The “6-Month” Ramblings & Ticking The Bucketlist

Today marks 6 months since we left home with only one backpack each to explore the world! It doesn’t feel that long, yet thinking back to our first destination, Iceland, it seems ages ago.

We’ve visited 14 countries so far and still have a few more to go. We get asked the question, “what was your favourite place?”, and personally, I have a really hard time answering that question as each place has been special in one way or another. If I had to choose one, it would be Iceland. It was destination number one and felt as though we landed on a different planet. We were in awe from beginning to end and enjoyed every second of it. Our Iceland trip ended on such high as we hiked a crazy steep mountain to soak in a hot spring river and was it ever worth it! The one hour hike felt like an eternity with bugs swarming around our head and driving us absolutely batty but once we got the top and stepped into the river, the bugs were forgotten and it was pure bliss!

 

Iceland was followed by a month in the UK. Fowey, Cornwall won our hearts and is by far our favourite place we visited in England. It has been the only place so far that every single person you passed on the streets said, “how you doing today?”

 

 

After the UK, we boarded our very first RyanAir flight and headed to Sweden for a visit with Rick Smith. It’s always great to meet up with friends on the road and this definitely was another highlight. If you were to ask Bruce, he would tell you that sitting on Ricky’s sofa and chatting was one of his highlights of the trip so far.

Oh and the only place so far, we found my favourite wine! How I miss Kung Fu Girl! – Christine, we’ll have some catching up to do 😉

 

 

 

We headed towards Eastern Europe after a great week in Sweden and slowly made our way to the Portugal in the west and covered a total of 12 countries in Europe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What a glorious time we had for 4.5 months in Europe! There was still so much more we wanted to see but the rest of the world was calling so we boarded the plane bound for India at the end of October.

India was an incredible experience! Good and bad. Living in North America and travelling in Europe, it was such a culture shock. We landed in Delhi possibly at the worse time, with Diwali coming to an end and the city being engulfed in one of the worst smogs they’ve experienced. Measurements that were taken at the US Embassy, put the city’s Air Quality Index (AQI) at 999 at one point. The standard chart finishes at the “hazardous” level of 500!

The pollution and garbage that litters the streets were definitely the lows of our visit to India, to a point where we actually considered leaving but I’m happy we stuck it out. We met some amazing people, whether being locals or travellers and enjoyed some incredible sites in Rajasthan and not to mention the delicious food! Our goal was to step out of our comfort zone and have Kasm experience a different culture and we certainly achieved that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And that brings us to our current location, Chiang Mai, Thailand. We’ve been here just over two weeks. It’s been a great relaxing stay and we connected with some amazing travelling families here. It’s been nice for Kasm to be around other kids and make new friends.

 

Where to next? We’ll be heading to the beach with my parents for the rest of this month. Taiwan, Indonesia are next for Asia. We head to Australia followed by New Zealand in February. The plan was to circle the globe and head to South America to make our way home but the pull for Japan was too strong. That’s the beauty of not having any set plans. We’ll be Japan-bound early March for about 2-3 weeks and after that… who knows 😉 We’ll most likely head to Kuala Lumpur for a week and back to Europe to finish off the adventure.

The force is strong today! Can you guess what we’ll be doing? 🙂