About Peace

Hi!  My name is Shantha (which means Peace in Telugu) and in March of 2014, I am leaving on an extended international journey.  This is the site where I will gather pieces of my experience.

I’ve spent the last ten+ years working at a hospital in Colorado, the majority of which I’ve spent as a surgical tech on a labor and delivery unit. While I loved what I did in that job, I had been planning to change my career path for quite some time. When an opportunity to travel to India arose, I decided to take it as a sign that I should perhaps end my tenure at the hospital and move on. I also realized that once I was in India, I would already be halfway to many of the places I had always wanted to see. Coincidence? …probably. However, I am an optimist (or an opportunist, depending which way you look). So I decided that perhaps I should take advantage of the opportunity. Many other factors contribute, but the sum of it is that now is my chance to drop everything (and then, ironically, pick up) and see the world. So, I will.
Here, in these pages, I will have a forum for my journey, a place to put bits and pieces of what I see and hear and experience. I will try to expand and grow my website and I’ll change it as I need or want. Bear with me. I’m new to this…
Peace,
Shantha, Feb 2014.  

UPDATE  (May 2020): 

For nearly six years, I traveled abroad, spending time in over 35 countries (see map by country here).   I spent the first year traveling extensively.  The second year I bought a car in Australia and used it as my hub, visiting numerous countries in that part of the globe and making some amazing friends. 

By April of 2016 I had left Australia and moved to Malaysian Borneo, where I got my scuba Dive Master certification.  I spent several months visiting Egypt and fun diving the Red Sea before volunteering in the operating room of a charity hospital in Amman, Jordan for 2 and a half months.  I returned to Borneo and spent most of the next year working as a dive guide, with some side trips, including a visit home to the USA, time in India joined by my father, and in Slovenia at the wedding of some friends from Australia.

After finishing in Borneo, some fun time diving in Indonesia, and another visit home to Colorado, I went to Costa Rica in order to dive with hammerhead sharks at Cocos Island and then to travel there and practice speaking Spanish.  I ended up staying there the majority of a year, as I ran into some technical issues but also really loved the tico culture and people I met.

In April of 2019, I returned to New York City for the wedding of my sister and her husband.  I chose to stay in Brooklyn for some time, where I was taking a writing class through the New York Writers Workshop. An injury sustained in Costa Rica was not yet healed and had caused old migraine issues to return.   At Christmas time, those health issues required me to come back to Colorado temporarily to try and improve them.  Unfortunately, the surprise cancer diagnosis and subsequent death of my father occurred in March of 2020, followed immediately by the pandemic lockdown and I have suspended all travel plans for the time being.

In the meantime, I’ve been able to work on writing and photo editing, and hope to upload years of backlog – things I’ve written but not uploaded and things I’ve yet to write about my years of travel.  After so many years of wonder and wander, I have much fodder for my writing.  I have videos for to post, and I’ve been trying to publish some of my writing as well.  Stay tuned for links to my published poetry, videos, and more…