Ali

Daydreaming of drifting around the world is a relatively new one for me. Two years ago, I was content to read about places I had never seen and would never be likely to see in the Guardian travel pages. I had a good job, a nice house and a partner to share my world.

Then it all blew apart when my partner left me for another woman. I cracked under the strain and found myself unable to deal with the stress of coping with life alone and a high-pressured job. I moved to a house renovated by John Wayne Ltd and watched as my savings disappeared into it. I also felt I had no choice but to leave the job that was causing so much stress.

Since then, I seem to have been constantly searching for something - perhaps to regain what I had, perhaps for the unattainable - certainly searching for happiness.

Then, in February, I went to Nepal to raise money for the NSPCC by trekking to Everest Base Camp. It was an amazing, mind-blowing experience and I came back fortified with good intentions. But the soul-seeking continued. Still with no job and with money tight, a friend suggested I packed my bags and went travelling. I dismissed the idea as nonsense. I couldn't, could I? The practical difficulties seemed immense - I couldn't possibly afford it. But the idea wouldn't leave me, and I daydreamed of setting off to see the world, to be carried where the fancy took me, to broaden my mind and to enjoy the travel bug caught in Nepal.

So that's why I want to go - but why pick me? Well, my friends all enjoyed my emails from Nepal. I have no dependents and am practical, independent and have a real spirit of adventure. And I would reply to readers' emails - especially if they kept me up to date with Arsenal's progress in the Premiership!

Andrew

My generation didn't have The Gap, never mind a Gap Year. Two weeks' grape-picking in the South of France before university seemed intrepid. Only in my 30s do I now have the funds to travel for the sheer pleasure of it, and to feel the benefit. But what employers give in salary, they take away in time, so I make the most of a week here, two weeks there.

I am a single, white, gay, urban male of 37. For the past dozen years or so, I have been working at a London art and design college. I am also out and proud as a resourceful cheapskate. This has made for some memorable and genuinely life-affirming travel experiences.

Planning a summer trip to Romania and Bulgaria that I couldn't afford, I placed free ads in Loot's sister papers in those countries, offering to pay for B&B in family homes. I had my pick of dozens of offers, including one of marriage. My hosts would put me on the train after three or four days together, both of us weeping! Not like me at all. Some still write to me. That three weeks probably changed my idea of travel forever.

It was during a week in Iceland last summer that I finally discovered the simple secret of a good travel journal: write it for other people. Email access was everywhere, and I sent reports to friends every couple of days. Describing the Martian landscape outside Reykjavik to someone in Walthamstow, or the taste of puffin to a vegetarian, rather than just compiling a list of people and places, gave me a travel journal that even I liked reading.

Ellie

There's a book I want to write called Me And My 'bab. It is a travel book where the history and culture of each country is examined through the consumption of kebabs. Falafel in Israel, souvlaki in Greece and so on. I see it as a public service. I eat the kebab, I assess the kebab and the public is saved from wasting their money and toilet paper on bad examples of the kebab.

That is the primary reason why I should be chosen as a Netjetter.

There are, of course, other reasons. When I started work after a postgraduate qualification recently, I received a text message from my brother. It said: "How was your first week. Only another 37 years to go." Actually, it said, "Hw ur 1st wk @ wrk. 37 mr yrs to go." A couple of months on and I'm not any happier about it.

I have travelled before. I backpacked in Australia, India, Vietnam and Thailand. I managed to read Middlemarch in Australia. In England, life is too short to read Middlemarch. If I were given the chance to travel again, I would go for the biggie. I would try War and Peace. I might also try a Dickens. I've never managed one of those.

Many people feel unattractive when they travel. They get sunburnt and sweaty. They hate wearing the same two items of clothing every day. I don't. Travelling is the only time I can put my frizzy hair up in a bandana and get away with it. And wear cotton smocks that make me look like a Maoist worker but keep me cool.

I was talking to a friend about the idea of Me And My 'bab. He suggested another travel book where someone must travel and have sex in every place they stop. It's an interesting idea and one I think I'd enjoy. It would certainly be a good opening line for meeting locals. I'm thinking, perhaps Me And My Post-coital 'bab would be a good way of combining the two. Written by email. Exclusively for Guardian readers.

Rachel

I live in London. I have a decent job and a cat; life is good, except I keep having these "What am I doing? How did I get here?" moments, and getting urges to quit my job and travel the world, or to do something entirely different (sadly, entirely undefined).

How I got here: an obvious, conventional route: A-levels, university, and straight into a job, three years ago now, ignoring the "What do I really want to do with my life?" perched on my shoulder. These days, I acknowledge the question, but still have little idea of how to go about answering it.

What I do know is that my experience of life to date has been incredibly narrow. I spent my university holidays working to pay next term's rent - telesales, waitressing, economics research. My longest and furthest trip abroad was a two-week holiday to Egypt, last year - two fabulous weeks, belly-dancing and scuba diving. The pyramids were worth seeing, too.

I'm not after changing my life and finding myself (if I can say that without quotation marks?) - although admittedly either of those would be something of a bonus - but changing my perspective and finding some new experiences, getting a wider view on the world and me and my place within it - and sharing my thoughts with the unsuspecting, Guardian-reading world.

Sara

At 39, I'm at a crossroads Eleven years striving to be "something in the City" have taught me that life is not best spent in an office. At least not mine. Not this year, anyway. Breathless business trips only reinforce my conviction that I should be spending more than four hours in, say, Singapore before turning round and heading home.

So I have a decision to make. Do I break into my forties sharing yet more cold pizza at 3am with a team of power hungry twenty-somethings waiting for that 98-page fax to come in from New York? Or do I complete my last timesheet of this decade (Sunday: 9.5 hours drafting loan agreement) and return to the wilds of Canada to look for the best spot to pitch my tent? It's an easy choice to make.

So why me? I'm naturally gregarious and obsessively curious. I can truthfully say that I find nothing so compelling as communicating with others. Except perhaps scaling an impossibly high peak or two.

My age is generally considered lamentable, at least by 99% of my (younger) friends, particularly the women (all broody on my behalf). And yet, with a good few years as an adult in the bag, I feel a confidence that was lacking in my 20s. While handy for rebuffing the unwanted attentions of over-amorous admirers (and useful for ensuring that any wanted attentions don't go to waste), this means that I am unfazed by the challenges of travel.

I've had a taste of the world from both the first-class lounge and the back of a truck and relish both. I've backpacked in South America (with just a boyfriend for company) and climbed mountains in Spain (the boyfriend having gone). I've encountered bears in the Rockies and iguanas in Guatemala. And yet I thirst for more. I've never seen an aardvark and won't rest until I do.

So why Netjetting and not just an overdraft, to be paid off in cold-pizza moments when I'm 43? Because if I Netjet, there may be no more cold-pizza moments. Just memories of the aardvark and an Argos sofa instead.

Steve

I followed the last Netjetters and if it is possible to read something through gritted teeth then that is what I did. I went from school to college to work without a break and now I need to travel.

Of course there are reasons against it and God knows I have blown these way out of proportion as I have wimped out of setting a date to start travelling. I am ashamed to say that Newcastle United have been one the main reasons that I have stayed on Tyneside. Yes I'm an addict. Yes a trip around the world could be just the kind of cold turkey I need.

I am very very proud of Newcastle Upon Tyne. Except for two years away at college, the north-east has been my base. I'm so attached to the place that even the sentimental, god-awful, tacky crap that is Jimmy Nail's Big River brings a lump to my throat.

In recent years, though, I have had the chance to travel. St Kitts two years ago, Trinidad & Tobago last year - would it sound sad to admit that this was simply because the Toon were touring there? Either way I have the bug.

I work in marketing, but you could say that my faith in my profession has been somewhat rocked since I read Naomi Klein's No Logo. I would love the chance to write something a little more challenging and enjoyable than the press releases I churn out on a daily basis.

I have worked the past 10 years and now I'm fed up. If I had a break and had my horizons extended then perhaps the new, improved me would return with fresh ambitions in the world of work. I want to see if my beloved Newcastle really is the greatest city on earth.