Home Sweet Home

Here we go......


We have been back for 3 weeks now and have been hesitant to write the final blog. 2009 had flown by and we are sad to finally say that its over. Coming home was a bitter sweet experience. It has been amazing to finally see our families and friends, eat at our favorite spots, expand our wardrobe and best of all...take hot showers when ever we feel like it - and we still savour every minute. The hardest part about being back is getting used to being in one place. We have reached our final destination and there is no next adventure. We know where we sleep tonight, we have a car parked outside to take us where we want to go and the clerk at the store charges us the same price they charge everyone. Although we were itching for this life a month ago, we now find it very unexciting. I wish someone would just try to rip me off to liven things up a bit - maybe we will become AT&T customers again!

Just to sum up our trip.....we were away for exactly 9 months (276 days). During this time we traveled through 23 countries taking 23 flights, 33 boats, 8 long-distance trains and over 140 buses (which were about 10 hrs on average).

To give you some sense of how often we moved, we estimate that we changed accommodation over 130 times - that's 130 times trying to figure out where to stay, how to get there and--best of all--130 times negotiating the price for the night. On top of that we have spent more than 30 nights in transit - these included nights on buses, in bus stations, on trains, in train stations, on planes, in airports, on boats and outdoors!

Our favorite spots were Malawi, Nepal and Sulawesi. While India was tough to travel in the summer heat and we were sick most of our time there it takes the top prize for best food of the trip. We still think about the yummy paneer curries, fresh naan bread and the cheap thalis. The hardest travel goes to Kalimantan,

where people (nicest we ever met) spoke almost no English and the lack of infrastructure made each day's journey an adventure. The place we will continue to dream about escaping to still is and always will be Lestari on Kadidiri Island (in the Togian island chain, Gulf of Tomini, Sulawesi, Indonesia) where we spent a wonderful week with the greatest family, amongst an eclectic band of like-minded nomads. We met some amazing people around the world (locals and travelers) and come home with many amazing memories and new friendships that we will always cherish.

Many have asked about our budget, and how we did sticking to it. You may recall that at the outset, Todd set a target of roughly $1000 a month (to cover daily living expenses and travel costs, but excluding the larger planned flights). The cost ended up averaging to about $1500 a month, only because the cost

of moving about is generally substantial. The two of us could easily live on $15-20 a day, most places we went, but as we kept constantly moving, that cost expanded, making keeping to the budget very difficult. As we predicted, sticking to a strict budget forced us to get creative; it forced us to be inquisitive; it forced us to walk... a lot; and it forced us to eat on the street, and shop in the market, and sleep in local accommodation, where the locals eat and shop and sleep. The result was a much different experience (a much richer one) than most travelers have when they venture abroad. At times, it was painful and irritating, but we agree now that it was well worth it. As for the larger expenditures, the $4000 spent climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro was well spent, but it could be done for half that, if negotiated in-country and you really want to rough it. The $3000 spent visiting Bhutan for five days was worth it, but we would highly recommend visiting when you've got more cash (like $8k), and can spend a good two weeks exploring that amazing country. The $30 Tatyana spent on a cut and color in Bangkok...

The worst part of the trip was a bus accident in Malawi. It was just 3 weeks into our trip and we decided not to blog about it at the time to save my mother 9 months of grief. Our

bus driver was driving so fast (through the mountains) that as we flipped and rolled, the 40-seat AC bus leveled over 60 meters of roadside jungle - fortunately coming to rest just 20 meters from the edge of a cliff. We were sitting right in the middle and came away relatively unscathed (unlike the other passengers) apart from a few goose-eggs on our heads and sore muscles. The worst thing about the accident is that it was right at the beginning and it made the next 125 bus rides just a little more unbearable.

So here we are. There are jobs to seek, a home to find, and a family to plan. We're restless, and it will be difficult to strike a balance that keeps us appropriately un-comfortable. And upon coming home, we see with new eyes the country in which we live -how much sense it all makes to us, yet how impractical it is; how wasteful; how unsustainable. We're shocked at the

cost of things we once devoured as necessities; shocked at the consumerism that seems to be keeping this whole place afloat; shocked at how poor our long-distance infrastructure is compared to that of even the poorest countries. Shocked to find that it is actually possible for property to lose value in San Francisco -though not by much, it would seem. And we're intrigued. How is it possible for both GM and the UAW to still be going concerns? How did the value of our investments nearly double while we were gone, when we can't find evidence of anything really changing? How did the great new frontier of political cooperation fall back to partisan lines within, what, a month? How on earth did Jay Leno get his own show?

For all of you who have followed this blog for the last ten months, who have endured Todd's many rants, and bad jokes, and constant commentary on the quality and consistency of his poop, thank you. Really. At times we feared that the (sometimes very long) intervals between postings would serve to shake our readers, and surely it did for some. But we were truly very amazed to learn who had joined us over the course of 2009 -folks we hadn't heard from in years. That was exciting, and gave us the fuel to keep cranking out these posts. Upon returning we now understand how many people were actually following this blog... and that is really cool.

From the outset, from the moment over a year ago that we revived our shared dream of traveling, we never looked back and never doubted that it was the right thing to do. On this trip we saw amazing things, and met and learned from so many people from all over the world. And our perspective changed, and we're better for it. So much clearer to us now is the true value of work, and its purpose, not as an end, but merely a means to much more important ends. And despite the moments

(and there were very few) we wanted to leave one another stranded on an island, we came home still joined at the hip. While we can't promise the same experience for those who've been mildly inspired by this blog, we can promise that shedding your baggage and hitting the wide open road cannot possibly take you in the wrong direction. And the sooner you do it, the better. However, for those of you who think your chance has passed, nonsense. We met more than a few young couples traveling with children in some pretty wild places, and we met many more seniors who'd closed up shop and opted to live out their retirement years in the world, learning and living. It's never too late to eat bugs.

In the years to come, we look forward to sharing our many stories with you all, and we hope, some of your own...

Todd and Tatyana