The final blog
Three weeks have now passed since
returning to England; enough time to catch up with most of my family and
friends, tie up the loose ends of the trip and mull over the past year or so.
A
lot of people have asked different questions about the trip, so I thought I'd look back over
the year as a whole, as well as picking out the best and worst bits, as you will
see mostly in a separate post. It's not been easy as so much has happened that
I wasn't sure myself - such is the ability of time to turn all the small details into a
slightly blurry big picture, but it seemed like a bit of a waste not to digest the trip since I’ve gone to the effort of finding such places and adventures
in the first place.
I'm pleased that I made the effort to quit my job to do the trip and on the whole it's gone tremendously well, with so many things happening
that were beyond my wildest dreams, and very few problems, certainly nothing
major. The journey had been significantly different to my first big one five
years previous, where I went to more well-known countries and generally played
things a little safer. That experience held me in good stead for this one,
where I've purposely pushed the boundaries of what I feel comfortable with, and
at times have strayed far from the beaten path.
---
It's always hard to pick out favourites
when there's so much to choose from, but I have to say that in
country-wise I really enjoyed Sweden, India and Indonesia. Sweden had great
lifestyle and beautiful scenery, India was like being on another planet half
the time and thoroughly exciting because of that, and Indonesia had such
variety - thick jungle, tropical islands, active volcanoes and very kind and
friendly people. In terms of the favourite things that
happened, well, you'll just have to read the seperate post I'm afraid.
I got ill twice, but thankfully neither
time was particularly bad. The first was in India happened when I got a bit too blasé about
street food and ate something which mildly upset my stomach for ten days,
though only really knocked me down for one afternoon. The second time in
Indonesia something, who knows what it was, levelled me for a day but again thankfully didn't last long. I also
suffered a dog bite, an eye infection, and a fungal infection, all of which
were simple to sort out so on the whole I was pretty fortunate.
The first three months or so in Europe
were in total contrast to the rest of the trip. It was clean, organised,
and comfortable (if a bit expensive) and whilst those are mostly good things, they didn’t give the
feeling of excitement and adventure I was looking for, in fact at one point in
Dresden, Germany, I felt completely bored of travelling. Thankfully the spark
came back once arriving in Jordan and pretty much continued thereafter, since I
found Asia to be almost constantly exciting and challenging to the senses.
---
Some people might find it odd that I'd
want to quit my job and do such a trip in the first place, wondering whether I hate working or
just wanted to run away from a crappy life; in fact the opposite is true. I
enjoy working and life at home was pretty good. I'm just a
curious person; I wanted to see amazing sights and understand the world whilst
circumstances allowed. I enjoy the sensation of movement, of continually experiening new things, and wanted to learn,
see how people lived, gain knowledge and meet interesting people.
Some guy called Voltaire once said ‘Work saves us from
three great evils: boredom, vice and need’, a saying I agree with to an extent,
certainly early on in the trip when I struggled with the feeling that I needed
to be productive, and that there was little point to what I was doing. Thankfully these feelings subsided and
were replaced with the understanding of what I was actually gaining, as well as the notion that there’s more to life than just work. However
as a form of lifestyle travelling is a little fake and unsustainable - you're seeing real life, but not really living a real life. There's no day to day worries or pressures, and seeing so much eventually left me feeling
jaded and over-stimulated, so I'm pleased to have finished living like
a nomad and come back to a more settled life. I didn’t work as such over the
trip, at least not for money, but spent around a month in total doing jobs for my hosts
and volunteering for an NGO.
There are many upsides to travel, but
many downsides as well. The constant changes in culture and surroundings that
you need to adapt to, the continual need to find somewhere to stay, eat, and
wash. The uncomfortable transport, the noise, haggling, the lack of stability.
The lack of income, lack of advancment in career, and not seeing family or
friends. The very limited amount of belongings you have, having to take
anti-malarial tablets every day, the constant planning ahead, and the regular writing
on what's passed behind. I sound like a moaner, and of course the good sides outweigh the bad by a long way, but it
needs to be known it's not all lying on tropical beaches. In fact it rarely
actually was.
---
I spent just over four of the twelve
months staying or travelling with other people, including friends in Sweden, my brother who came to Berlin to meet me, and my old Uni Adam who now lives in Singapore. I
travelled on my own for the rest of the time. Thankfully loneliness was never really a problem as I met new people at almost
every stop and am pretty good with my own company anyway
when things were quieter.
The media is pretty good at portraying
the world out there to be a pretty nasty and dangerous place, and indeed it is in a
tiny amount of places, but when you compare the size of those spots against
the size of the world as a whole they are but mere specs of dust,
and as long as you take sensible precautions travelling is pretty safe
on the whole. To be honest I’ve seen more hostility on a Saturday night out in
England than I did on the whole trip, and apart from some Indian teenagers who
threw rocks at me when I wouldn't use their 'guiding services', the most
dangerous things I encountered were generally buses.
Someone asked me if the trip was life
changing. Well I've returned neither married nor dressed as a woman so not
massively so, but I have seen and learnt a tremendous amount along the way so it
must have had some sort of impact. Just like on my last trip I learnt that people generally want
the same things in life - good health, security for their family, material
comfort and so on.
Or more eloquently put, in the words of a Radio 4 documentary I recently heard:
‘We all have the same needs, the same preoccupations. We all have the same
hopes and fears’. I was shown great generosity from a huge number of people I
met, curiously often from people who have much less than I do. The people I Couchsurfed with, the Indians who
invited me into their homes during a festival, the guy we hitchhiked with who
also bought us lunch - just a few examples of generosity. And before people
think that would never happen here, it did within an hour of arriving back in
England, just outside Heathrow.
---
You
might think that travelling would throw up a few communication problems and
indeed at times it does, but there were usually ways around it, be it using hand
gestures, writing down numbers or pictures or simply learning a few words, such
as in Indonesia where the language is fairly easy to pick up. But to be honest
English is king, and you'd be surprised by just how many people can understand
a bit of it, particularly in former British colonies such as India or Malaysia.
In fact it was obvious to see how the first wave of English-language influence
came in colonial times, and the second from America's more recent influence on the world,
particularly through Hollywood movies. Hearing a Spanish person speaking English
to an Indian, a Korean girl to an Indonesian, and an Italian
to a Georgian really tells of its dominance as a medium in today's world. In
particular, though I knew they were good, I was amazed by the fluency of English in Belgium,
Netherlands and Scandinavia - I once sat at a dinner table in Sweden where nine
people spoke perfect English between themselves so a to not block me out from the
conversation. The fluency in India as well was a surprise and I rarely struggled
there to find someone who spoke it.
--- The Practical stuff ---
I said from the start that my route was
going to be flexible, for it's hard to predict what might happen along the way
and how I might feel as the journey progressed, and indeed the route changed
quite significantly from plan. I visited five countries that I planned to whilst missing out two, yet for varying
reasons went to an extra twelve that I hadn’t intended to. Just as
well then that I chose to book everything as I went along rather than buying a
more straightforward (but more expensive and rigid) round-the-world ticket in
advance. If I was to do the same route again there would be a few places I'd
skip for sure, but I don't regret going to anywhere as such - every place had
something to offer, even if it was just a story afterwards.
Contrary to a few people's understanding
I only used my bike as a form of transport for the first three weeks, though I
did hire a bike for the odd day along the way. Getting around thereafter generally meant
using whatever form of transport was cheapest, most comfortable, quickest or
generally most appropriate. Planes where absolutely necessary, trains whenever
possible, buses begrudgingly but most commonly, taxi's or rickshaws rarely, bikes as
much as I could, scooters for exploring areas when possible, all manner of
boats on river and sea when I found water, and on foot when none of those would
do. No animal transport though - I hate horses.
Even though a few experienced travellers
consider it uncool to travel with a guidebook, I always do, particularly for
the transport information. I try to use the book as a guide not a bible,
picking and choosing what I use from it and taking the descriptions with a
pinch of salt. The trouble with guidebooks is they're often out of date
straight away, make for unimaginative journeys, and encourage people to flock
to the same hotels and restaurants, which often means those owners take
advantage of you and the small guys nearby miss out. I prefer to use the Rough
Guide series where possible but sometimes use Lonely Planet when it's not, and
use them as eBooks on my iPad so that all I then have to do is download it
when I reach a new country instead of any faff. It saves a fair bit of weight as
well, even if an eBook is not quite as easy to use as a real book, and security
wise it never proved a problem.
---
I also often checked for information the Wikitravel website as
well, which whilst often quite amateur often has much more information on the
destination, and Trip Advisor could be handy in small doses to show reviews and
ratings on attractions.Where possible first hand
recommendations for things are the best though, as long as they're impartial of
course, and if someone was going to, or staying somewhere that sounded good I'd
often join them.
In summer in Europe it was pretty essential to
book accomodation due to high demand, but in Asia there was usually plenty of choice and
availability so I never bothered, especially as standards vary
wildly so it's nice to have a look before you commit. With transport I played
it by ear - with buses I'd often book the same day, trains a
day before, and short haul flights in Asia anywhere
between a couple of weeks and a few hours before flying with little cost
difference, though again this is different in Europe.
My travelling style, and indeed thoughts
on travel evolved over the trip. I learnt to slow down, and not just focus on
sightseeing - 'it's about the journey, not the destination' as a wise old
traveller told me. I liked to look at the places behind the gloss - the side
streets, industrial areas and strangely even municipal services, which tell a
story in themselves of how well developed a place really is. I'm a lot less
interested in the major attractions now - the pyramids and Machu Picchu's of
the world, as from experience often the better something is, the more people go
there, and therefore the more busy, commercialised and trashed it gets. It totally ruins the experience for me; Petra and Mt Bromo being two such examples, so
with the world getting more affluent and therefore able to travel, such places
are only going to get worse in my opinion. Don't leave it until retirement if
you want to see them!
---
Writing the blogs took a lot of time,
often up to five hours each, especially as I wrote almost every word on a
mobile phone for the first three months and then an iPad mini thereafter - neither of which are
really suitable writing tools, but in the name of weight and overall simplicity
they had to do. Having now put it all into Microsoft Word it's only now I've
seen not only how much I wrote (180,000 words - enough for three books!), but
just how many spelling errors there are, so well done for putting up with them!
This is likely to be the final proper blog now bar possibly the odd video over the coming
months - it's time to get back to work. I'd like to
thank everyone I stayed with, and everyone who has taken the effort to read my
blogs whether you've done so regularly, caught up from time to time, or just
glanced over occasionally - please do stay in touch.
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