Off the Couch and On the Road

It seemed a lifetime later, though it was really only about a year, when I boarded my flight home, with as much anticipation about arriving as I had about leaving. I hadn’t counted on the world being so fascinating, so beautiful and scary, so addictive. In short, I hadn’t expected to love the anarchy of travelling as much as I did. I left a planner and came back a traveller.

As I thought back over the entire year, I realised that the moments that epitomised my trip, that I looked on with fond memories, were ones I could never have captured in photographs, that I couldn’t hand over to a fellow traveller with a phone number and instructions on how to book. When I looked at advertisements in travel agency windows and smiled, saying ‘I’ve been there’, it didn’t so much remind me of looking at the pyramids themselves, for example, as when we all threw ourselves into the Nile on inflatable toys and felt the sun on our faces and the cool water on our feet. Or when I sat next to a praying nun looking up at heavenly art in St Peters Basilica, or viewed sunset over the Greek islands, or saw the majestic Lion rest after a kill on the Masai Mara.

Surprising then, that I settled into life fairly quickly after arriving back in Sydney. I found myself a great job in PR in the tourism industry, and worked on getting the new house and a few other things on my list.

There was a second list though - 4W-driving through the Australian outback, trekking Maccu Pichu and the Grand Canyon, Irish pubs, the famous Trans-Mongolian railway, Michaelangelo’s David, the streets of Prague and the city of New York…true, I wouldn’t be able to do them in a year, but I would try for a lifetime.

-Sarah

Ok, just to make sure you understand the background of my experience with dates and times - I am quite good with a diary, a calendar, a mobile alarm and lots of people reminding me about appointments. I really am. But when your travelling, dates, days, times and details don’t take such a prevalence to things like where you are, what you’re experiencing, and where the closest coffee shop is. At the end of the day, I haven’t been all that great with dates over the past year, purely because I haven’t needed to be.

So when the sister and I woke up that final day at the exact same moment and looked at each other, I already knew what she was going to say. It had something to do with realising that her flight back to Sydney was that night, and not the following night as we had planned (well, planned is a very loose term, let’s use the word assumed instead).

We hightailed it back to Vancouver and just got her fed and packed, a taxi waiting outside, and then she was gone, and I was there eating a kebab with pepsi and biding my time until my flight the next morning. And that was it. I was going home.

-Sarah

The countdown had begun to the end of my RTW trip, and I mentally prepared myself by repeating the words 'house', 'job' and 'credit card debt' until I felt comfortable enough that I didn't shudder. It had gone by so ... [Continue reading this entry]