1 • I was born in France, but I had to travel the World to find home

I was born in northern France, and I have never stopped loving the country of my birth. Yet I never believed that a single place could contain an entire life. Some people spend theirs rooted in one landscape, but mine unfolded across several, each arriving at the right moment, reflecting the person I was becoming and the values that mattered to me at that stage of my journey.

Morocco taught me that belonging has little to do with nationality, while India revealed that happiness often hides in simplicity, and Réunion Island proved that distance and connection are not opposites. None of these places replaced the others; each simply became part of the story.

My childhood was shaped by movement. Before I even reached adulthood, I had already lived near Nantes on the Atlantic coast, in the Berry region in Châteauroux, in Bergerac in the Dordogne, and later in a small village near Arras. Long before I became a geographer, geography had already woven itself into the fabric of my life. What fascinated me was never the landscape itself, but the invisible bond between people and the places they call home.

At twenty-five, I left France for the first time, not with a direct flight or a meticulously planned future, but on the road crossing France, then Spain, before boarding a ferry that carried me across the Strait of Gibraltar and into Morocco. I still remember my first morning there: the sun rising over the Atlantic Ocean, the sky painted in soft hues, the air heavy with the promise of a new beginning. It was barely six o'clock, and I, exhausted from the journey and utterly outside my comfort zone, sat facing the water, a thick apple-and-milk smoothie in hand; its taste unlike anything I had ever known. It was a small moment, almost insignificant, yet it marked the beginning of a transformation I couldn’t yet name.

It was the first of many moments that would change the way I understood the world. I became a teacher in Mohammedia, a coastal city between Rabat and Casablanca, a place absent from glossy travel magazines, and that was perhaps its greatest gift. The places that shape us are rarely the ones we dream about beforehand. My home was a traditional Moroccan house a short walk from the old kasbah, surrounded by a large garden where a tortoise wandered among the plants as if it owned the property. Life unfolded at a different rhythm there: children played in the streets until dusk, neighbors stopped to talk without checking the time, and the call to prayer marked the passing hours more reliably than any clock.

Little by little, what had once felt foreign became familiar. I had arrived believing that home was tied to language, nationality, and culture, but Morocco taught me otherwise. For the first time, I understood that belonging has very little to do with where you were born and everything to do with the relationship you build with a place.

Years later, life carried me to India, but not to Pondicherry, the former French enclave on the southeastern coast that so many of my compatriots dream of. Instead, my destination was Yercaud, a small hill station tucked away in the mountains of southern India, where the road climbed through endless hairpin bends, each turn revealing a new facet of the landscape. As the plains vanished beneath the clouds and the air grew cooler, I felt as though I were crossing an invisible frontier, not just between altitudes, but between worlds, each one more mysterious and alluring than the last.

My house was tiny, surrounded by gardens where chayote vines climbed over fences and rooftops, and a few rose bushes grew outside, though their flowers rarely had time to bloom before finding their way into someone’s hair. Life in Yercaud was built from simple pleasures: the scent of jasmine in the morning, brightly colored saris drying in the sun, a shared cup of tea, and conversations that never seemed rushed.

Every morning, a young girl from the village brought me fresh milk from her parents’ cows before heading to school, and every afternoon, she returned with her older sister and younger brother. Together, we drank tea made from that same milk, shared whatever snacks I had found in the village, and worked on their homework around my kitchen table. Those afternoons remain among my happiest memories. During that time, I created a small travel agency whose profits helped support educational projects for local children and a home for orphans. The project was modest, but it reflected values that were becoming increasingly important to me: I was not searching for places to consume, but for places where I could contribute, connect, and become part of a community.

Morocco had stolen my heart, and India had shaken my soul. When I returned to mainland France, I discovered that I had changed too much to simply pick up my old life where I had left it. France was still my country, and I loved it dearly, but I had learned that belonging is not limited by borders, and I knew the next chapter of my life would be written somewhere else.

A new chapter began over the Indian Ocean. As the plane descended toward Réunion Island, it banked sharply, and suddenly, the island emerged beneath the clouds, palm trees tracing the coastline, the ocean stretching endlessly toward the horizon. The vibrant Creole houses, splashed with color, echoed the memory of India, while the island’s mixed population whispered stories of centuries-old encounters between Africa, Europe, India, China, and Madagascar. Like most newcomers, I began with the lagoons and the tropical shores, but I had never been one to follow the crowd. Thirty kilometers inland, the landscape transformed entirely. The road snaked through countless bends, each turn revealing another layer of the island’s soul, until it delivered me into the vast crater of an ancient volcano.

When I stepped out of the car to buy a loaf of bread in Cilaos, I was shivering. The baker laughed, "It is five degrees," she told me. Five degrees on a tropical island! In that moment, I understood that Réunion was far more complex than the paradise described in travel brochures. The road continued another ten kilometers before reaching Ilet à Cordes, a tiny hamlet perched on a plateau deep inside the volcanic cirque.

When I stepped out of the car, I stopped walking. The view stretched across mountains and cliffs in every direction: no resorts, no concrete developments, no rows of holiday homes, only space and silence. I remember thinking that I wanted to wake up to that landscape every morning, to watch the sunrise illuminate the cliffs, to see the Réunion harriers soaring overhead and the white-tailed tropic birds returning from the ocean. For many, the place would have seemed remote, but for me, it felt connected to everything that mattered.

But beyond the scenery, which is often idealised from the outside and taken for granted by those who live there, lies a more complex reality: a fragile economy and a certain form of everyday precarity. It was there that I understood it was time to turn my lived experience into a way of working, something rooted in what I had learned and what I could share. And fortunately, technology made something possible that once would not have been: even at the end of the world, you remain connected to the rest of the world.

I began helping others navigate the same questions that had shaped my own journey, because choosing where to live is never really about geography, it is about understanding yourself. No blog article can tell you where you belong; there are no universal recipes. There is only your story waiting to be written.

Today, at fifty-three, I consider myself a human geographer not because of the diplomas I earned, but because of the life I have lived. Decades of travel, encounters, and observation have taught me that people do not simply choose places; they choose ways of living. The world is changing rapidly. Many feel disconnected from nature, from community, and sometimes from themselves, yet I believe another path remains possible. We can build lives that care for ourselves, for others, and for this tired planet all at once.

I live far from almost everyone I once knew, yet I feel closer to the world than ever before. Perhaps because I finally understand something simple: home is not always something we inherit; sometimes, it is something we choose. And yet we should not romanticise distance: far from home, you remain, at times, a foreigner. So tell me: Are you ready to write your own story?

Follow the story ...

	1 • I was born in France, but I had to travel the World to find home.
	2 • You're not choosing a country. You're choosing a life.
	3 • Why I never reveal my favorite places
	4 • The Geography of belonging: Slow expatriation
	5 • The Geography of opportunity • Why the countryside might be more relevant than ever
	6 • The Geography of dreams: Who decides what a successful life looks like?

I’m Leti (short for Laetitia). My life has unfolded between France, Morocco, India, and Réunion Island, shaped by rural and remote landscapes that taught me one thing: a place only becomes 'home' when you weave deep connections there. Today, I create projects for those who, like me, seek to live with intention, whether by settling abroad, reimagining their relationship with the countryside, or simply choosing a meaningful daily life.

My Incredible Life • European Conscious Slow Life Studio