Chapter 1: Trip planning
The questions we asked ourselves
What’s farthest away and difficult to get back to? What can thoroughly be explored in a limited amount of time? What are we each curious about? Where can we spend time in small towns and be immersed in new communities and cultures? What feels completely foreign and provides exciting opportunities for learning? Where can we spend time in nature — mountains, rainforest, wildlife, ocean reefs? What will bring us joy?
The plan
April: Hong Kong (3 days)
Malaysian Borneo (3 weeks)
Bangkok (3 days)
May: Sri Lanka (3 weeks)
May/June: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan (4 weeks)
June: Georgia (1 week)
Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia (1-2 weeks)
July: Serbia, Bosnia Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania, North Macedonia (3-4 weeks)
August: Southern Africa TBD, likely South Africa & Namibia (just Niki)
The approach
We’re each taking a duffel bag backpack with our basic essentials (plus some essential cute dresses for me). Our first 10 days are booked. We’ve each read our respective Lonely Planet guidebooks cover-to-cover and countless trip blogs, and have taken many notes in google docs. And that’s about it. Each leg of the journey will be booked a week or two ahead of time, leaving some room for spontaneity, but with plenty of advanced thinking about all the things we’d like to do.
We’re kicking off the adventure in Hong Kong, where I was born in 1987 and haven’t returned to since the age of 8. View from our Hong Kong apartment balcony pictured below. Then we start the first longer leg of the journey in Borneo’s Malaysian state of Sabah, where we’ll climb Mt Kinabalu, the highest mountain in Southeast Asia. My parents climbed Mt. Kinabalu in 1982, also pictured below. Note my father’s boat shoes.. ;)
Stay tuned for more!
“When we travel, we actually take three trips. There's the first trip of preparation and anticipation, packing and daydreaming. There's the trip you're actually on. And then, there's the trip you remember. The key is to keep all three as separate as possible. The key is to be present where you are right now.” — Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted, Suleika Jaouad
