Profile Jorge Sanchez

I was born in 1954 in Hospitalet de Llobregat (near Barcelona, north east of Spain). In 1972, when I was 18 years old, I started travelling abroad, hitchhiking.

During two years I visited ten European countries, living like a hippy in the Isle of Wight, in the Hyde Park of London, in the Vondelpark of Amsterdam, heading to Christiania in Copenhagen, etc., and earning money working in several places on the road, for instance: selling cheese in Genoa, I was receptionist in a hotel in Brussels, pastry cook in the Isle of Wight, I helped in a dentist laboratory in Paris, I washed dishes in several restaurants in Switzerland, etc.

I returned to Spain in 1975 to be enrolled in the then compulsory Army, and a few years later I began to travel intensively. To finance my journeys I worked in several countries teaching Spanish (Japan and Taiwan) or as a waiter in restaurants (New York, San Francisco, Sydney or Montreal), making four long around the world journeys in search of knowledge (and a fifth around the world journey to be started by the end of 2009).

At the beginning of my travels I was only interested in visiting exotic countries, meeting wise people and having lots of adventures. Then I entered several monasteries as a monk, mainly in Japan, India, Central Asia and in the Mount Athos, to learn about the mysteries of the man existence in this planet.

In the year 2003 I managed to visit all the 194 UNITED NATIONS countries of the world. But since after that I could not refrain from travelling anymore, now I try to visit remote and forbidden places, such as Parece Vela Island, the almost impenetrable Buddhist Monastery of Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh, or the Chukchi villages in the Russian Strait of Bering (all these goals achieved last year 2008!).
Presently I consult the UNESCO list to add to my travel curriculum vitae as many UNESCO wonders as possible.

My web page, is: www.jorgesanchez.org

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