At first, when we started to fantasize about our plans to travel around the world and soon realized it was not only possible, but also desperately needed, our ideas about its organization where merely vague. What items needed to be packed and moreover how would we transport them? Which vaccines are required and how do you properly assemble a suitable first-aid kit? After reading a multitude of recent books on travelling, especially on long-term travelling, it soon became clear: there were plenty of helpful hints and tricks, but there are no hard and fast rules. And so we startes to take our first baby steps towards this journey like ten months ago, motivated and willing to be prepared as good as possible for our intention. The sprint towards the obstacles ahead had only just begun.
Due to our differing financial and work situation it was practically impossible to take most of the steps of the preparation together or even take the same steps at the same time. For me the year 2019 started with the refreshment of established vaccines and the question which vaccines are going to be needed in the various parts of the world. Because of the fact that our goals were still undetermined and we wanted to be as well-provided as we possibly could be we took any kind of precaution that was to be achieved at the doctors. I had to face my fear of needles about 18 times from the beginning of the year up until the middle of September with bigger and minor complications, whereas Kevin started his quest for the perfect provision only in the last few months ahead of our journey. Our own experiences taught us that many vaccines in a very short period of time can be awfully exhausting and often enough these precautions confined us to our beds and left us unable to work for some time, but we were willing to make sacrifices. We’re still hoping, though, that all of these careful steps towards a safer and hopefully also healthier way of travelling will pay off in the end. Only time will tell.
A major advantage of the early start of our preparations was the fact that we were able to adjust and get used to our new moneysaving lifestyle that would be our guidance principle from now on. Apart from the money that we saved for the journey itself now each month there were many uncalled for and incalculable costs which wore us out every now and then like for example the cost of the vaccines, suitable equipment, new passports, international drivers license, car maintenance and crazy enough also the question of contraception. Costs of all kinds tearing fleshwounds into our -or especially my rather manageable- travel fund which was accompanied by a pain that often led to a daily lack of motivation, but never even in the slightest let us doubt our will to go on this journey. Pretty much at the same time we started to reduce our living spaces as well, I moved back to the four walls I spent my youth in at my parents house, while Kevin moved into a shared flat with a friend of his where he lived in the room of his friends‘ sister who was abroad in England for work at that time. But considering the fact that both of us were on the move for our jobs the whole time and hardly spent any time at home this step did not seem like much of a sacrifice to any of us.
The planning of the route itself was something we could not really commit to when it came to a strict schedule, so it’s not that surprising that it was and only a vague idea until we finally bought our tickets to Bangkok to mark our starting point. Even now we only have a rough idea in our heads when it comes to suitable way through the world for us, because we always read and hear about new places in the world that grab our attention and that we really want to visit. So any unexpected turn can actually be expected. The freedom and the possibility to keep the end open – for us this is the allure that’s clearly missing in our everyday life, the fact which leaves each day here at the moment so dull and lets our minds strive for some new impressions so badly.
In the last few months ahead of our journey a lot of things were tested for their endurance. First of all we spent quite some time to figure out what kind of tent would be best for our purpose, because in the future it was going to be the closest to what we used to call home. The first time we slept in this tent was on a awfully cold night in the Dolomites in Italy with a wonderful view up to the mountains, even though it rained almost all night long the tent kept us dry never mind that I did not even seal it properly beforehand. It might not have been our greatest night outside, but we were satisfied with our decision. As most of our moments at that time this one was also overshadowed by health problems which were of course an aftermath of a vaccine I got a week earlier. Another aspect we had to check for endurance was our friendship and so we started to spent as much time together as possible to get used to sharing our days with one another for the upcoming months and years. Even if we had some rather general concerns because of the fact that we’re both more of lone wolves, we never really had the feeling that we could not achieve our goals together. Sometimes people just get along perfectly and if it hadn’t been like that we would never thought about sharing our dream to travel the world with one another.
The remaining weeks ahead of the trip were especially stressful. All of the preparations and the organisation we handled alongside our fulltime jobs and a lot of things had to be taken care of at an early stage and on-schedule. We had to terminate a lot of contracts, to round out our equipment, apply for credit cards and test them out, compare insurances and decide which one we’ll get, to give a proxy to certain people, collect information on visa regulations, plan our website and write the first few articles, quit our jobs or sign new contracts, sell my car, sell our last few unnecessary belongings on the flea market or online and so much more. Most of those things we did on or own or together, but many times we also had vigorous support from our friends. So I have to take some time at this point and thank all of you who feel addressed by this reference who helped us and backed us up so very much and from the bottom of our hearts.
This is supposed to be just a short review on the past few months and it’s not just meant to be an explanation or an excuse for all of those people who kept wondering why we were so busy all of the time, but also an introduction for all of those people, like you reading this right now, who decided to follow us on our travels across the world. When I find the time, I‘ll for sure write about our planning and organisation in detail and if you have any questions always feel free to contact us and ask them. As a tentative end to this little discourse I just want to conclude that no matter what difficulties, how many tears we cried and setbacks we experienced, we never lost sight of our dream. Although it was hard before we even started the journey, we soon realised that everything is worth the fight if you really set your heart on something.