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Published: August 31st 2007
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If you´ve been enjoying the blog up to this point, then thank you for your attention and interest. This being the final blog, we hope not to let you down. However, this is a little personal, and although we have no new destinations to offer you, we wanted the chance to reflect on this final and most important one - home. What it is to have a home is something we have learnt to appreciate this year; ever-moving as we have been. Having family and close friends - those who understand you, and love you for being you; that is so important, and we have missed it. We've missed their easy conversation, their warmth and their energy.
What else have we missed? Well, bread, cheese and milk, as we know and love them. Our sofa we have missed at times, and being able to eat homemade, balanced meals. We have missed a hot shower here and there, and sometimes we have missed our language, when we've just wanted to communicate freely with people. And of course, we've missed a proper cup of tea!
It has all been worth it though. In one year we have seen and done so
much, visiting nineteen countries, and staying in more than one hundred and fifty hotels and guesthouses. We have experienced many different extremes on our trip; from the burning heat of Delhi and the humidity of Phnom Penh, to the freezing tips of Peru and Bolivia in their winter, and the cold winds of Beijing; from the ramshackled Indonesia, to the neat and tidy Hong Kong. We have also experienced the ´highs and lows´ in our time, having been up to the top of the world, in the Himalayas and the Andes, and to the bottom of deep glow-worm caves in New Zealand. We have experienced the remoteness of Easter Island and interior Papua, and witnessed the bright lights of Rio, and the modernity of Sydney.
Travelling is not just about being in a place but, as the word suggests, getting around. We made a list of a staggering sixty modes of transport that we have enjoyed, or endured! We rode elephants, camels and auto-rickshaws around the Indian sub-continent; sailed the far-east on longboats, junks, speedboats and cruise ships; Zorbed, parachuted and rafted our way around New Zealand; caught dune buggies, helicopters, zip-lines and steam trains through South America. However,
there's nothing more satisfying after all that travelling, than putting down your backpack and relaxing.
We've laid our heads in hostels and hotels, pensions and pousadas, beach huts and mud huts, friends' houses and guesthouses, houseboats and homestays. Sometimes, we've hit the jackpot, like the unforgettable Batak house on Danau Toba's paradisical island, or friendly hostels such as Bamber House in Auckland and the Secret Garden in Quito, where we made so many friends. Sometimes we got the booby prize - rooms with bed bugs and cockroaches, holes in the wall, broken toilet seats and cold showers, and rooms that just needed a good, hard clean. It will be great to sleep in our own bed again!
We have been offered an eclectic array of different foods and drinks this year. Some we have tried, some we just couldn't stomach. Intestines, tarantulas, coca tea, bangh lassi, deep-fried boiled eggs, Llama and Alpaca, corn beer, durians and cashew juice. Some of the strange foods we will miss, such as juicy rambutans, spicy Chicken Amok and the extremely potent Caiparinhas. We have also sampled some classics; New Zealand Crayfish, Peking duck, Indian Masala Dhosa, the Aussie meat pie, fish on
the beach in Thailand, and of course, the fantastic Argentinian steak.
We have been so lucky to meet up with Alex in Laos, Amanda and Michael in Thailand and Malaysia, Ahsan and Gers in Australia, Laura and Joe in New Zealand and Jeff in Brazil. And that's not to mention all the great chums we have picked up along the way. The people you meet and travel with really make the trip special; big shout out to all of them!
So what have we learnt? As well as the multitude of tiny facts we have absorbed about the various places we have visited, we have also learnt about ourselves. For David, breakfast is very important, and Louise is quite obsessive about a hot shower! David has realised an incredible aptitude for learning languages, and Louise always remembers the way back to the hotel after a walk around town. We have both discovered reading this year, and have reviewed our hobbies and what we want out of our lives in the UK. We have had to get better at problem solving, and thinking on our feet has been important. Have we changed? You will have to tell us that,
we don't know! We think David is more confident and practical, and he has had to learn to organise himself and his belongings better. Louise is more culturally aware; more realistic about the problems the world faces. She has also learnt to appreciate England, and is proud to be English.
Our future awaits us, as it does for everyone, but the perspective we have been lucky enough to gain from our time away leaves us all the more ready for it.
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Christopher Lord
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Congrats on Making It!
You guys are very lucky to have pulled this off. Not many people get to do it, and it really is an accomplishment. Just the short time I spent was pretty intense, so I can't imagine doing it for a year. Good luck back home, and if I am ever in london hopefully we can go out for those beers!