In February 2011, me and my boyfriend Nick went on an journey to India, Nepal and Australia that ended up lasting two years. We travelled, worked and learned a lot about each other, other cultures, our passions and the importance of choosing your own destiny. Writing home in Dutch at the time, these stories haven’t travelled further than our closest friends and family. But from now on, you also get the chance to experience what it’s like to leave home in search for adventure… Are you ready?
I’m all packed. Let’s Go!
November 2010
Planning the trip of a lifetime
We’ve got a country. Well, we’ve got multiple, to be precise.
With a friend living in India, we decided to make a stop there first, continuing onto Nepal, just because we can. We’ve got about 1.5 month planned to see (part of) both countries, so that’s quite a bit to get a good feel of the place. And to eat lots of curries.
Reading travel stories and flipping through travel guides like crazy, I try to imagine the journey that lies ahead of us. Adventure seems to be guaranteed, so all we need now is a bit more practical information. But everything at its own pace.
Dreams of faraway places
Of course there are tons of places we would like to visit. We dream about Fiji (where I stayed almost 2 months in 2008) and think about visiting the West-Coast of the USA ‘on the way back’ (that would be 2012, to give you a sense of the broadness of it all).
But then there’s also the Transmongolia train journey that we’ve always wanted to do. If we follow our rough schedule, however, it means we’ll have to stock up on thermal underwear, as we’ll be visiting Syberia in…. yes, winter. Now to give you the complete picture: I usually spend my evenings under a blanket on the couch, even when it’s 22 degrees (C) inside. I wear knitted socks in my shoes and woolen leggings under my pants. Also in summer. To put it shortly, I get a chill even looking at a picture of snow.
It seems I’m the perfect person to spend some time in a damp tent at -35 degrees during a 1800 kilometer journey. Fun guaranteed, that’s for sure.
And then there is Australia. I’ve been there two times now, the second one being the most special of course, as it’s the trip Nick and I met. We both travelled through the country quite a bit on our own, but we’d love to see the West-Coast together. And at the same time, we would love to experience living in a city like Sydney and see how far we can get finding work and starting our social lives from zero.
Getting practical
Besides dreaming, Nick got me to think a bit more practical then I usually do, so we started with research on tickets. First we ploughed through hundreds of airline- and ticket deals- websites online, asked a travel agency to give us a quote, were in shock of the price for about a week and finally decided to go back online for 3 hours, find the best deal and just book it ourselves. We saved 300 Euros this way!
At the moment, we’ve got our tickets from Amsterdam to Delhi (21 February 2011) and Kathmandu to Sydney (12 April 2011) booked. The rest turned out to be too far ahead, so we’ll have to get back to that. We’ve heard that the Australians like you to come, as long as you can prove you’ll leave again in the end (which our mothers totally agree upon), so we’ll have to get that sorted as soon as we can book it.
And that’s it for now. We’ve got a dream, a bit of a route plan and a goal.
We even have two flights booked. We’ll both keep working until right before we leave, Nick as an architect and me as a teacher on the International School.
Next up: the Big Visum Festivities, the Travel Gear Parade and Jobs Searching Shenanigans. It’ll a be a blast, see you next time!
If you’d offer me a job cutting images from magazines and sticking them into a scrapbook, I’d take it. Nothing better than ripping pages of inspiring photos and travel routes out of a travel brochure, right? My family always wonders how I can spend hours amidst a pile of scraps organizing pictures and pieces of sticky tape…
Any questions? Let me know! The following episode from (the road to) our lives as expats in Australia will be Sunday, May 19th. Will you join me again?
The post Expat Life Australia – Flashback #2 ‘Planning the trip of a lifetime’ appeared first on The Travel Tester.