Meet Hannan – His journey to becoming an Inspiration Outdoors guide
Meet Hannan – His journey to becoming an Inspiration Outdoors guide
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My journey to becoming an Inspiration Outdoors guide is a story that follows anything but a defined path. Growing up in the Blue Mountains I had, from a young age, been entirely indoctrinated into an appreciation for the outdoors. Towards the end of high school, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. Faced with the ever-present question of ‘what are you going to do when you finish?’ I enrolled into a Bachelor of Environmental Forensics because I thought it may combine my love for the outdoors with some kind of practical, career-orientated future. Perhaps predictably, it did not. So I did what most young Australian’s do when they have no idea what to do with their lives: I went overseas.
Liberated from the confines of university and the soul-destroying retail and hospitality jobs I had to get me through it, I started to realise how much more there was to the world. After the typical tourist tramp through Europe I travelled through the Balkans to the mountain ranges of India, Nepal and Pakistan and found the realities of the world humbling.
So from a tenuous internet connection in the lobby of a Kathmandu guesthouse I enrolled back into an Arts degree. Somewhat serendipitously, that Arts degree took me straight back to Nepal and into a Journalism internship with a Nepali newspaper. Taking the opportunity to spend as much time as I could in the mountains I was faced with the liberating potential of the pursuit of literature and its demand for real world experience (it’s hard to write anything without inspiration).
So at the end of my Undergraduate Degree I enrolled straight into a Masters of Research. Inevitably, sitting at home writing a thesis provided neither the inspiration, nor the finances to get out into the world and it was in a late night, absent-minded browsing of the internet that I stumbled upon Inspiration Outdoors.
The job seemed to good to be true, and I had no professional experience so I applied without expectation. Needless to say, the phone call I received shortly after changed the trajectory of my life. Since then, the team at Inspiration Outdoors have been endless in imparting all the knowledge and experience that is essential to a great guide and for that, and everything that is to come I am in equal parts thankful and excited.
