I photographed Simina last December, in the North railway station from Bucharest, Romania. It was a...

I photographed Simina last December, in the North railway station from Bucharest, Romania. It was a special day for her. 19 years before, on the very same day, her parents had to leave Romania and move abroad for work. That’s the story of hundreds of thousands of Romanians who left the country in search of better jobs, without having the possibility to take their children with them.

From age 7, Simina was raised by an aunt and her sister. After a while her parents had a better situation and wanted to reunite the family. But Simina chose to continue her life in Romania. At 16 years old, she was already living by herself. All this experience taught her to be independent and mature. In the university she was a successful student and after graduation she could have easily find a good job. But she wanted something else. She wanted to discover the world.

So she started to travel in Asia, only accompanied by her backpack. She taught English and French. She lived with a few dollars per day. She learned Indonesian and a bit of Hindi. She helped people in need as a volunteer. She had dengue and typhus fever. She explored the wilderness and reached places where locals have never seen a foreigner. She fell in love. She climbed challenging peaks in the Himalayas. She opened a restaurant in India. And she recently gathered her memories and published a book about her experiences as a solo female traveller. She called it Samsara.

Saṃsāra is a fundamental concept in Indian religions and refers to the belief that all living beings cyclically go through births and rebirths. Figuratively, Simina already went through births and rebirths, but she did it in one single life. And that’s only the beginning because she’s only 26.