Back Home

We've been back home for more than ten days now, and a closing post is long overdue. But it's a tough one, first because we've been keeping busy since we got back and second, we don’t really want a closing, we still wish the trip wasn't over!

It's been a great adventure and eight months have passed by way too fast. Once you get used to this lifestyle it would be easy to just keep going. After all there is so much world out there to discover, that it's impossible to exhaust the options for adventure, ever. On the other hand it's easy to wear out and get tired of being always on the move. Some travellers prefer to visit fewer places and spend more time in each of them. We have chosen to move often and see as much as possible. It's not a matter of better or worse, it's simply the way we felt like to do it. With a limited time frame and so many things to see, we couldn't just hang around and let the days pass by. Even we had to take a break every now and then, though.

One of our favorite spots

It has been eight months full of new experiences, new places and new acquaintances! In the 251 days of the trip we:

- visited 178 cities, towns and villages (very rough estimate) in 14 countries, and passed through hundreds more

- slept in 113 different beds, 11 of which were with Couchsurfing and three with Air b'n'b, and slept 3 nights in airports, 6 nights on buses, one on a train and 4 on airplanes

- spent 329 hours on buses, 35 hours on boats and 85 on airplanes, and countless hours in a car

- traveled through 11 time zones and crossed the international date line

- mostly avoided the winter (although the kiwi autumn can be veeeery cold)

- met old and new friends (which we hope to meet again someday) that were all inspiring in different ways

- encountered many kinds of animals and loved all of them (even the cheeky macaques!)

- tried innumerable types of food and with one exception never got sick

- got robbed only once, and it wasn't even that bad

- broke a wrist (at least I have)

- flew over a glacier in a Cessna

- learnt to scuba dive

- learnt to drive a motorbike

- got married!

And much much more, most of which you already know…

At first, we were planning to give lists of the best/worst places, the best/worst food, the best/worst experience, etc. But it's actually very hard to do it, and it would require a long list of commentaries and exceptions. Even recommending where to go and where not to go is tricky. But what is that we will surely never forget?

Our monk night in the monastery in Japan,

 bathing elephants in Thailand,

spending Christmas on islands in the middle of Mekong in Laos,

cycling around the temples of Angkor in Cambodia,

diving into tea plantation in continental Malaysia,

getting drenched in Singapore,

discovering the wonderful animal world of Borneo,

all our great Couchsurfing hosts in Australia,

proposing and getting proposed on top of the Fox glacier in New Zealand,

our last and only truly sunny day in Cook Islands,

our wedding in LA and morning pancakes in Dallas,

diving in the crystal clear cenotes in Mexico,

climbing around the ancient Tikal in Guatemala,

thinking we were about to die on a bus in a thunderstorm in Honduras, the sadness we felt when we were packing our backpacks one last time in London…

This trip had been my dream for a very long time, well before meeting K, but I'm pretty sure that without her I would have never been able to just leave everything and go. This would have never happened without her! Surprisingly enough we even coped very well with being together 24h a day for such a long time. We rarely wanted to kill each other! In the end, it was hard to part in London and go to our respective homes. I'm sure glad it's just for a short time.

Going back to reality wasn't as hard as we feared. On one side it was nice to go home as we finally get to see family and friends. The first days were slightly confusing. After a while on the road, I got used to having very little belongings, and having them always well packed in my backpack. Now it's great to have more than three t-shirts and two pairs of pants, but all of a sudden I have so many things that I didn't even remember to have. It takes some time to get used to possessions and a stable location again. Can you imagine how sweet it is not having to worry about how to pack your luggage, where to wash your clothes and where you'll sleep tomorrow? The simplest things in life... We hated it at times, but now we miss it. It's good to be back but we are already thinking where our next trip will take us, even if it only might be around Europe for now. We don't want to stop! Traveling and meeting other travelers only made us realize how little of the world we have seen so far.

We were afraid that we'd get depressed after going back and falling into a routine again. Luckily for us there'll be no time for any routine to settle into. In just a few weeks we'll move to Germany to begin a new adventure, and we can't wait.

See you in Lindau!

PD And thank you for following us for so long…