Life on the road: how far we have we come

So, as we say adieu to yet another country, I’m thinking back on the first six months of our journey. And wow, what a trip. I guess the unexpected events like – night squid fishing on Halong Bay in Vietnam.  Attending an opium ceremony in India and trying to imagine how these elders ever sort any of the village’s troubles out when they are out of their tree. The lioness staring me in the eye in Kenya as she munched her way through the early morning buffalo kill we came across. The crocodile selfie, bad, bad idea!  Missing the start of our boat trip down the Li river in China for the sunrise because the proprietors had locked us inside our hotel.

It’s not all fun

Drinking snake wine on the Mekong Delta, eating buffalo balls in Kenya. Falling down a sinkhole in the ironically named Ned Kelly’s Last Stand toilets in Hong Kong. Three months on my leg is still in pain. Christmas day spent with Iain on a drip in hospital in Cambodia as we both had dengue fever. I still have a fear of dodgy looking pavements and mosquitos. The stories, the lists, are endless.

Journey far enough, and you will meet yourself

We have encountered some wonderful characters and met up with family and friends, some I hadn’t seen since I was a child! And there’s been a lot of time for personal reflection. Being disconnected from your own way of life, you understand things in another light. And shining a light on yourself is not always pretty; the flaws are there to see.

When confronted with different realities, too, your own life falls into perspective. The baffling city of the ‘slumdogs’ in Mumbai. People, all over the world, living in their peaceful rural ways, with next to nothing, and happy for it.  Botswana, ohh Botswana.  If you crave to understand life, and recognise the superficial absurdity, we call living – go to Botswana. (Life-risking trip in a dugout canoe not recommended if you are an overweight middle-aged couple like us. How we didn’t sink, I do not know.)

Life: live every day of it

And then, as life is life, death follows wherever you go. I learned of the passing of one of our little friends in the orphanage in Cambodia just before we arrived there. Another University friend of mine was diagnosed and tragically died from cancer in the space of time we took off around the world. That has shocked me most, and every day I am entirely, utterly grateful to be doing this. First, we were sharing stories of my journey; next, I’m reading about her funeral. As she said – “our time is short and bloody unpredictable, don’t waste a second of it. Live, live, live.”

But yes, the saying is true, if you travel far enough, you will find yourself. I wonder though when back to the 9 to 5 if I can keep that free-spirited person alive? And how, in any case, can I even return to the 9 to 5; it feels unimaginable.

The world at your feet

For now, I feel a little apprehensive about the next six months. Not least because it is all now perfectly unplanned! As I sit here at the underside of the earth looking down on Sydney harbour, all I know is that I have the world at my feet. I have the opportunity to make whatever I want of the next six months of my life and go wherever I want to go in the world until we reach home. I feel an absolute responsibility to myself to make sure that every day counts. And honestly, that’s scary!

But ohhh how unimaginably wonderful and eternally grateful I am.