From my earliest memory, I always wanted to travel and was so envious of the families around me who saw the world. For my family, travel was an expensive luxury - but this only added to my interest and curiosity.
I felt very sorry for the new students at my school from other countries, I stalked them until they became my friends and then I bombarded them with questions about their countries. I was a sponge, I soaked up every detail of their homelands.
As soon as I was old enough to make some money and set foot, I did!
When I became a parent, I wanted to show my children the world. Thankfully for me they too were born with an adventurous spirit; not only do they travel well but they live for it!
Embarking on travelling with children can attract a lot of concerns and questions. I don’t shy away from controversy, and I found myself constantly backing up my decisions to take my children on holidays.
YOU’RE BEING SELFISH
True. I love to travel and I didn’t want the fact that I had children to stop me. But to my defense I also wanted to share experiences with them. I wanted the wow factor and I wanted to be with people I loved. Sharing the wow factor moments over and over again have been the highlights of my life.
THEY WONT REMEMBER
Just before taking my children trekking through the heights of the Himalayas, I was given advice from every corner. The trip had been well planned, we had been there before as a couple and had many friends there.
Regardless, friends and family were well intentioned and thought that taking a 4yr old and 10 yr old to Nepal was a waste of money and adventure.
My children loved it. My little son was carried on shoulders every day for two months by his “mountain taxi” and my daughter enjoyed the tasty delights of every curry imaginable. They loved learning Nepalese and bargaining in the marketplaces of Kathmandu.
12 years later and my children still talk fondly about this adventure. My son looks at clouds and talks about their height on the day we walked through and above them.
We’ve had many adventures together as a family, and they continue to talk about every one of them.
…....AND OTHER JUDGEMENTS
As a young family, we had strict travel budgets. This limited our travel adventures to places that we could afford comfortably, and while it might have been lovely to travel through Europe by private limousine, it wasn’t really practical.
Instead, we travelled through affordable countries - this meant many developing countries. Besides financial, the other benefit to experiencing a developing country was also providing my children with a sense of tolerance and compassion through being exposed to cultures who were less fortunate.
Walking through villages of Indonesia with a little white baby in tow opened up many wonderful opportunities. Once in Lombok while carrying my little 1yr old on my hip we were invited into a village to share cooked corn on the cob. The fascination in my child was immeasurable, and the exchange (without language) was absolutely beautiful. They called my son the Mulan Baye (sp?) meaning the moon baby. In Nepal he was a Nepali Baboo. In Botswana, Namibia, Zambia he wasnt given a name, he was just my beautiful teenage boy who “manned up” over the years.
It will be a sad moment when we wont have any children to share our adventures with, perhaps we need to start saving for our grandchildren.
Did I just say grandchildren? *gulp*
