---
type: Video
title: "Why I Travelled the World This Year"
description: The channel's origin story — a 9-to-5 quit in lockdown, a one-way ticket to Dubai, and the Pakistan trip where daily vlogging turned into a job.
tags: [meta, channel, dubai, career, jordan, pakistan, barbados, year-in-review]
timestamp: 2026-08-07T18:10:00Z
resource: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdrbr4hEfFo
video_id: kdrbr4hEfFo
upload_date: 2021-12-28
duration: 564
---

# Why I Travelled the World This Year

The last video of 2021 and the last of the backfill: a nine-minute summary of the
year in which Harry stopped being someone with an office job and became someone
who travels for a living.

**It is the only origin story in the bundle**, and it explains things the rest of
the pages assume. Why the early videos are cinematic and the later ones are daily
vlogs. Why [Mac](/people/mac.md) is credited so warmly everywhere. Why the
channel's centre of gravity is South and Central Asia. And why a man filming
himself in a barbershop in Amman keeps talking about how recently all this was
somebody else's life.

He says at the top that he deliberately did not monetise it — no adverts —
because he wanted it to be an experience and to inspire people rather than to
earn.

## The year, in his account

- **He began 2021 in a nine-to-five office job he disliked**, feeling
  unsatisfied and trapped by the prospect of doing it for the rest of his life.
  He wanted to do something he was proud of and that inspired other people.
- **When the UK entered another lockdown in January he booked a one-way ticket to
  Dubai**, hoping to turn videography — until then a hobby he had never earned
  from — into a living. He knew nobody there. His phrasing: the drive to succeed
  was greater than the fear of failure.
- **It worked.** He built a client base in Dubai, and says that being around
  successful people daily was what opened up the idea that a much larger life was
  available.
- **Then Europe**: sunset in Santorini, his brother in Austria, client work in
  Amsterdam, and back to the UK filming weddings, fitness and music events.
- **The summer highlight was Barbados**, filming a lifestyle shoot for the
  England cricketer **Jofra Archer**, who invited him. He says on camera that he
  still doesn't know how it happened.
- **Then [Jordan](/countries/jordan.md)**, on Mac's invitation — ten days he
  calls the best, with Mac and [Sofia](/people/sofia.md). His summary of
  Jordanians: a very good attitude to life, living in the moment and being happy
  with what they have.
- **Then [Pakistan](/countries/pakistan.md)** — the country that changed the
  channel. He describes it as absolutely crazy, from the beaches of
  [Karachi](/places/karachi.md) to −20°C at the Chinese border, and says the
  thing he will never forget is the hospitality: more than once, several people
  competing to pay for their meal.

## The moment the channel became a job

**Mac talked him into vlogging.** Harry had been doing cinematic films; Mac
convinced him to add daily vlogs, and coached him through it. In Pakistan the
algorithm caught, the videos did well, and — his words — **YouTube is now his
job.**

He closes by asking viewers to subscribe to Mac's channel before his own, and
thanks a list of friends and family for the year.

## What he wants people to take from it

Quit the job, follow the passion, and **get outside your comfort zone, because
that is when genuinely interesting things happen** — the same argument he makes
on [do hard things on purpose](/tips/do-hard-things-on-purpose.md), applied here
to a career rather than to a cold night or a long climb.

*Obs: this is a music-led montage with narration over it. There are no location
scenes to describe beyond the ones he names, and the page does not describe
footage.*

## Extracted pages

- [Jordan](/countries/jordan.md)
- [Pakistan](/countries/pakistan.md)
- [Mac](/people/mac.md)
- [Sofia](/people/sofia.md)
- [Do hard things on purpose](/tips/do-hard-things-on-purpose.md)