He jumps from one place to another and from one country to the next. That’s why he is nicknamed ‘Jumps’. That’s also why you find him jumping in most of the pictures he posts on his FB page (https://www.facebook.com/Jumps-435526166613421/). “In life, we all have to jump. In other words, we have to take a risk to create an opportunity,” he explains the symbolism behind the jumps. Just 24, Antony d’Oliveira has been travelling the world for the last four years, with little or no money. He has visited 40 countries including Australia, Indonesia, England, USA, Mexico, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Argentina, Brazil and Belgium. Arriving about a week ago in Chennai from Singapore, the low-budget traveller from Paris was in Kochi the other day, and is currently in Pune. “I am staying here with a friend whom I had met in New Zealand,” he says.
It is the Pune friend’s mobile phone that he relies upon to chat with this correspondent in his heavily accented English. He lugs around a tent but little else, not even a laptop. “I have nothing,” he says, stressing the last word. He rarely stays in hotels and usually curls up in temples or churches or even beaches. He travels in local buses and likes to meet people. In certain countries, he has resorted to ‘crowd funding’ to meet his expenses; nothing fancy or technical but just spreading around a map that shows where all he has been to and accepting donations.
Back in Paris, he used to work as a Pizza delivery boy and salesman before it hit him that he was leading a boring life. “I wanted to experience life more and see how people lived in other places,” he says. The first trip was to Australia where he lived for several months on a working visa. At that time, he did not know yet that he was going to be travelling forever. “If you want to travel, do not plan,” he says. “Just go with the flow.” From Australia, he went to Indonesia for a few weeks, before returning to France. But the travel bug had already bitten hard and he went next to London where he did odd jobs to survive. Before long, he realised that travelling was his real vocation and mission in life. “There is a lot of learning and sharing that happens when I travel. Maybe later on, I will make a documentary and write a book too,” he says.
“Kerala is nice,” he says, adding that it is too touristy for his comfort though. No wonder he was off to his next destination in three days! Varkala and Fort Kochi and Alappuzha were the places he explored the most but disappointingly did not do a jumping picture in God’s Own Country. He saw more places in Tamil Nadu including Tiruchy, Madurai, Tuticorin, Nagercoil and Kanyakumari besides the Union territory of Puducherry. It was around seven months ago that he visited home last and considers the whole world as his country. He keeps in touch with his folks mainly on email. “Now they understand my lifestyle,” he says.
He knows that a lot of people would like to live and ‘jump’ like him but are too scared to try. “They don’t want to lose their comforts,” he says, adding that it is a fallacy to think that you need a lot of money to be a world traveller. “I know how to live with nothing,” he declares. It’s hard to disagree with a walking, talking proof.
