A Kerala tea stall owner who plans to visit all seven continents by 2015!
Published January 17, 2012 | 
Meet this avid traveller fromKerala , Vijayan who has already travelled to seven countries, ,made pilgrimage trips to most of the destinations in India and who has plans to visit all the seven continents by 2015! If you thought he is a well heeled businessman or someone born with a sliver spoon in his mouth you would be in for a surprise. He runs a small, ramshackle tea shop in Kochi for a living and lives with his wife and two daughters.
In the 61 years of his life, he has lived his life to follow the passion of travelling and often he chooses places that he comes across in novels and travelogues. He makes sure to enjoy every moment of his life and feels that gold or wads of currency notes cannot give him the happiness that he derives from touring some of the most beautiful places on earth. This year he and his wife are planning a European tour and a tour company is even making arrangements to take them to Vatican to meet Pope Benedict XVI! They will set out on a 12-day tour to Europe on April 23 at a cost of Rs 2.90 lakh.
A wanderlust in the making, he has visited the hill shrine of Tirupathi over 100 times; and travelled to Chennai just to have a feel of the new AC bus ! A man of different tastes, he also makes sure to catch up all the films on the first day itself. Often people ask him why a small time tea stall owner would dream big to travel all over the world for which he replies with a smile that the money he make by breaking his back from dawn to dusk including Sundays in his tea shop is best spent to pursue his dreams. He has a debt of over 5 lakhs already and is trying to take another Rs 1 lakh as a bank loan, to fund his foreign trips and every month he pays over Rs 10,000 for repaying the loans taken from the KSFE, Cooperative Bank and Society.
When he is not busy globe trotting, Vijayan, reads novels and travelogues . He also plans to write a travelogue on his travel experiences that he has gained through these world tours, which will be published by one of the leading Malayalam news dailies. Don’t worry ; be happy seems to be the motto of this happy go lucky man , who tries to keep aside his worries and look at the brighter side of life!
