We have just rounded off the first week away from
home on our round-the-globe adventure. Thailand has given us everything we had
hoped for and more so far, and we are not even a third into our time here!
As with every great journey, ours needed to start somewhere.
However, it did not start in Thailand; ours started in India, around 9 months
ago.
Ingrid and I have always toyed with idea of traveling around
the globe in one giant trip, however over the years we always opted for the
safer and somewhat easier option of spending a month here, and a month there at
a time. We figured this way we did not have to alter our lifestyle much at all,
just store up our leave and once a year go away for 4 or so weeks somewhere in
the world and, in theory, over the course of 10-20 years we could visit every
place we wished to see. While this approach could work in the near future,
there obviously was (and still is) the possibility of kids on the horizon - now
that we are getting a little older (I wouldn’t say I’m maturing all that much
though haha).
Now, while I would say that there is no problem with
traveling with children, it needs to be done right. Firstly the kids need to be
old enough (I think traveling is a wonderful experience and should benefit
everyone participating. If children are too young they will hardly remember their
experience and in all honesty will probably make the time traveling for the
others more difficult). Secondly, the type of travel is important with kids – I
mean you wouldn’t take your kids to a budget Backpackers in the middle of the
Kolkata slums, or to Oktoberfest/Burning man and other similarly
‘adult-orientated’ festivals (well, we wouldn’t anyway). So with all that in
mind our travel priorities needed a change.
During our trip to India in late 2010 we decided that we
would make the commitment to a non-stop round-the-globe adventure (I know,
deciding to take a massive holiday while on one – addicted much?). Whatever it
took, we would travel for 12 months without the need for work, and see and
experience the parts of the world that we had been fascinated about for a long
time as well as others we hoped would surprise us with what they had to offer.
The road from then to July 2011 wasn’t easy by any means. It
involved a lot of careful budgeting (something we may write a specific article
on when we have some spare time), a lot of sacrificing, researching, planning
and a lot of overtime J. However, come July 6th 2011, we
had finished with work for a year, rented out our house, placed in storage all
our possessions (and sold what wouldn’t fit), hugged goodbye all our family and
friends and were waving goodbye to Melbourne from on-board a Thai Airways 767
bound for Bangkok. The epic adventure was on the road (or ‘in the sky’ so to
speak).
