2 Year Landmark 2016 to 2018

The end of January 2018 found us briefly back in the UK. This was one of those visits to catch up with friends & family, for health appointments and to deal with some life admin duties. It was also a special occasion, as our good friends Dave and Sandra were getting married, and we would be there to witness the event.

By the time we left the UK, bound for Singapore, we would have been travelling for exactly two years. We therefore thought it might be any idea to mark the occasion with some statistics and frequently asked questions.

Statistics

During the two years, we have visited 14 countries on 5 continents and travelled about 228,500klms. Of that 153,000klms was by air, 70,000klms by land (mostly self driven), 2,000klms by sea and 3,500klms on foot. To put that in prospective, that’s almost 6 times around the earth (at its widest point) or 2/3rds of the way to the moon.

FAQ

Along the way, friends, family and people we have met, have asked us many questions. Listed below are the most common.

Q. How is the Budget doing?
A. We are pretty much on budget, but have had to call on our entire contingency to cover the effects of BREXIT. As soon as it was announced that the UK planned to leave the EU, its credit rating fell and with it the value of sterling against other world currencies. And as we generate our income in sterling but spend most of it in foreign currencies, it has hit us heavily. On the bright side, there has been a bit of a recovery recently, so fingers crossed it will continue.

Q. Are you still enjoying it?
A. A most definite YES.

Q. What were the highlights?
A. There were too many to mention, but in reality the highlight was achieving our travel dream.

Q. What was the worst thing?
A. Generally its all been great. But, I suppose being robbed in Chile wasn’t very nice, although we were unharmed and the authorities were all very good, and BREXIT, which is costing us a lot of money.

Q. How do you manage to be with each other everyday without falling out?
A. At an early stage in the travels we set some ground rules. Always tell each other, immediately, how we feel about any issue; if one party really wants to do something a certain way, then just go along with it and we have learnt how to do our own thing without disturbing each other even if we are in the same room.

Q. What do you miss?
A. Not being able to see our friends and family so frequently. Malc: Watching Rugby (although New Zealand & South African TV have been pretty good) and being able to attend Heavy Metal concerts. Anne: Good pillows & comfy beds and going to the theatre.

Q. Don’t you want to stop?
A. No. All the time the money holds out and we are healthy, we want to carry on.

Q. How did you decide where you wanted to go?
A. We made a list of all the nations in the world and then split them into categories based on how much we wanted to visit them. This produced a long list of must visit and must return to countries. Then, for those countries we investigated when was the best time of year to visit. Armed with this information we slotted them into a five-year plan. The upshot was that there were too many countries to fit into five years, assuming that we would stay long enough to explore them fully. So we selected what we could achieve and will think about the rest for another occasion.

Q. Why do you go back to the same places and not somewhere new each time?
A. Firstly, we always intended to revisit our favourite countries, and secondly, some countries are so large it takes a number of visits to explore all its regions. The later being particularly relevant for Canada and South Africa.

Q. Do you plan everything in advance?
A. Mostly. This allows us to make best use of our time in a country and usually gets us the best prices for transport and accommodation.

Q. Do you stay in AirBnB’s all the time?
A. No. Staying in AirBnB’s is the exception rather than the rule. We have found that AirBnB’s are better value for groups rather than couples and that the quality is quite variable (no industry standard). We usually look for self-catering units on web sites such as Booking.com.

Q. How can you afford to do this?
A. The travelling is funded by my modest pension, income from our house rental and our savings. That’s why we are limited to five years, as our saving will be almost gone by then.

In addition to all the questions, we have yet to meet anyone who honestly feels that they could do the same thing.