Closing Thoughts, Lynne
As we leave Paris on the Eurostar, I’m astounded at how successful our world trip has been. The time has flown by. What adventures we’ve had; no disasters, just some challenges, most of which we relished. Nor have we got bored or blasé about the experiences either. We paced ourselves; we didn’t try and check off all the sights and activities, but tried to catch the vibe of each place, we were fortunate enough to visit.
It will be great for us to be able to dip into this blog and recapture some of the excitement, awe and fun.
Travel over land and sea provides such a different experience to flying: one is forced to slow the pace. You get an insight into the huge distances involved and a better view of the landscape, vegetation, population density, mountains, rivers and climate. We came across snow-covered peaks, in Europe in March, in Japan in May and the Canadian Rockies in June. We fortunately missed the wild fires in Rhodes, but caught them in Canada.
We travelled cheaply by bus, coach, metro and train and luxuriously by ship and the Rocky Mountaineer. But never did the transport feel sub-standard or unsafe.
Obviously the timeliness and speed of the transport varied greatly.
We experienced high speed trains in Italy, South Korea, Japan and France, but our worst travel disruption was in France at both the start and end of our trip! Trains in the US were as unreliable time-wise as those in India, but much more expensive.
Arranging travel and accommodation ourselves made us aware of the diverse possibilities, or the very few options! But travelling independently was not stressful when we had done our research, on the internet or in person; witness the success we had in booking our trains at the ticket office in Madgoa, India and the crossing from Costa Rica into Panama. Where we did it on the fly, we were sometimes obliged to take some risks or rely on the help of strangers.
AND at no hotel did we arrive to find we hadn’t got a booking; huge credit to Peter for his diligence and perseverance on that score. And mostly the accommodation was where and what we were expecting.
We couldn’t have done this at all, without access to the internet: wifi en-route, local SIM cards, local travel apps, website translation facilities and downloaded Google maps. When buying train tickets to Sapporo, the agent in the ticket office spoke into her mobile phone in Japanese and the information we needed spewed forth in English!
We ate well, far too well. Apologies if I seemed to major on my garlic allergy, but that is my world. We were delighted that we managed to eat some Turkish, Korean and Japanese meals with absolutely no word of English; we don’t necessarily know what we ate but that didn’t detract from the enjoyment. There were great Italian restaurants all over the world: the best we experienced were in Seoul, Jakarta and Bengaluru.
We enjoyed varied nature, flora and fauna. We visited coffee and rubber plantations, vineyards and markets. We loved the hiking whether it was up in the Rockies or the volcanoes in Indonesia, whatever the weather. We enjoyed parks and gardens everywhere; they make cities that much more habitable. We adored the beach at our yoga retreat and the waterfalls in Indonesia and Costa Rica.
A favourite expedition was to find the orang-utan in the jungle in Sumatra. Iconic sights include the sunrise over Mount Bromo, the peace park in Hiroshima, the Manhattan skyline as we left New York on the Queen Mary 2 and each and every view of the Grand Canyon. We were excited to go through the original Panama Canal and thoroughly enjoyed the Japanese drumming that accompanied our departure from Otaru. We were humbled by stories of slavery, exploitation and persecution.
We went kayaking, paddle-boarding, tubing, horse-riding, canyoning, swimming, running and sightseeing. We visited museums, (including transport museums, which held a special interest for us), temples, ancient ruins and many memorials.
Of course, we carried our rucksacks everywhere. They got heavier despite our best endeavours, especially after we picked up our wedding garb in New England, but gradually as we disposed of stuff that had deteriorated or dropped off surplus items in our London and French homes, they began to get lighter. Mostly we thought we’d got the contents about right, but we definitely needed to buy smarter clothes for the Queen Elizabeth; stuff that was cheap enough to discard, but we couldn’t bring ourselves to do so!
People generally were very welcoming to us and some were especially generous. One of the joys of slow travel is the opportunity to engage with fellow travellers. We used some of their recommendations as to places to visit, such as the travertines at Pamukkale, Hampi, the old capital of the Vijayanagara empire, or Providence, Rhode Island. We got lots of advice from casual acquaintances who loved to travel too.
It was great fun meeting up with old friends in the US, staying with Mary and John on their patch and holidaying with Chris and Becca in her childhood haunts. I missed my father terribly, in Greece and thought all along, about how much he would have delighted in hearing about our exploits. David and Desi’s wedding provided a wonderful bookend to the journey. The stopover at our French home also reinforced how almost unbeatable our own view is of the sunset.
There are so many places, we visited, I would like to return to and not many I would not, but there are still lots of places in the world we have yet to visit, which we want to do whilst we are still fit enough. We will hopefully be able to indulge our passion for travel for many years to come, provided we can do so responsibly.
