Wandering around the world

My decision to travel around the world was, on the one hand, a rather impulsive one. After a conversation with my brother Phil (currently expatria in the Land Down Under), and an e-mail to my best friends from college, Lucy, who was on a medical placement in Peru, I decided it would be fun to meet her out in Lima (albeit only for a few days), rather than wait until her return to the UK. So from there, came a sketchy plan to spend three months in South America, which, in the space of less than a week, evolved into a RTW trip taking in South America for 3 months, 4 weeks in New Zealand, five-and-a-half months in Australia (principally to see my family, and to earn money to actually pay for the trip!), then taking 6 weeks to return via South East Asia. Since I set off on 20 January 2007, the more astute amongst you will notice that I am scheduled to be back in time for Christmas.

So all this is rather exciting and sudden. But is it? I have been thinking about a big adventure (a “gap year”, if you will), involving travel to far-flung places for a while; I think if I had to pin it down, I would say that my horizons were first opened to this possibility about a year ago when I was studying in Paris, and I met people (Belgians, mostly!) who had experienced much more exciting adventures than the orchestra tours I have been on to such places as Barcelona, Stockholm and St. Petersburg, beautiful as they are.

The time-line of events went something along the lines of the realisation that I had to stop doing what I was doing and go somewhere else occurring on a Wednesday, the realisation that I would have to hand my notice in at work on the Thursday, and actually doing it on the Friday. (That was a very liberating experience!) Meanwhile, I had told my family and work colleagues – that was the point at which I was committed to this crazy plan! Then I visited the travel agent’s the following week, and bought the ticket three weeks before I flew. I bought most of my kit (probably most of which I won’t use more than once, if at all) in the last week before departure, and actually packed the night I left. That was after going to the work Annual Party, which I rather egotistically took to be my leaving do. Not bad, a formal dinner, followed by an 8-piece band at the Portsmouth Guildhall just for an office boy who’d only been there 4½ months!

As most of you have probably guessed by now, I am writing this retrospectively, after several weeks of travel. I would like to apologise to those of you who may be reading this who felt that it would have been curteous of me to let you know I was going before I set off. You are, of course, right. I only managed to catch up with a handful of the people whom I had intended to see, call, or e-mail, and I can only offer in mitigation the fact that the weeks before my departure were rather stressful, and somewhat frenetic! To anyone considering embarking upon a similar project, I’d say “go for it!”. There are problems with trying to do everything at the last minute, and it’s not for everyone (particularly if you have a heart condition!), but I don’t have any regrets.

I will send more news when I have a chance. In the meantime, love and best wishes to all my kin. See you in a year!