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Stalking the sun

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An Adelaide lad travels from country to country enjoying the essence of summer. FRANKEY GERARD FERNANDES reports

Friends describe him as crazy, passionate and funny, but also hard-working, intelligent and worldly.

Meet Kynsley Edgar Laurence Savio Nazareth, who is on a special mission travelling the world. He began this exciting project from Adelaide in August 2011, and shares this interesting experience with us.

Kynsley contacted us nearly nine months later in mid-July, from a farm at Sátormapuszta, outside the village of Hegyesd, 7 km from the town of Tapolca in South Hungary, where he was working on a farm in exchange for free food and accommodation.

So what prompted him to undertake this tour and what does it mean?

“I quit my job to travel the world, and am hoping to write a book about my travels,” says Kynsley. “My mission is called “510 million km² of Chasing Summer”; that is the earth’s entire surface area. I follow the summer sun around the world and to countries where it is summer. I have been swapping hemispheres as per the waxing summer sun.  I also use the word ‘summer’ loosely so as to not just mean summer but also happiness, self-discovery and joy in small things”.

Kynsley believes the world is a far more positive place than people think it is, because of all the negative stories heard though the media. People are afraid these days, and do not trust strangers.

“I thought if I were to preach the message that the world is a good place, I should be able to prove this by example.  So for almost all of my travels through nearly a year gone by, I have been living in the houses of absolute strangers. They too, opened their doors to an absolute stranger like me.  Part of my aim is to also spread the message of multiculturalism,” says Kynsley.

He is a good example of this, being Indian, born in Mumbai to a Goan family of Portuguese heritage. He has a New Zealand nationality, but lives in Australia, having moved because of his family who are settled here. Kynsley attempts to understand a culture and then write about it in a manner that dispels myths, misconceptions and mindsets that also go beyond culture.

“My aim is also to encourage others to travel and view the world with curiosity and open-mindedness, and in an inexpensive manner,” he states.

So what made him embark on this journey? “I realised that I needed to do something really different. I wanted to visit every country in the world but even using every single annual leave in all my life solely to travel, I would still not be able to visit even half the number of countries. So while this journey will get me closer to my goal of visiting every country in the world, it is still a largely unattainable goal,” he says ruefully.

How is Kynsley funding his trip? “Well, I couch surf (live in the houses of strangers) which helps save some money. I have some savings that I have been using, and considering that the Australian dollar is at an all-time high, there’s no better time to travel. Besides this may be my last chance to travel before I decide to settle down, if I do!”

Always seeking the next big escapade, Kynsley has varied interests from extreme sports and adventure activities to spirituality, intellectual debates and partying, whilst also exercising that balance between planning some events and yet being spontaneous for others.

In the course of his travels, Kynsley has had some interesting experiences. One of these would have to be Europe’s most dangerous airport in Gibraltar. “Watching planes land on a measly 1.8km long runway, that was amazing! The runway has the sea at one end and a Jurassic age mountain rock on the other, and not only that it bisects the highway that leads to Spain, and is used constantly by pedestrians and traffic!”
He has also explored Africa’s untamed wildlife during safari game drives; and attended a Catholic mass in a Kenyan church, where certain members of the Eucharistic ministry had the interesting task of dancing through the aisles, as the congregation sang, clapped or danced along!

“I have been welcomed into the homes of absolute strangers including female strip dancers, a drug peddler (didn’t know until he later told me), a male model who models only in the nude…you name it, I’ve seen it,” says Kynsley.

“I have attended the Rio Samba Carnival, the biggest party in the world; witnessed African religious rites where the devout get into a trace-like state in the Candomble ceremony; visited Panama where the sun rises in the Pacific and sets in the Atlantic, and vice versa in other parts!” he adds.

An interesting life indeed, and one that most of us could only dream of living.

In Portugal, Kynsley decided to seek out his roots, and went in search of them only to find a whole raft of interesting information about Goan surnames. “My surname Nazareth is Portuguese, and we carry a lot of Portuguese cultural traits.  I visited different places in Portugal and at various points I garnered information about surnames in the Goan Catholic community and their relationship with Portuguese surnames,” explains Kynsley. “I found three Nazareths in the telephone directory in Lisboa, but I still visited Nazareth (Nazaré in Portuguese). We share common last names like Braz, Braganza, Gomes, Mathias, Fernandes, Almeida and so on with the Portuguese. I also learnt that the Portuguese have many names, some of which include those of their parents, a trait that many Goan Catholic Indians got from the Portuguese.  In my own name, Edgar is my dad’s name, Laurence, my grandfather’s on my mum’s side and Savio comes from Jesus Christ, the saviour”.

He also discovered that there are some differences in the way surnames are spelled, for example ‘Gonsalves’ in India but ‘Gonçalves’ in Portugal, or ‘Bragança’ and ‘Braganza’. Kynsley theorises that the surnames changed after the British came to India as English did not contain alphabets that included accents to complement them (ç ã and ç). “Additionally, last names like D’souza came from ‘De Souza’ meaning ‘of Souza’, so if someone is called by the common Indian Goan Catholic name of Maria D’souza, it originally meant ‘Maria of Souza’ or Maria is the daughter of Souza.  It’s amazing how we accept surnames over the generations without really having a true understanding of them,” states Kynsley enthusiastically.

And finally, when with his amazing journey come to an end?

“On embarking on this trip, I promised myself a maximum of 12 months before returning to Adelaide so ideally, I should return in early September,” says Kynsley. “However, it’s more than likely that I will extend my journey to return to Australia in early 2013”.

And why not? Kynsley is enjoying his travels, his freedom and his experiences. Good luck to him on his journey of stalking the sun, and may it continually shine down on him.


Read Kynsley’s escapades on his blog http://www.travbuddy.com/travel-blogs/93200/summary

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