LORI O - THE ADVENTURER

I was always fascinated by different cultures, as a child, I loved books where I learnt how other

people lived and dressed.

I grew up in a multi-cultural island where East Indians, Africans, Chinese, Europeans,

Venezuelans, Middle Easterners all mix up and we celebrate every culture’s holidays and have

even created quite a few of our own.

I would be the one planning my family vacations, always trying to discover some new place or

country. At the age of 10, my mother left Trinidad with her three children and we moved to the

South of France. I went to a French boarding school and was immersed in French with hardly

any prior knowledge of the language. In a few months, I was speaking fluently and scoring high

marks at my tests. The year I started studying Spanish we had to go to visit the Alhambra in

Sevilla, Spain. One Christmas, my grandfather took us all on a cruise around the Mediterranean.

Everyday we stopped in a new port and I made sure to book every tour and collected all the

maps and flyers from the tourist attractions.

In French education, you choose around the age of 14/15 which direction you are more

inclined, mathematics, physics, literature or languages. I chose languages and when I graduated

at 18, I headed to the Institute of Oriental Languages at La Sorbonne, Paris.

I was going to study Mandarin Chinese Language and Civilization, the year was 1980. China was

in the throws of communism and Maoism.

My first big trip without my family was in the Summer of 1981, when I left with a couple of

friends to go and spend a month in India. India was a transformation and a spiritual awakening.

I had the travel bug and soon my life was being planned around my next big travel destination.

When I went to Taiwan to study Chinese, my whole family came to visit and we met in Hong

Kong then went on to spend Christmas in the Philippines.

In 1986, I booked a round the world trip traveling from London to the US to Japan, Australia,

India, Turkey and back to Paris.

On one of my trips to India, I had been studying Tibetan and really wanted to go to a big festival

in Hemis (Himalayas). When we landed in Delhi, we were told the flight to Leh was cancelled

due to bad weather, I was determined to get to this festival where Buddhist Tibetans were

gathering in the holy town of Hemis. We hired a driver to drive us from Delhi, nearly 1000 kms

through the most incredible landscapes in the Himalayan mountains. The festival didn’t

disappoint! 

On that particular trip we also rented a little hut up in the mountains above Manali with no

running water or electricity and spent a week there.

When I moved back to live in Trinidad in my 30’s, I became a home maker with children, we

travelled mostly to the United States to visit my mother, my brother and family. We did make a

few trips to Europe. One memorable one being the trip to France and Germany, when Trinidad

and Tobago qualified for the FIFA 2006 World Cup. It was very exciting discovering Germany

while representing Trinidad and Tobago. We met country mates everywhere and the ambiance

was electric.

Now that the children are grown up, I have started back traveling as one of my wishes is to travel

to places producing essential oils, like Turkey for roses, Australia for Sandalwood, Ethiopia for

Frankincense, India for a variety of oils.

In June 2022, I went to the South of France, the plateau de Valensole to be exact, and

experienced the Lavender fields for the first time. It was such a breathtaking experience, the

scents, the colours, the bees buzzing, all came together to make me love lavender and lavender

essential oil even more.

in August 2022, I travelled to Lagos, Nigeria to attend the Real Time Film Festival. It was an amazing trip, taking me into the very dynamic and busy city of Lagos. Looking forward to discovering more of Africa soon.