Apparently you can’t just pack up and travel with your kids, for a year!…. want to bet on that?
One of the most common questions we get asked is HOW? How can you do this? How do you travel for a year? How can you afford it? How will it affect your kids education? In this short video I’ll answer all of the HOWS. Key to our how, is simply deciding. We decided we were going to do it, no matter what! Then we made it happen.
The questions are always around the How, Not once have I been asked Why? Why are you taking a year off. Why have you chosen that destination? Why are you leaving the week before Christmas?
Human nature is always seeking a roadmap. “If I wanted to do this HOW would I go about it?”. Like a recipe for travelling – the recipe does not care who is following it, if you complete each step carefully and in order you will get the same result. How cool is that?
What a recipe does not do is answer the WHY?
Our trip is entirely made of WHYs. Why do we want to motorhome to Tromso in the winter? Keryn has a passion for nature and has, for as long as she can remember, wanted to lay in the snow beneath the Aurora Borealis. Is that not reason enough to make it happen? No, OK, Logan wintered over at Scott Base, Antarctica and lay in the snow beneath the Southern Lights (Auroa Australis) and he wants to do the same in the northern hemisphere – so we have a firm WHY. Now we work out the HOW! Is this a slightly silly and very difficult thing to do? Yes, but just look at the WHY! We simply have to make this happen – there is no doubt we will het there.
Back to the BIG question. Why are we travelling fora year with our two kids? Our why is made from a number of smaller, but compelling reasons.
Keryn was lucky enough to travel at around the same age as our youngest, Zara, and it changed her life. Personally I spent a year as an exchange student (for a full year) in Peru when I was 17. Some of my best friends in the world were made during this time.
Why go now?
As parents (and for me, an older parent) when our bodies and minds start to break down we want to have lived our lives. Sure, travelling after retirement would be financially easier, easier with work and more logical (isn’t that what you are supposed to do?), but no self-respecting 23 year old would want to travel the globe with their 65 year old Dad. A compelling WHY to go NOW!
But what about Covid? Why go so close to the tapering of this world changing event? Now is the time where symptoms will be recognised and treatment plans well rehearsed. Now is the time when personal hygiene is still taken seriously (a worldwide increase in simple hand washing). Now is the time the world economy needs our support. If blogging our amazing adventures in Namibia inspire one other traveller to spend their Pound, Euro or USD in south west Africa that is a win – all compelling Whys!! Now we just have to work out how to make it happen, we really have no choice but to go!!
Why is a purpose, cause or belief and has nothing to do with how we are making this trip possible.
Simply copying what we have done, or how we did it should not be enough, discover your why, then start your true journey. Sure, learn from what we did well – learn from where we screwed up – learn some insider tricks – but go because of your why!
VIDEO COMING SOON…..
Most nights after the children are in bed the laptop, tablet and note pads come out and we pick up where we left off. Our trip or parts of our trip have changed at least a hundred times.
As we develop a better understanding of VISA rules and when our world wide friends have holidays/birthdays/weekends away we massage our timeline into theirs.
Just last night I received a message from the governing body of the Monaco Grand Prix advising me I was too old to work for them – 4 extra days, just like that.