A Round-the-World Journey to Find a New Home #1
Digg this page
| 
Save This Page
| 
Stumble It!Departure date: 26th April 2001.
Oh my god! It's less than three weeks till we go, leaving for the trip that we hope is going to change our lives. It's a search for what may turn out to be a crock of gold at the end of a rainbow, something that may not exist. Let me bring you up to speed...
My wife and I were born in the S.E. of England, both of us are in our early to mid 30's, and we have chosen to change our lives dramatically. We have decided to pack our bags, sell our possessions (well mostly, bar a few family heirlooms and personal stuff), rent the flat, and leave the wet, grey and windy skies of the UK behind on a personal quest, to find new lives somewhere else out of the western world. Something in the slow lane, away from the stresses and strains of modern life. Maybe a guesthouse, maybe a boat, a café or a dive school, who knows.
We don't know where this place is, we don't even know if it exists. We don't have an ideal, it's an exploration for us, out of the comfort of our security of our home lives and jobs, away from our families and friends, and into the unknown world that is the future.
So this is the start of the travelogue of Eddie (my wife) and Jake (that's me); tales of our experiences, good and bad, happy and miserable, a written diary of our endeavours to realise a dream, albeit possibly a pipe dream.
We have now both left our jobs, and for the last month have been running around like blue assed flies organising and preparing for our departure. This is no mean feat. Firstly, you can't really quantify the amount of material possessions that you have collated over the years: the television, stereo, plants, furniture, pictures, ornaments, trinkets brought back from previous trips and holidays, not to mention all those clothes that clutter your drawers that you keep looking at, thinking, "I might wear those one day, better not throw them out."
And once you have taken stock of all those things, what do you do with them? They all have some kind of meaning, maybe memories. They have been locked away for years, some things never used, some not even seen since they were acquired, but nevertheless, what do you do with them?
Some things you can just throw away, you might feel a slight twinge of guilt, or regret, a sad feeling that something you treasured for all those years just ends up in some land fill or mashed up in some recycling unit. Other possessions that slide into the bracket that houses the "can't throw them away, they mean something, or are too good to throw" but don't fall into the "Gotta keep this, it's something I will hand down to my grandchildren" bracket, have to be disposed of somehow. There is only so much you can give away to family and friends, some things you just have to sell. They are worth too much to give away, but are uneconomical to store like the cars, the bike, the PC etc.
So what do you do? You become a car boot sale seller, someone who weekly writes a handful of ads to the local papers, and sits by the phone hoping that someone may be interested in your wares. Then comes the inevitable bargain hunter, the person who will beat your price down to half the worth you have put on it. This leaves you with the feeling that once gone, you can never replace these things, and on top of that was it a price that you feel was worth the sale.
Probably the worst experience so far was re-housing the cats, of which there are four. They are our babies, a real part of the family, and it was a tough decision to make. If anything were going to stop us doing what we wanted to do, it would have been the cats. They hold a special place with us.
Our first was a rescue cat from the RSPCA, an animal protection unit throughout the UK that houses and re-homes unwanted and stray animals, a big, white, fluffy, long haired cat that had come from an unknown source. A timid 4 year old, he sat behind our sofa for the first six weeks. We had to put the food and litter box behind the sofa, which kind of surprised visitors when odd scraping and lapping noises would arise from between the sofa and wall. We would explain, "the place was haunted and not to worry about it, it would stop eventually". We then picked up two brothers from Eddie's sister's cat's litter, and lastly, a couple of years ago, we took on my mother's cat when she sadly passed away. Josie became my cat, a memory of my mother, and very difficult to part with.
Happily, we managed to cajole one of Eddie's sister's into taking the first three cats, explaining that they couldn't be parted due to a long family relationship, Bugsey being the daddy cat, and the two younger brothers his underlings. A few weeks later at a drunken dinner party we managed to persuade the sister and her partner, who we shall call Jo and Martin (mainly because that's their names), to take on the fourth and final cat, Josie, the friendly pure black fluff ball that purred whilst sitting on Martin's lap, gently clawing lovingly into his legs as cats do. So the family of cats was successfully moved inter-family and it means that we can visit them in the future on a trip back to the UK.
Bugsey remains a very clear memory, and always will. After all, we called our hotmail account, bugseythecat@hotmail.com.
And then there's the flat. Renting is easy, isn't it? Not as easy as you would think. The flat is to become a continual income to us while we travel. We are lucky that the inheritance I received paid the flat off, so we don't have a mortgage. After a small payment into a fund to protect our future, the rest is profit. A comfortable place to be, you might say. However, whilst you rent, there is the management fee to pay, insurance, maintenance, etc, and of course whilst there is no occupancy, there is no income.
The fun part is, of course, the arrangements to be made for our adventure. I am a gear freak, I love all the stuff you can buy for the trip, and it's been great to be able to do it all again.
Last time I travelled for an extended period was back in 1989. I left the UK with a planned trip for six months. Six months later I was still in the country I first visited, India. Three years later I returned, and having lost a bit of weight, my mum didn't recognise me when I turned up on the doorstep unannounced. She tried to persuade me to go to the houses around the corner which were student housing for the local college. I forgave her, it was 6:30 Sunday morning, and she was as blind as a bat without her glasses, bless her.
So I guess what I am trying to do in our travelogue is to give anybody who has the faintest idea that they might want to do what we are attempting, a run down of our experiences, what we have had to do to get this far. It's not a light decision to make, and frankly, it is as scary as it is exciting. There is a lot of commitment needed to do what we want to do. We are lucky I think, in that we do have a home to return to if it does all go pear-shaped, but it would have to go seriously wrong for us to return, such is the determination that we have to succeed.
Money wise, I don't feel that funds are the be all and end all of what we want to do. Of course, we do need initial funds but everybody can get by, find work and make money if they really put their minds to it, wherever you may be. Our trip has enough funds to carry us for at least the first year, but if we didn't, we would head to a place where funds could be made - Oz, the Caribbean, Far East, wherever. We will run out of funds eventually, and if we haven't found a place to settle yet, then we will do just that, find a way to fund ourselves. There is always a way, where there is a will.
This has been the ramblings of an idealist, a man that believes that there is a paradise for him and his wife, somewhere that may not suit you, but where Ed and I can feel comfortable and safe, with a little business for the traveller maybe.
I hope that you will follow our travels. I promise that they will be informative and hopefully amusing. Together with the trials and triumphs, the good and the bad times, I want to give you the insight of what we experience in our quest for a pipe dream. I was a professional photographer in my past, so I hope to bring you some stunning pictures of wonderful places too. Please feel free to e-mail us with your questions and comments, I would be most interested to hear your views on what we are trying to do. Bare with us in replying, we will eventually, we will have a laptop and means to pick up and send e-mails wherever we may be.
For the first year or so, we will be following a route that will take us through the Indian Subcontinent, N.E. and S.E. Asia. Many of these places will not be places we will want to settle, but are places we want to see, partly for experience, but mostly to wind down, and get back into the travelling way of life. I think that to really free yourself from the life you have led for a long period of time it would take maybe six months to a year. So this is the idea, to have a clear head, free from the ideals and way of life in the western world, before the true hunt for the new begins.
We have one flight booked, 26th April 2001, London Heathrow to Delhi, the rest will come naturally. I think the best forum is the travellers you meet, and they will be a great influence in the direction of our travels I'm sure, but the experience will be the fire in our travels. We hope to see you there.
Good luck to you all with the choices you make in your life.
