I am Ciprian and I am a searcher. I am curious about finding the best ways people can live their lives. In the past I though that the best way to feed this curiosity is to read about this topic. I was wrong. The best way is to explore the world by myself and expose my body, mind and heart to everything this world can teach me. The best way is to get my own insights about the world.

These ideas have led me to become a worldwide explorer and to create this website. But before getting into more details about it let me tell you a bit about me and about how I did get motivated to start this project.

I was born in a small village in the North-East of Romania. You know how the kids are, they always try to know and understand the world around them. So was I.

Many years my searches were focused only around to my surroundings because, as all my friends at that time thought, that was enough. But from time to time, someone or something new was entering in my universe from outside of it and served as a the proof that I knew nothing about the world.

For example, when I was just a little boy I received from my father a small book about Africa. It was a book without pictures or drawings – only plain text. That would have to bore to death most of the kids of my age but somehow the world that was arising from that book caught my attention.

Who knows, maybe it was the notes about the lushly palm trees full of exotic birds or the descriptions about the strange life and appearance of the Africans. I don’t remember. But I do remember that those kind of abroad insights made me dreaming that someday I will become a worldwide explorer. I was saying to myself:

I will get to discover the rest of the world by myself.
I will discover even more that world knows about itself !

Years passed and I did not forgot about that old dream. I start reading about the history, culture, religion and everything that could gave me insights about how the rest of the world look like, how other people think, feel and live. And the next natural step in this process should have been to go to visit the world. However, even after I could afford the money to do it I continued to tell to myself that “it’s still too early to think about that, maybe next year”. The truth is that I was scared that I may not be able to handle all the problems involved by travelling and living abroad. I was just a coward dreamer.

Fortunately, my fate was wiser and braver than me. She was aware that if she wouldn’t do something most probably I will never do more than just postponing. She kicked me in the ass and through my school and (later) my job she forced me to travel and live 9 months in Portugal and China.

Those experiences shocked me by revealing the nonsense I was believing about the rest of the world. There was a very big difference between what I imagined before going there and what the reality was. I felt like all the articles, books and documentaries I studied before were not showing me the whole truth and that made me wonder how much of my reality is true and how much is based on censored, inaccurate or outdated information. That led me to something like an existential crisis:

“Now that I know that reality can be tremendously different than what people are saying, I just can’t continue to settle for a regular life. It would be like building a house on a ground I don’t fully trust anymore. It would be like investing my time on a purpose that I am not sure is best for me. That’s why, from now on, nothing is more important to me than discover the true worldwide reality.“

Soon after I realized that I lost the desire to get a fancy car, to get a big house, to get unlimited power and influence and everything that I thought I wanted before. This greatly freed my mind of useless thoughts and allowed me to focus even more on discovering the true face of the world. It also freed my pocked so I was able to invest more in traveling and also in traveling related things (like photography gear and photography courses).

You know, many people say it feels good to travel and, obviously, I am among them. But for me, there is even more than that. I realized that the true potential of the worldwide exploration is that it changes you from within and forces you to redefine yourself based on solid grounds. It makes you become an authentic man who, slowly but surely, will master the art of living in this world.

Traveling abroad gave something unexpected: a new ME! I got a new me who:

• is not terrified anymore about the unknown. And in the day by day life that helps me to accept more easily new challenges;
• start to love and treasure people more than before. I understand them better and that makes me treat them with more respect;
• continuously improves its own life philosophy which helps me to get faster and better decisions.

Besides, I noticed that these good things were not happening only to me. They were happening also with other people which invested some of their energy to explore the world. It was a very interesting observation which invited me to think more about the differences between people who travel abroad and those who don’t. And those differences made me strongly believe that:

“Worldwide exploration is a vital educational food. If people are getting enough of it they will manage to have the best possible life. If not, they will start to develop different kind of mentality problems: racial hatred, intolerance, fanaticism, bad relationships, irresponsible behavior, paranoia, lack of self-esteem, lack of a clear life purpose and depression.“

Well, it is not hard to guess that I don’t want to be surrounded by people having those kinds of problems. But I am. Not only in my city, not only in my country but everywhere I go. I can’t just simply ignore them because their behavior is impacting me. So instead of running to escape from their impact, I decided to help the mankind by creating a website and using it to shout as loud as I can:

Worldwide exploration is the best way of improving and enriching your life!

Well my friend, this is the story about how did I get inspired to create this website. I hope you feel the same about my vision about the usefulness of worldwide exploration because, honestly, I will need your help to spread it to as many people as possible. That’s why I am inviting you to join the Exotic Spy community by subscribing to our social media pages.

Regards,
Ciprian