Where are all the other travellers?

I know very few people who share my need to keep moving. I know people who like holidays, people who like Paris and people who have been to lots of places. I don't know anybody who would spend their last 40 quid on a one way ticket to Moscow. Nobody knows what it's like to look at a world map and think, 'Well, I guess I better get cracking.'

The beauty of friendship is that sometimes people can point out things you can't see for yourself.

Today, after a particularly agonising week of dissecting my finances, re-writing budgets, looking at a map and then re-writing them again, somebody said to me something along the lines of, "I would think travelling is the key to becoming a travel writer." 

Which is kind of obvious really isn't it? But I've spent so much time trying to be responsible, squirelling away money and trying to put a lid on my overwhelming desire to explore Europe's best cobbled streets, that I've missed the point of it all- to write well, you have to write what you know.

Last week my favorite partner in crime, who is currently exploring Canada, told me she was going to keep travelling until all her money ran out. And my first thought was, 'thank god somebody else understands.'

That is, understands the complete indifference to owning homes, settling down with hubby and children, having a high paying job that pays for a home in Notting Hill and numerous trips to Dior but doesn't allow for any real time off.

When did vivir suddenly mean to become part of a rat-race, a statistic, a bore? When did we stop living and start dreaming, instead of the other way around? Where are all the other travellers?