This is a very hard blog post to write because part of me doesn’t want this trip to have an “end” although the more logical side of my brain knows that we have to get back to real life and school and income-generating pursuits to fund future adventures. But here it is, my concluding blog post with a few of my reflections on the trip.

The basic trip stats

All in all we stayed in 11 countries for more than a week each – Japan, Australia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Nepal, Turkey, Sweden, Germany, Netherlands and Peru.  Plus there’s an additional two countries where we just stayed for one night each (Switzerland and Austria), and one additional country where we spent two days (Norway), but no nights.  So technically it was 14 countries visited outside of Canada.

We took 27 flight segments on 17 different airlines.  After doing LOTS of research, it turned out to be cheaper to buy separate one way tickets for each leg rather than connecting them into multi-destination tickets, or around-the-world tickets.  One-off deals and low-cost airline options are easier to find when itineraries are simple.

We packed our bags 56 times, including our departure from Toronto and the 55 other accommodations we stayed at.  Three times we went back to the same place twice, but still had to re-pack and unpack in between, and on two separate weeks of our trip we moved daily (our Nepal hiking trip and Germany biking trip) so that really drove up the number.

We didn’t take a count of the number of Ubers, Grabs (Asia’s version of Uber), buses, trains, boats and vans – I wish we had, but needless to say it was ridiculously high number that makes me exhausted just thinking about it. Our scariest van ride was probably our speedy middle of the night ride across the island of Bali. Our most rickety vehicle used had to be the tuk-tuks in Cambodia.

Given all of the movement, our losses were quite limited: 4 out of 5 water bottles we brought went missing; one pair of shorts didn’t return from a laundry service; one pair of sunglasses were left by the side of the road at the top of a steep hill; and, one baseball cap ran away in our last week.  

We only had one theft (of about $500 in cash) when we were unexpectedly forced to check our small carry-on bags on Air Emirates and our bags were rummaged through by airline/airport employees.  After this we were militant about avoiding airline employees who wanted us to check bags and we boarded as early as possible.  Lucas and his “doe eyes” usually helped on this front.

Answering the common questions

We kept getting the same questions time and time again about how we pulled this trip off, so here’s a quick summary of our common answers.

Admittedly planning was NOT easy.  I wasn’t working for the 6 months prior to leaving on this trip, and I’m not sure how I would have been able to do all of the research and booking had I been working. That was definitely a luxury.  The country selection process was partly democratic and part benevolent dictator but everyone got a voice in the country selection.  We chose to spend ~2 weeks in each location to be able to see a breadth of countries, but in each country we tried to not move around too much so that we could get to know each place well that we did visit. Spending a week in a city allowed us to get past the tourist sites and do some more “normal” types of activities, like going jogging or roaming through a shopping mall.  I think that did work, but we broke the “stay in each place for a week” rule a number of times, although always for a good reason, so it never felt too bad at the time.  

I did book ALL flights and accommodations in advance – with a budget conscious family of 5 this was the only way to do it, and it certainly made the trip itself less stressful because we always knew what was coming next.  The travel books from the public library were so helpful, and my favourite sites were Booking.com for hotels (which made it really easy to figure out how a particular accommodation would fit the 5 of us) and Hopper (for flight price tracking), although I more often than not did the final bookings on the direct hotel or airline sites.

We traveled with only carry-on bags – the smaller version that are accepted on European and Asian airlines.  Carry-on bags were not only the secret to easy airline travel but also made it way easier to pack up each time because we really didn’t have much stuff.  After 6 months we were tremendously sick of our clothes, and we all looked pretty ragged, but it was still definitely the right decision.  There was nothing in our bags that wasn’t used.  We shipped one box of gear to Nepal for our hiking trip, and were happy to send that back to Toronto at the end of the hike with a few extra souvenirs tucked that we didn’t have to carry around the world.

We did not “home school” the kids, preferring the “no schooling” method, or more accurately “world schooling” as some call it.  We still whole heartedly believe in the structured education system, but I also strongly believe that it’s OK and healthy for kids to take a break from that.  Although the letter of the law in Canada is that kids must attend school (I was asked this MANY times), the administration from each of the kids’ schools was 100% supportive of the trip.  We did try to keep up a bit of ad hoc writing and math, and a lot of reading for the younger two. Nicholas did one grade 10 course online which was painfully boring for him, but it did get finished just in time near the end of the trip. I was most impressed with the level of conversation we were able to have with the kids about the countries we visited on so many topics like war, the environment, poverty, sports, currency and food.  I don’t think however they realize how much they absorbed, but hopefully this will become clearer for them over time.

Observational tidbits

I don’t feel like I have the authority to make global sweeping statements, but a few observations I had along the way that I wanted to share.

• Climate change shouts loud and clear all across the world. There was a definite understanding from people of all cultures and education levels that the world’s climate is dramatically changing and its impacts were very clear.  There was less discussion however about what people should be doing about it at a local level and while we certainly observed pockets of environmental consciousness, there was less action than I was hoping to see. 
• I really take clean water for granted.  It shocked us all that so many countries still don’t have access to clean water, and even with all of the technology that is available on this front, many governments don’t have enough money to update their water infrastructure or it’s something that they don’t prioritize.  It ties right in to the environmental issue too because the amount of plastic used to distribute water, because people can’t access it any other way, is baffling.
• I can say with quite a lot of certainly based on these countries we visited and the 25+ other countries I have visited in the past that people are fundamentally kind and helpful.  We were greeted and helped by so many people and everyone was so so patient with our limited language skills and our common confusion about where we were going or what we were supposed to be doing.  Although we were often warned about pick pocketers in various areas we visited, we did always feel safe and well protected.
• My empathy for newcomers to Canada has certainly increased on this trip.  I traveled to many foreign countries in my younger years, but there was something about being in a new place as a parent and wanting to make everything smooth and safe for my family, that brough a new perspective.  It takes a long time to figure things out in a new country, a new culture or a new language and it likely takes an endless amount of time to feel like you have a new home.
• Privilege is a word that ran through my mind throughout this trip and I made sure that the kids understood it as well.  We are so privileged to have been able to take such a trip and our day to day lives in Canada are so privileged. I want to make sure our family remembers this when we go back home so that even when we’re busy, we remember to think of others and give back.

Happiness

I had to pinch myself so many times on this trip because I couldn’t believe how lucky we were and how happy I was to have this opportunity.  The stars really did align to allow us to fit this trip into our busy lives and I feel tremendously lucky.  I know that travelling forever wouldn’t make me happy, but having this dedicated time to spend with my family and see and do so many amazing things brought me so much joy. I think I’ve also realized that I get more energy and happiness from being in nature than being in an urban environment.  While I love a good dinner out and the buzz of a city, I think future vacations and our retirement plans will focus more even more on the outdoors than they already do.

If I did the trip again…

With the kids starting off to university in just a couple of years, I’m very sure there won’t be a repeat of this trip, but if I did do it again there’s not a lot that I would change, but here are a few things:

• I would keep it the same total length but move around less. The constant packing and unpacking was tough, although we’d need to make sure to have more non-tourist activities planned in each place if we were staying longer than a week. That’s not always easy to organize.
• I would try to organize more with friends and families around the world.  We did have a few family and friend meetups (thank you to many!!) but the kids missed having other kids to hang out with and we would have loved more adult company.  That’s always hard to organize but I might push harder on that next time.
• This is just a small one, but we loved getting a box with country-specific clothes in Nepal that we had shipped ahead of time.  It would have been fairly easy to organize this for other places, so I would do more of that next time
• In general I preferred the big adventures we had (like hiking trip, bike trip, canyoning etc.) than the tourist-sites, but the big adventures can be very expensive. Next time I would see if I could figure more of these out before the trip which might allow us to find more budget-friendly options.

Coming home

We’ve been home almost a week now and the trip is starting to feel very far away already, but I think that’s how life goes, and I’ll remember it forever. Thanks for reading my blog and travelling along with us!

We literally have thousands of photos, but Steve has created a great highlights reel here: Lake Waslander Family Sabbatical Highlights on Flickr . Enjoy!