In April 2016 I set off from Goa, India at the age of 18 with less than 200$ in savings with everything I owned in a 50 Liter backpack after dropping out of college and giving away almost everything I owned! My goal was to make money traveling the world , meet incredible people and build a kind of life that I wouldn’t need a vacation from.
Now it’s been over a year as I sit down to reflect on everything that’s happened, from having soo many incredible adventures, making my goals a reality and impacting soo many lives. Here are a few lessons I learned along the way.
If there’s one thing the mass media has done well, it’s selling us on the idea of stuff and that we need more and more things to be happy. From the big house with the white picket fence to the latest iPhone! Now the big house with a picket fence is a dream for a lot of people, but not everyone actually wants that!
Many people want to travel a country in an RV or bring up their kids on a farm in the countryside! However, to keep the economic system flowing, thanks to the advertising industry, we now have millions of people who buy things they don’t need, with money they can’t afford to spend, to impress people they don’t even like.
The greatest lesson I have learned would be that, you don’t really need a lot of things to be happy! Growing up I was born into a family of hoarders, they kept plenty of things that they didn’t need. Stuff that logically would never ever be used again! I didn’t choose that path, somewhere down the line I realized that I’d rather have a life full of experiences instead of a house full of things!
Not that a house full of things is bad, but it just isn’t something I prioritize, as I don’t think it brings value to me. When I climbed the world’s third highest mountain pass alone last year I had everything I owned on my back, weighing about 15kgs. That feels like a lot to me, right now my bag weighs only 5kgs! I have a personal rule in life, wherein I give away anything that I don’t use for 2 weeks! That may seem extreme but it fits my lifestyle.
I’m in a few groups of minimalism on Facebook and I always cringe when people start to treat it like a competition. According to the lifestyle, I live and the picture above it may seem like I know how many things are there, and have a list of everything I own, Right? Wrong!
It’s not a competition about having less, the only reason I know that my bag weighs around ~5kg is because of airlines carry on weight limit! It’s not about what you have or how much you have but what you do with what you have and how what you have makes you feel!
There are times where I’ve felt more at home, sipping coffee sitting in a cafe overlooking the ocean in Sri Lanka then I did in the house I was brought up in. I’m typing this from a cafe in Vietnam, a country I spent 5 months in so far and I will spend this night, like most nights in an Airbnb, where I’m spending the next few nights, Is it my address? Nope. Is it my house? Nope. Does it feel like home? It sure does.
This was the view from the rooftop of the sunset yesterday, and that’s just on a normal day! The world is so beautiful and has so much to explore and I don’t think it would be fair for me to consider a single place “home”, I believe that the world is my home.
Home to me isn’t a place or an exact location, it’s a state of mind. I feel at home while climbing mountains, crossing borders and basically doing what I love. If I find a city or country that I like I just stay there until it feels like I need to move again. I was in Laos for a month, just a little over a week ago and was supposed to go to Thailand after that but instead, a part of me wanted to come back to Vietnam and live here for a while, so I did.
Will I ever settle down? Who knows, Probably! I rarely think past the next coffee . One of the things I talk a lot about is doing what you love. If tomorrow I find that traveling the world doesn’t bring me any joy, I’ll stop doing it. If I find a place that I love and want to live in, then I’ll just stop traveling and live there!
A lot of my fans have asked me to start travel vlogging. However, I didn’t do that. Why? Because it wasn’t something I was passionate about. Just cause it’s popular to do something doesn’t mean you’ve got to do it, even if you don’t like it.
I wanted to vlog but not about travel as I didn’t like having to record all the time, now what did I like more than travel? Coffee; so I started a vlog on YouTube where I’m going around the world, trying different coffee’s and talking about them.
Do you, whether that is traveling the world, getting a stable job, buying that big house or whatever! Do what you love! Screw other people’s opinions because at the end of the day they don’t really matter. Just cause it’s glamorous to “live out of a backpack” like I do, it doesn’t mean you have to do it! If you want to then sure go for it, but at the end of the day, do what makes you happy!
When I say that no one’s opinions matter, I’m not just talking about strangers on the internet! Most people I know are crippled more about what their parents, friends, and family will think about their decisions, rather than strangers! They don’t matter, I respect the opinions and feedback from every single individual who I have come in contact with in this journey of life, but I don’t let anyone’s opinions cripple me or define me.
I genuinely believe that most excuses used by people are absolute ( and mind my language) bullshit. Most of the people I knew growing up always “wished” and “hoped” for things to happen.
Based on the social and economic structure of the world, it would have been pretty darn lucky for me to be born a White Male in New York with a trust fund, but I wasn’t! Instead, I was born Brown in India to a family that didn’t support my endeavors. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to spend my entire life complaining about what I don’t have, which in this case would be a powerful passport, a support system, a trust fund, white skin etc. I don’t believe you gain anything by playing the victim, it’s just a sure way to lose.
What I chose to focus on was what I had, I had the internet, just like every single person reading this . What I decided to do was to actually put in the work instead of whining about my circumstance. The first way I ever made money was by learning to build websites off YouTube and Google and then going cafe to cafe to get clients. I traveled for half a year doing that, while I grew my blog to pay for my travels.
I get 100s of messages from people around the world who say that they wish they could live a life like mine, I tell them that they can if they put in the work. Because that’s what it all comes to. I believe that 99.99% of the problems and goals of people can be solved or achieved respectively by Googling, “How do I ____?” with your goal in the blank, reading, filtering the content, learning and then actually putting in the work and executing.
Using that simple trick and a free website called Google you can do anything whether that’s traveling the world or making more money or improving your relationships. But it takes actual hard work and it’s just easier to call people who succeed “lucky” and to share memes on Facebook and talk to your friends about how “you’re going to …”, as @GaryVee would say, “F@#k you’re gonna! Go do.”
Jeremy Noronha is the host of The #CoffeeWithJeremy Show where he is going around the world, trying the best coffee’s and reviewing them, he built this blog to pay for his travels around the world by leveraging social media and SEO. He has been traveling the world since April 2016.
You can follow his adventures here on his blog, YouTube or connect with him on Facebook and Instagram .
By Jeremy Noronha on May 21, 2017 .
Exported from Medium on January 30, 2026.
Firstly cause I’m too lazy *yup, I do stuff like climb mountains, but I’m too lazy to count the things in a picture haha* and secondly, knowing the number of things I own brings absolutely no value to my life whatsoever so why waste my time.
Someone’s opinion about you doesn’t have to be your reality…..unless you let it!
They tended to blame or credit “luck” and “circumstance” instead of actual hard work. Circumstance does play a role, you can’t control your genetics, the color of your skin, your gender and the place you are born in. However I believe that the most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work — brains and talent are just the starting point.
Lessons Learnt From Living Out Of A Backpack For A Year
#1: You Don’t Really Need a Lot
#2: It’s Not a Numbers Game
#3: The World is My Home
#4: Do You
#5: Excuses are bullshit
