So then, our email distribution list grew from something like 30 to 120 within a couple months, not to mention the additional forwarding generations of recipients. Jim was periodically posting our updates on the web, but I don’t think we received a single email from a random surfer the entire time we were gone. Once we got back in late 1999, I scanned a ton of pictures in, attempted to restructure the site, and relaunched it. Then we got a couple links from other sites…and started getting emails from random people around the world. A lot. And it was really fantastic. Let me tell you something, it is this aspect of having our story up on the web, and this aspect alone, that is the reason we still try to find new ways to make this exciting. Paige and I have experienced severe reverse culture shock since returning from our journey, and being able to discuss recommendations, share insight and experiences, and laugh with other people about our similar passions to travel has fed our soul.
So here’s the story…
On our second date back in December of 1995 at a Christmas party in Santa Barbara, Paige non chalantly asked, "So, do you have any desire to travel?" "Sure," I answered, pretty much only trying to make her happy in the hopes that she would soon get naked. "…Around the world?" she prodded. "Absolutely," I definitively, and extremely ignorantly, stated.
I had no idea what I had just gotten myself into.
But from this tiny seed… Over the next couple years as we got engaged and eventually married, we would periodically talk about this concept of "traveling around the world." It was very real to Paige, who had lived in both France and Spain, and traveled to Central America and Australia. But I had been to Tahiti and Tijuana; it was a concept so foreign to me that I couldn’t, and didn’t, even attempt to get my arms around it. Paige began stashing our money away, month after month, and after we hit ten grand, suddenly it was time to really talk about it. We decided that since it was still at least a year away from reality, and our jobs and lives in general were not really in a position to commit to it at that time, it would remain a fantasy. But then month after month, we found ourselves talking more and more about it, and not so much as a fantasy anymore. We found ourselves mentioning it to friends and family, not as "something we would like to do someday," but something we WERE going to do someday. Finally, in late 1997, we had THE talk.
"Let’s just do it!" And when you thought about it that way, you realized, "screw the jobs, screw the possessions, screw the responsibilities and crap that are controlling our lives…"
"OK, when?" We figured we needed eight more months of saving and active planning to get there. From then on, it was a whirlwind of activity: securing visas, researching places, needs, dangers and expectations. Printing out page after page of the few travel sites that existed on the web (special thanks to Jim and SueBee Klima and their awesome Klimagrams – big inspiration) and even meeting with friends of a friend who had done a similar trip the year before. We lived by Edward Hasbrouke’s book "The Practical Nomad," and even saw him speak at REI in Berkeley. It was actually going to happen. It was like we had been climbing the ladder of a slide for years, then reached the top and pushed off with little effort. From that point forward, our speed incrementally increased, so that by summer of 1998 everything was moving a thousand miles an hour.
Then one day we played hooky from work and went to Airtreks in SanFrancisco to talk about our airplane ticket options; we were unprepared for the question, "OK, so what’s your itinerary, where do you want to go?" We had bought a huge laminated map for our wall and spent an hour sticking colored pushpins into the places each of us wanted to go to (white for Paige, green for me). Paige chose Nepal, Indonesia, Thailand and most of South America; I chose Iceland, Easter Island, Greenland and Antarctica. Not realistic, but it was still so beyond reality to me that I chose the most remote, random places possible. Eventually though, I thought about it a little more and went back and chose Zimbabwe, Zambia and Tanzania, Egypt, Turkey and Israel. And then put ten pins in India. India was a must…for some reason. So here we were at Airtreks, stumped by this question. We had a brief, private huddle and came back with an on-the-spot itinerary, figuring that we’d just pick continental "in’s" and "out’s" and travel by land the rest of the way:
SanFrancisco to London, London to Zimbabwe, Nairobi to Rome, Israel to India, Nepal to Bangkok…and then we would need to look at a map to see where we would be. All tickets would need to be changeable; we wanted nothing but the very first departure date to be set in stone. But our agent explained that those types of tickets couldn’t be issued more than a year in advance, at this point that would put us in either India or Nepal… "Just buy them on the road, it’s not a big deal," he recommended. We wrote him a check for nearly five thousand dollars and realized as we took the elevator down to the first floor and emerged onto the street that our bodies were completely numb.
"It’s suddenly frighteningly real," I stated, both in fear and incredible excitement.
Traveling itself did not bother me, nor did third world conditions, safety issues, health issues, being away from friends and family for so long, or any of that stuff. So why was I afraid? Change. This was a life-changing decision, in the best way, and it was a sobering reality to actively take that first step forward past the point of turning back. Exhilarating.
Paige and I laid out the itinerary for the remaining months until departure day: August 2, 1998. We’d give our notice at work in early June, sell everything we owned in late July, we had checklists for visas, supplies, contact information, guidebooks, research, and on and on… Planning the trip was almost as fun as the trip itself, but in much, MUCH different way.
We get questions all the time about how we determined our budget. Back in the fantasy stage, Paige had randomly set down some daily dollar amounts that we might need between the two of us in the first, second and third worlds: $40 for third, $50 for second, and $70 for first. After we had discussed our itinerary, we went back in and multiplied those numbers by the number of days we estimated we’d be in each, then added special expenditures: diving costs, Kilimanjaro trek, special trains/planes, etc., and came out with a little of $20k not including our bulk plane tickets. Paige had budgeted perfectly and we would be slightly ahead of our timeline by the time August rolled around.
About the budget; we found that as a generalization, $40 for two people in the third world is a pretty good estimation – food, lodging, transportation, site seeing and beer included. Obviously it will differ per country; we spent much less in India, Africa was plus or minus ten bucks, and Indonesia was right on. But of course, it totally depends on your own personal style of travel, and your own needs and expectations. We could handle the insane chicken buses in the beginning of our trip, but by the end we didn’t want to even see a chicken, let alone share a seat with one on a bus anymore. Second world costs are pretty close to first world, and first world is way more than the $70 we budgeted. We had to shorted our time in all the first world countries we planned to visit, trading anxiety and arguments over watching our budget to closely to enjoyment and spending in a shorter stay. Of the (few) arguments we had on the road, I’d say that half of them were due to worrying too much about the budget to the point that it made it not fun anymore, while the other half was due to the stress of travel itself (e.g. arriving in a wildly foreign place, trying to find a hotel or money exchange, and promptly getting lost – quite stressful, but all part of the experience).
We did not explore a philosophy behind our route whatsoever. This could have been a huge mistake, but thankfully it could not have worked out better. Consider your mindset over the course of the trip; looking back, here’s how ours evolved: We started off in the first world (Ireland), almost as a vacation breaking apart from our U.S. lives and preparing for the third world. Thank god we did not jump right into the third world, this first leg allowed us to get used to a travel style and living out of our backpacks, and was important for us to see how we’d handle "regular" travel problems between the two of us before being dumped in totally foreign environments.
By the time we hit Africa, we were itching to get thrown right into the fire. Every day we wanted more and more stimuli, more freaky new experiences, more of everything. And boy did we get it. Two weeks of this and we needed our two weeks just relaxing on Likoma Island in Malawi to heal and recharge. Then back out right in the thick of it for another couple weeks until two weeks relaxing on Lamu Island in Kenya. Do not underestimate your need to catch your breath and treat yourself to a spiritually healing environment, be it a nice hotel, a nice dinner, a plane flight, or a week relaxing on a beach. Our 2+ weeks in Italy were a godsend, but afterwards it was really difficult to throw ourselves back "out there" again. Still, our stay in Tuscany had been the carrot that was dangling in front of us during the hard times in Africa. It took literally weeks for us to get back into the swing of a comfortable travel style, and it finally caught up with us in Turkey and Jordan. A week relaxing on the beach in Dahab, Sinai, followed by a week in first world Israel, and we were ready to experience India…
In retrospect, doing Africa first and India second was the perfect decision. India is the extreme in every sense of the word. Africa has the touts, the filth and the extreme foreign culture, but India is that times a thousand. India is infinitely more developed, but that makes it more difficult too because you may have false expectations about things. We spent the first month and a half traveling hard – every three days or less – and I can’t imagine ever traveling like that again. I’m glad we did it because we saw so much and experienced even more, but it really wears on your mind and body. Don't underestimate the debilitating power of repeated 8-12 hour train rides followed by rabid touts and the unending search for an affordable and decent place to stay.
We thought our month on the Andaman Islands would be the recharging our batteries needed, but instead the crazy Indian bureaucracy had the exact opposite effect on us. It can be really hard to relax in India if you come from the U.S. because we’re used to people taking responsibility, treating customers as important individuals, and communication. I believe our six months travel prior to India were the perfect preparation for that country; I would never recommend traveling to India on a two week vacation from work, and even more important, would only recommend it for people who can take the time to experience it properly. Maybe not three months worth…but to each his own. I can only imagine people who experience India on a stopover through Delhi or Bombay…it would be like traveling to the U.S. with the sole stopover being Disneyland.
Nepal was phenomenal, and the best part about it was that it defined the middle of our trip, right after India and right before Southeast Asia. Kathmandu may be perceived as a terrible place if coming direct from the first world, but coming from three months in India was heaven. You can really catch your breath in great comfort in Thamel. Our three week trek helped us get in shape – both body and mind – and was the single best experience of our trip. Hands down.
Following this extreme high, Thailand and SE Asia were a letdown, to be honest. This isn’t a fair evaluation of these countries, but again, our experience and perceptions were shaped by our past and future and the emotions prevalent at that time. It took even longer this time to get back into a comfortable travel style, and for awhile we didn’t think we could do it again. But Indonesia provided the comfort and environment on the island of Lombok. We loved it so much we couldn’t leave for six weeks.
Lastly, I do not recommend doing what we did as our last fling: flying from Indonesia to Chile through the U.S. That kicked our asses, and we ended up sleeping for two days when we finally made it to Santiago. Plus, we hadn’t considered the change of environment from the northern to southern hemisphere: it was damn cold now. Still, it all shaped our trip, and looking back, our positives and negatives were determined more by our state of mind at that time than by the countries themselves…keep this in mind when you set your own itinerary.
So that’s that. Except on final thing: reverse culture shock. Yes, everybody’s different, but for me, this has (and is) the single hardest thing I’ve ever had to deal with. Paige and I have found that we have been through so much together now, and shared experiences that no one else could even imagine, let alone understand, that we do not get excited or interested in things at home that used to make us happy. Once you experience the high, and in our case share it with your soul mate, nothing else matches up (note: except for our new child!). It would probably do me a lot of good to see a psychiatrist or something, because I don’t have patience for first world crap, external relationship bullshit and politics, or people who don’t understand that happiness is the key to success. I get incredibly uptight for people who live vicariously through their pasts because I don’t think they’re enjoying or even understanding the "here and now," and yet I struggle every day with constant thoughts about our trip. I know we will be out there again someday, sooner rather than later, but in the meantime, we live by a few simple rules that we learned on the trip:
1. Always remember what’s REALLY important in life, and keep your priorities straight
Actually, that’s good enough to be the only lesson I relay here. When you travel, you shed the paradigms and personalities imposed by others. You are only who you want to be. People you meet do not ask you "So, what do you do?" and define you by that. They ask you for your name and accept you for who you are at that moment. It is a wonderful and addicting reality…and I can’t wait to get back out there and immerse myself in the thick of it again.
One final note here about the whole "Mefloquine Dreams" thing. Mefloquine, or Larium as it is also known, is an anti-malarial drug, mainly distributed by the U.S., as many European countries either have yet to legalize it or have outright outlawed it. Obviously, we spent most of our 13 months in malaria-infested regions of the world, and downed Mefloquine like candy. Interestingly, one of the known side effects of the drug is an increased awareness to one's dreams... As we were on the road, I kept a very detailed set of journals that I have translated into a complete and comprehensive account of our adventures - day by day, chicken bus by chicken bus, buick-sized spider by...well, you know. Knowing of this side effect, I also kept close tabs on my dreams as we traveled and intersparsed the writings with the dreams that were occuring at those times. Now, "Mefloquine Dreams" is an actual book, all nearly 2,000 pages of it (!), and I have to admit, our grandkids are going to love this stuff. Anyway, all our events and emotions seemed to be represented in our Mefloquine Dreams, and besides, it just sounds cool. Cool enough to copyright it at least...gotta love having a lawyer in the family.
Please write us – good or bad – if you’ve gotten this far. We always love to hear from you and will most likely write you a book in response.
Love,
Chris (& Paige) chrisandpaige@hotmail.com