The best thing about travelling are the people you meet. Relationships blossom quickly due to the intensive periods of time spent in foreign places.
We tell our story from scratch of who we are, what we do, how we go here and why we are travelling.
So people tend to get many layers from the get go. And we are more inclined to open up to find things in common with others from different cultures. The questions certainly are different to those you find in a bar in Sydney. Where are you from and what do you do? All of a sudden you’re in the box, categorized by suburb and your choice of university degree.
When we are away from home soil, we tend to latch on to what feels comfortable, what feels safe. No matter what language we speak, landscape or city we live in, human beings are all just that, humans being.
So, what are our skills and how can we share them? I don’t just mean work skills like sales, marketing or accounts – but what are you naturally good at? How can we all use what we know to create something more easily, more beautifully, more collaboratively? Something that often gets lost in the ‘normal’ workplace.
And so the Chamonix Yoga Festival was born.
Chamonix Yoga Festival. Image Source: Clara Yoga Photography
One girl’s vision became a community dream. It was a team effort well before the first event, design, communication and PR, sponsors, translation, production, teachers and volunteers, catering, raw food introduction, discussions with the council, the list goes on. And after the second year running it continues to flourish.
The most beautiful part though, is that we are a mixed team, French, English, Swedish and Australian, all bringing to the table something unique, our skills.
That is the beauty of travel, sharing your talents with others and creating something real, something that you are proud to be a part of.
You can check out dates for next year at www.chamonixyogafestival.com
Having a relationship with a French Freeride skier
Image Source: Clara Yoga Photography
Having a relationship with anyone can be scary at the best of times. It’s challenge enough to have an international relationship. People tell you it won’t last with cultural differences, speaking different languages etc etc. But why not just take it one step further and choose a guy who loves to ski from the highest, steepest, off-piste, avalanche prone peaks in the world. And I thought surfing 6-foot waves was scary.
This is a clip he pulled together from the best of last winter:
The rebound off the tree was the day I was banned from skiing with the boys. That was crash number two in my presence, number one ending in stiches above the eye.
If you are unaware, as I was, the Freeride World Tour are a series of competitions that involve the rider to choose his/her best line with fluidity, skill and tricks/jumps in control. They are scored points and ranked based on their performance across different comps.
This is what you can imagine if you were in his boots…
So, as for the Australian surfer yogi and the French freeride skier…like any love story, time will tell. I guess the best part is there will always be amazing drone footage for our travels together!! This final one is the recent trip back home to Aus, enjoy!!