My name is Tristan Chavez, I grew up in a small town in the United States, the state of New Mexico to be exact (part of which is pictured below). I don't know if it was the provinciality of a quiet upbringing or something else but there became a point where I just wanted to go somewhere and do something, something different. Finally for my graduation from high school my parents booked us (a small family of three by the way) a Mediterranean cruise. That's right: I, tristan.travels, the solo budget and backpacking traveler began traveling by a cruise.

  Upon realizing that I prefer solo travel and abiding to my own itinerary I began to look at other forms of travel and began to drift towards backpacking. Also as a side note, the mass tourism promoted by cruises is something fairly damaging that I would prefer to avoid. The next year I did a class abroad focusing on the history of world religions in Morocco, Spain and France as a primer for solo backpacking trips that I had began to envision and this is also the trip where my Instagram page started. That was in December of 2019. The next year put a global pause on tourism and my plan of starting solo backpacking on my time off had to be put on hold.

  That summer-the summer of Covid-gave me the opportunity to start making money through short internships and part-time jobs so that I could travel and also my family went on a classic American roadtrip to fill the void. Finally as the next summer rolled around I looked at a list of countries open to tourism and picked a few that I found interesting. I really jumped off the deep end and for my first solo trip I went to Central America, starting in Nicaragua and ending in Panama. This leap of faith confirmed that this was something I would want to keep doing.

  Balancing work, school and travel means that my time and money is short so I specialize in going to places and getting the highest impact experience in the shortest amount of time and on as small of a budget as possible. Also a benefit of being overly curious is that I end up traveling to places considered less orthodox than what people typically imagine when they go on vacation. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy visiting places like Venice, Mykonos or Paris which are full of tourists. Unlike other "traveler, not tourist" types (which I more or less fit the category of) I still visit places that have been well-traveled to because I think every place, people and experience have something of value to contribute to travel. That exact reason though is also why I branch out beyond the popular circuit because there are stories out there that aren't being heard that I feel almost like an urge to discover or at least rediscover.

While that's a tough question for me to answer I'll try. Well, here are a few reasons that I can think of:

• Curiosity - I am a naturally curious person, if i hear about something, I want to see/experience it myself. After all, travel is the world's best teacher.
• It's fun, there's never a dull moment while travelling for me since I'm always seeing something new or from a different perspective.
• To show people that the world is a better and safer place than what we typically assume. The majority of people are good, just trying to do the best they can for themselves and their families and I want to showcase that.