “something proper”?
Yes, when I got married, I often heard the Cimrman saying “you’ve drawn enough”. I always just smile and tell myself that if a person wants to, it can always be arranged so that he can continue to travel. If you want to stay at home and work in the factory, fine, but if you want to go out, you just go out. I usually don’t respond to such comments.
Does the woman mind that you were in Africa for three months?
Of course, Janča and I discussed it, and it’s not just like that. Before I left, she wrote me a to-do list. When I was away, she got a present every other week to make things easier. For example, a wellness center or a dishwasher, because of course I don’t want to be replaced by the postman. This trip was not just like that, a cameraman also went with me, because a film is made from the trip. So I had to pay for my trip, the cameraman and the household. Thanks to crowdfunding and sponsors who contributed, it was possible.
“Children in Uganda named my tuktuk Mája,” describes Tomáš. | Photo: Archive of Tomáš Vejmola
No one can take traveling out of me
You used to take annual trips. Do you miss traveling longer?
Traveling is great, but family comes first for me, I’ve always wanted to have it. At the same time, I know, and so do my loved ones, that travel is in me like it or not, it cannot be taken away from me. For example, last month my wife and daughter and I traveled around Sri Lanka by tuktuk for a month and it was great. Of course, it’s a different kind of travel – when I’m alone I can sleep peacefully in a puddle, but when we travel together, they’re princesses who have to be taken care of from morning to night.
You live in Hranice in Moravia, where you were born. Do you see this village as your home?
Yes, but it seems to me that when a person travels, he feels at home wherever he feels comfortable. You begin to realize that the entire planet is your home. And it doesn’t always have to be a specific place, but maybe also some moment that you experience.
People are often afraid to travel because they are worried that something will happen to them, that things will not go according to plan. But aren’t unexpected situations and the fact that you can handle them the essence of travel and adventure?
When you are at home in the Czech Republic, you live a balanced and simple life. You go from job to job, and when a tram misses you, another one does. When you miss the last evening flight in a foreign country where you don’t know the language, and you’re in a place you’ve never been before and you don’t know what to do, it’s a real challenge. But it’s precisely these situations that I enjoy traveling the most and I look for them. Thanks to them, you will find that you can handle a lot. A lot of people are afraid to travel because they are not sure that they will cope. But when you’re in that situation, you don’t sit there and die or evaporate. Such situations, on the contrary, generate a lot of stories, along the way you will meet a lot of good people who will help you. In the end, you just laugh at how great everything is.
I died in Myanmar
Can you mention a story of help that stuck with you?
For example, when I went from Thailand to the Czech Republic by tuktuk. It was a year trip and my vehicle broke down in Bulgaria. I thought I wouldn’t make it any further. In the parking lot at the mall, two complete strangers started helping me. For three days they repaired the tuktuk, got spare parts, and even slept there. I said that I would give them the first last thing I had, and they replied that they didn’t want anything, they were happy to help, and then let me help someone else. It happened six years ago and I still have this experience with me. It’s a kind of sticker that instilled in me that it should be automatic to help other people.
Does it often happen to you when you travel that things somehow start to fit together, even if they don’t actually go according to plan?
Usually not during the trip, but only when I get back. For example, this trip seemed like a fairy tale to me. I was gone for a year and during that time everything good and bad happened, I almost lost my life three times. I am allergic to bees and was stung by one in Myanmar. I swelled up, I couldn’t breathe, and finally they saved me with an injection at the local pharmacy. I think I kind of died there then.
Shortly after being stung by a bee in Myanmar and given an injection at a local pharmacy. | Photo: Archive of Tomáš Vejmola
What has changed since the “ritual death”?
Before this journey I had a good, standard life like my peers. We went to work every Friday and Saturday. I was 26 at the time and told myself that I don’t want to live like this for the rest of my life. My friends always talked over beers about how excited they were to be there or be like that one day. And it suddenly dawned on me that they’ve been saying this for two or three years and they’re still where they are. I will come away from this trip happier, more satisfied, more fulfilled. I appreciate life more, every morning I am happy to wake up under a roof and a warm duvet. When people in our country curse at every stupid thing, I would like to take them all on a trip to Calcutta, so that they can see how people live elsewhere and how happy they can be.
Go now, there won’t be a better time
Now you organize group trips, among other things you act as a travel buddy on the travel platform Worldee. You used to travel alone before. What is it like for you?
I enjoy it. When I take a group to Morocco, where I’ve been going for ten years, I enjoy how enlightened people are about certain things. I no longer experience the “wow effect” at the place, so I’m glad that through their eyes I again feel as if I’m seeing, for example, the historic square in Marrakesh for the first time.
How do you finance your travels?
I earned my first three trips to India, Nepal and Georgia in England. For three months I worked there from morning to night on the construction site. I’ve been active on Facebook since the beginning and got some funding through crowdfunding and my account. Well, then I did all kinds of part-time jobs. No one wanted to hire me in Hranice, because everyone said I would leave anyway, so I worked part-time as a gardener, welder, bricklayer, roofer or plumber. At one time, my days were like getting up at five in the morning, working as a plumber until three in the afternoon, and then taking the train to lectures and the last train back again.
You were at the beginning of “travel influencership”. More and more people are traveling today, don’t you sense a certain crisis?
Yes, sometimes I feel like a dinosaur because I’ve been writing about travel for eight years. On the other hand, traveling only started to support me last year. I have always financed my adventures mostly on my own. Today, however, I would not be able to undertake such large expeditions without crowdfunding and sponsors.
If someone wants to go on their first solo trip, what advice would you give them?
Definitely don’t worry. One must not think because one has only one life. When you start thinking, you suddenly look and find that you’ve been thinking for eight, ten years and still haven’t gotten anywhere. And then you’ll make it easier, you’ll have a mortgage… If you want to go, then go now, because there won’t be a better option.