The End

375 days after setting off and Air Canada flight 848 brings us back to Heathrow where it all started on 3rd July 2009.

The raw numbers show two complete circumnavigations of the globe on 169 flights. The first circuit involved flying 152,588 km, while the second trip was 88,060 km in 3.5 months. Total in-flight carbon is therefore in excess of 240,000 km. These were largely incident-free with just two aborted landings (one early on in Erbil and another on the short flight from Samoa to Tonga) and a near miss avoiding a bird-strike out of Vancouver on our commuter flight to Victoria.

In addition, we sailed 4,150 km on a cruise ship and drove rental cars over 38,200 km and I managed a run about every three days, running a total of 1,300 km.

Our trip took us to 38 (or was it 39?) countries and territories, so we covered 19% of the UN list of the world’s countries in a year. We had set out with the aims of spending more time in the places we love (South Africa), revisiting places we had not been to for some time (Canada, Australia, China) or only briefly visited (Japan) while also setting out on a discovery of the new (New Zealand and the Pacific islands). On the whole our travels reinforced previous experiences.

This being our first trip of this magnitude, we certainly learned a few things on the way, which will be useful for doing it again. And in no particular order here is Peter’s 8-point guide to travelling the world:

Packing & planning

• For me, take less clothes! - no matter what the airline luggage allowance says, being weighed down with three suitcases on a Japanese metro train in the rush hour is no fun.
• Organisation and planning really are good traits, allowing more time on the road to enjoy the experiences rather than having to be thinking about the next destination.
• Some places really just are not worth bothering with - I have this idealistic world view that places will not really turn out that bad but the illness and dirt of Madagascar and the bureaucracy of Russia on this trip were tiresome and will possibly help in Sarah reigning me in from booking a trip to Tajikistan for our 2011 wedding anniversary.
• It has been tremendous having a support network back home with Sarah’s sister only an e-mail away when we desperately need to transfer funds to pay for our Tanzanian safari as their credit card machine was not working. And for dealing with a year’s worth of mundane post and bank statements - I am sure despite protestations to the contrary she has thoroughly enjoyed the free snapshot into our lives! And the feeling of popularity due to the volume of our post received on a daily basis.
• The thought of spending a year with the same person might put people off contemplating a trip of this nature. We have had periods of not listening to each other, being ill and tired and grumpy with each other as well as disagreements over where we are going, but on the whole we have had a great time together. The trip has reinforced what we enjoy about each other’s company and has provided many shared experiences we can treasure and that are already oft-repeated.

Airlines & money

• Low cost airlines are not low price and cause no end of hassles (particularly if they are called Virgin Blue) when things go wrong. You are plum out of luck if you expect good service and low cost and the difference to the front end of full-service airlines is simply unbearable. Also, don’t believe independent ratings of airlines - we booked several flights on Korea’s Asiana based on their top rating by Skytrax only to find their beds extremely uncomfortable and their service indifferent.
• When you visit so many countries and with a weak domestic economy, currency hedging is a good skill to have and playing the currency markets can be of great benefit. We were in Oz when the pound was its weakest against the Aussie dollar and acquiring foreign exchange at times when the pound was stronger could have helped us out financially.
• We have dipped rather than plunged into the various cultures on our route. This was our intended strategy when we set off and it worked well. However, as we were preparing to leave Canada we saw a map of the vastness of this country and this brought home to us how much longer we could have spent in each place. Nevertheless, our experiences have given us definite ideas on where we would like to spend more time in the future.

Emotionally we have thoroughly enjoyed the enriching experience and the wonderful opportunity to spend extended periods in so many great places around the world. On reflection the world seems quite small despite the big numbers and only Japan stands out as truly culturally different to anywhere else on the planet. China may well be the future but it’s a future very similar to the present based on the pursuit of materialist consumerism.

We finish the trip healthier (maybe trimmer), culturally wiser and emotionally wealthier, which leaves us ready to do it all again - if anyone wants to pay us to disappear for a while.

Sarah has produced her own thoughts on the year of travel, shorter than mine of course………"Next time I’m doing it without Mr Dipstick"…..charming.

Enough of the emotional diatribe from me. We plan to keep the blog going on our future (less adventurous) travels, so keep an eye out for possibly a new web address but the same mad people at the keyboard.