Trip of a lifetime

Trip of a lifetime

07-Sep-2023

So up until a little less than a year ago, the farthest I’d ever been was to Italy in Europe. That trip was sort of a graduation present from my father. After graduating from high school, my brother and I went with he, my stepmother and one of her nieces to Europe and spent about a month traveling across Europe. The furthest we had gotten was Italy, Southern Italy, Rome, Capri, and those areas. But that was as I said the summer of my graduation which would have been 1987.

Now just under a year ago. I did something that up until that time I didn’t think I was ever going to get the chance to do for particular reasons which I won’t go into here. I was unable to travel internationally for decades. At least two decades. The way I found out about that initially was one of my mentors was offering me the possibility of a job with a TV station in Egypt, which would have obviously required me to travel internationally. When I started to look into that, I came to realize I cannot travel internationally and at that time I didn’t know what I could do about it. So things persisted like that and many opportunities that might have happened didn’t because of that limitation.

Just over 2 years ago I believe it is, I finally got all of that sorted out. I got my passport. The first trip I took after obtaining the necessary documents to travel internationally was a cruise to the Caribbean, the western Caribbean, as far as Honduras. That was the last time I was anywhere out of the United States for more than a few hours since 1987.

So fast forward to just under a year ago. In October of 2022 I had what the title of this story says is the trip of a lifetime. My wife and I had been discussing international destinations that we wanted to visit and possibly move. One of them that kept coming up to the e top of the list was Turkiye. We finally made plans to travel to Turkiye and we were able to make that happen and this was my first time visiting a Muslim country since becoming Muslim a little over 30 years ago. So it was really mind-blowing for me in many, many ways. The history, the the culture, the architecture, the experiences, all of it, you name it … this was something that I was not expecting. It was a fantastic trip. I enjoyed every minute of it even if it was somewhat exhausting, but I saw so much, experienced so much. I’d love to go back already, but the part of this trip that made it truly memorable and life-changing was that we were looking at possible places to move. My wife was selling her old house and was going to have a windfall of money that she was looking to use in some sort of an investment endeavor or some sort of you know real estate or something like that. And so while we were in Turkiye we were looking around and one of the recurring refrains we heard from everybody we spoke to was that we should visit Bursa; which is on the other side of the Marmara sea from Istanbul. Not very far actually. It turns out it’s a 2 hour ferry ride across the sea of Marmara which was a beautiful trip in and of itself. So we decided to go and visit Bursa for the day. The original plan was to go on a Thursday stay for the day and then come back that evening. We got there and met up with a friend of mine who happened to be in Bursa at that time and while we were speaking with him he mentioned to us that the place he lives in had some properties that were going on sale and suggested we take a look. He put us in touch with their sales agent. We made the trip to the site to see the models and explore the building and hear all of what they had to say, etc. To put it simply, we were absolutely blown away. My wife and I, and then my two step children who accompanied us on this trip were all very excited. We were nervous about making a decision too hastily so we prayed Thuhr at that time. After that we sat and discussed it extensively. The unanimous decision was that it was a fantastic idea. The price was right. The facility was amazing. It was quieter and more reserved, more conservative, than Istanbul which was to our liking and so we made the decision to go ahead and purchase a property there in Bursa. So fast forward now from today in another 2 years I believe we, In Shaa’ Allaah, God willing will be moving to live in Bursa and so Turkiye will become my new home. So that was my first trip and my longest trip ever in my life away from home and In Shaa’ Allaah in the future there will be many more and I’ll get to see so much of this world. Many destinations in mind. I won’t go into them here, but one of the top most besides making Hajj to Mecca is to visit my ancestral lands in England in the county of Shropshire.

That’s all for now. Feel free to comment in the sections below or send me a message if you like this. If you’d like to hear more stories from my past, I have many. I just am not in the habit of telling them I’m using this opportunity to do just that. So if you like what you read. If you’d like to hear more let me know. Onwards and upwards everybody. Peace