A reflection on travel & intro

Travelling overseas is and will always be an invigorating experience. Being immersed in a new culture, unable to speak the language and lost without the guidance of a map, travel book or friendly local can be both overwhelming and liberating. Realising that you alone can navigate the great underground metro system or order a beautiful meal off a menu you can’t understand instills confidence and enables you to move through life with a certainty that can’t necessarily be achieved at home. It is the small hurdles you overcome on the journey that you’ll remember the most, not the overpriced generic hotels that you could have stayed at home to experience. Travel is your own, it’s what fuels your imagination and helps you take notice of what’s happening outside of your daily life. Travel empowers you and enables you to empathise with the struggles of others around the world, it allows you to let go and dream ‘what if………...’

I wish I could take credit for writing this, but no it's not from me! It did inspire me though when I read it on the cover of a Kathmandu catalogue! I posted it here because it really represents for me what our travel adventure will be all about. It has been a long drawn out process to get here, but finally it is almost time for us to begin!

We are virgin bloggers, but we thought it would be a great way of sharing our adventures with all of you - our family and friends who may or may not be interested in our antics! At this stage we don't even know if we'll be that disciplined with posting here especially if we are too busy immersed in the places we are visiting, but we will do our best!

So the initial plan is....fly to London on June 26, stay for 2 weeks in Cheltenham (2hrs from London) with our friends Phil & Careina, then we head to Prague to begin the first leg of our European travel which will hopefully last about 3-4 months covering Czech Republic - Poland - Austria - Switzerland - Italy - Croatia - Greece. Following that, we will return to Cheltenham to look for work in whatever we can get, work for however long we feel like and until we top up the travel dosh, then do some more travelling. From this point, everything is a little unclear but that's part of the adventure! We don't want to plan too much because we know for sure those plans are very likely to change! Although part of me feels uneasy with not having too many plans, it is really exciting and quite liberating!

We have sold our house, our car and most of what we own to do this trip and although lots of people have said how great it is that we have done that, it hasn't been the easiest process I can tell you! There's something about letting go of everything that is familiar which is quite anxiety provoking at times and although we are not pioneers in what we are doing, it is still pretty big! I have to say though, that I know this is one of the best things we will ever do! It's going to change us, challenge us, expand our thinking and really highlight the most important things in life!

Stay tuned! Sal