Adventure is the name of Tanja Gittens’ game. Travel is her passion. She has bedded down with Malaysian tribes; had her neck similarly outfitted with the multiple brass rings worn by the Karen Long Necks of Thailand; lost her way driving into a South African township, all part of the adventurous spirit which has taken her to some of the world’s most exciting, distant places.
A self-employed chartered accountant, this Barbadian who told Easy Magazine “I have always liked the travel aspect of life”, has in the last year alone gone to South Africa, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Borneo, Japan, Australia, Los Angeles, and London.
“For me it is about meeting random people from all over the world. You just meet somebody, you chat with them, you spend the day travelling, going sightseeing with them and you probably never see them again in your life.”
Her passion for travelling developed from an early age. It ignited when her mother first took her to Disney World. She could hardly wait to grow up and do it on her own, which she did when university studies were out of the way. She began exploring the Caribbean.
Later when she was relocated to the Channel Islands for two years, she seized the opportunity to tour the United Kingdom extensively, going to Scotland, and taking in the sparsely populated Channel Islands of Sark and Herm.
What is it about travel that excites this 32-year-old woman?
“I like meeting random people. I like the fact that you are just another face in the millions of people. I like to see the different cultures.
“A couple years ago I was supposed to do a tour of Europe, taking in as many places as possible. But then it was a nightmare to work the visas at that point in time because you needed a visa for all those countries.”
Putting that frustration behind her, she decided on an alternative trip that would take her much farther.
“I have a few friends whom I would have met when I was living in the Channel Islands who have done gap years, and they have all done Asia. Since Asia was being targeted as the spot for travellers, I decided that is where I wanted to go. South Africa was also one of the places I always wanted to go, so I incorporated South Africa into the equation.”
For seven months straight she lived out of a suitcase. She started out in Cape Town, spent one week there, then rented a car and drove for two weeks up the garden route, stopping in diffferent towns every night. Next it was on to Krugers National Park, a couple of days there spent gaming, rising early in the morning to see the animals in the reserve. She next moved on to Joburg to end the South Africa leg.
The experience of being in Nelson Mandela country is indelibly etched in her mind.
“It felt like when you have something that you want to do and you’ve thought about it for ever, and you finally get there and it feels like an out of body experience and for the first day you ask yourself ‘am I dreaming, am I really here’? and then you get on with it.
“It turns out to be a lot easier than you thought and I found myself getting all wrapped up in the culture and the people and in things that I had only seen in the newspaper or on television.”
She drove across South Africa without a map for two weeks.
“I know everybody says it is crazy but it did not seem crazy at the time,” not even when she got lost and ended up driving into a township after making a wrong turn late one evening while trying to find Port Elizabeth.
“That was one anxious moment. I saw school children walking for miles, with nothing around them, with no idea where they came from and where they were going.”
She drove the rented KIA Picanto for several hours, some days as long as eight hours to make it to the next town with the aid of a map, Googling the next town she wanted to reach the night before, and setting out early in the morning to reach the selected destination.
“In each location I tried to do one grand thing. In South Africa it was the opportunity to actually go to Robben Island where?Mandela was imprisoned for so many years. I also went to the Apartheid Museum which has a whole section entirely devoted to him.”
Standing beside the six-metre statue of?Mandela in Nelson Mandela Square in Johannesburg, surveying the magnificent view as she stood atop Table Mountain, picking her path among the thousands of penguins on Boulder’s beach are among her precious South Africa moments.
Being present at a Formula One Weekend car racing event was for her “the icing on the cake” on the Singapore leg.
In Malaysia, she spent an adventurous day trying to reach the famous Lake Kenya. “I had sign languages frustration, a taxi driver who did not speak English, he kept stopping to get help with directions from people. On the east side of Malaysia I found myself as a black person drawing so much attention, people riding cycles in the street were shaking at me, some were hiding behind cars to take my photograph.”
In Japan Tanja discovered the value of sign language. It was the saving grace when she sought the asistance of a Japanese pharmacist in selecting medication for a bug.
“I went into the pharmacy, looked around and walked back out. The next morning I was really beginning to feel ill and I walked back into the pharmacy. The pharmacist looked up and said ‘not well?’, and I said ‘no.’ It took us about ten minutes to go through a series of few English words and actions but eventually I walked out with some tablets that worked.
Tanja is at home in Barbados at the moment, but foremost in her mind is where will she go next.
Of the affordability she remarked: “It is not as expensive as some persons would like to think because there is a tourist who stays in five-star hotels, and there is a traveller who knows how to stay in places where you get decent accomodation at a moderate price and you don’t go on organised tours.”
She chooses to be the latter.
