Hi all.


I figured I would introduce myself, or at least get something out there. I imagine I will be posting occasionally on this subredit as things progress, now that I have become invested in redit. Briefly then, my name is Jonathon. I am, to the best of my knowledge, the first or one of the first people to backpack the world independently while also being completely blind. I have been travelling for about a year and a half now, and have covered the majority of North America, including most states in the US, most of the Canadian provinces and portions of both Mexico and South America. As I do so, I am running advocacy projects in each new city I go to. These projects consist primarily of working with local municipal governments and organisations to promote educational reforms that will introduce the skills that I am learning as I travel across the world to blind children. Unfortunately these skills are relatively undocumented, so I am having to pioneer them as I go and find out what does and does not work. For instance, the best ways In which a visually impaired person can safely enter a new and foreign city and become acclimated quickly, or the best and safest ways to navigate highways whilst hitchhiking. There are a variety of these skills that are, unfortunately, lacking in current educational practices, such as with in orientation and mobility or VI lessons. These skills translate not only to backpacking, but also to blind children developing confidence and self-advocacy within their own cities. If I can, I will do my best to allow others to do as I am in the future. I have not yet met or heard of another completely blind person who has done this, particularly in the traditional backpacking sense, that being limited in funding and having to rely upon non-traditional means of travel, such as hitchhiking or walking between cities. Though I am perhaps one of the first, I do not intend to be the last, and think that the capacity for the blind community to be able to travel in this way is valuable and necessary. Two often the disabled feel that they are limited to stay within the geographical areas that they have grown up in, even going so far as to say that they cannot do many things even within their own cities. I intend to change this.


Less dramatically, I love travel and find that this is an extremely liberating lifestyle. I'm flying to Europe in the beginning of January, where I will do my best to backpack going east from France. I hope to reach Asia by this time next year. I'm hoping that this community Will find what I'm doing interesting and respond. The more contacts I have and the more people I can get my message out to, the better. This is true in both the blind and sighted world. I would love to talk to anyone who has any questions, or simply discuss methods and skills or anything else of interest. I will be starting podcasts within the next few months, once I have learned how to properly do sound editing on my phone. I had a blog, though lack of readership meant that I let it die. I'll put the link here anyway for those who may be interested to read it. I also recently conducted an interview with a Canadian TV channel which is being broadcast in the beginning of January, and will post that link as well once it becomes available.


Lastly, if there is anyone who would like to meet in person, be that for drinks or just a chat, I would love to engage more with both the blind and the backpacking communities. Chances are I will have a chance to go through the cities of most people Who might read this. So, comment or message me. Thanks for reading and I look forward to engaging with this subredit.

Crossposted to both the backpacking and blind subredits.

Blog link: https://travelersites.wordpress.com/