Our Year On The Road #2
Well, it has been a little while... It feels like yesterday, but it was over 5 years ago when Alex and I decided to quit our jobs and go on a sabbatical year around the world, which gave birth to this blog, Our Year On The Road.
Back in 2018 when the word 'coronavirus' only made you think of beer 🍻 and travel was (relatively) easy and a lot cheaper, we embarked on a year-long sabbatical to travel the world and see lots of family & friends along the way.
How did we do?
Well, by all means, it was a huge success! In just over a year we:
- Visited all the continents (except Antarctica!)
- Travelled to 24 countries and 94 cities 🗺️
- Got 6 approved visas and 1 failed visa (no Canada for us ☹️)
- Took 37 plane trips ✈️
- Had 2x bouts of bad food poisoning (both from Alex, in India and Peru 🤢)
- Took one trip to the hospital (thank you to the amazing hospitality in Japan!)
- Met and made countless friends along the way
It was a year filled with ups, downs and unexpected detours and we learnt so much about ourselves, each other and the wonderful world we live in. Since then we have bought a house and got married! Two big milestones that we weren't even thinking about when we sat down for that first dinner in India...
📖 Read more about our trip highlights here
OYOTR, part 2
It's now a post-COVID world, we are five years older (and hopefully a bit wiser), and we have cooked up our next plan: OYOTR v2, around Australia!
The idea came to life on one of our many lockdown walks in our neighbourhood of Naremburn, dreaming of the day when we could leave our 5km radius and see more. Dreaming of another international trip felt too farfetched at the time, so we settled on the dream of travelling around Australia, living in different cities and experiencing different living situations.
There are three main differences this time round:
- We are staying in Aus! It's a HUGE country (something you really start realising when you track km's from city to city). We have never been to WA and we have both only ever lived in Sydney.
- We are going to keep working: we find ourselves in the fortunate position where we both have jobs that are remote-first and have been very open to our plan of travelling and working in different cities around Australia.
- We are not just 2 anymore: We are so excited to take our family dog Summer on the road with us this time. She is jumping into the boot and coming along for the ride, sniffing her way across Aus.
So how are we going to do it?
Firstly, a question we get asked a lot, we are not doing it in a motorhome. As much as we love motorhome life (as seen here), it is just not practical: we will continue working full time, and as both of us spend most of our time in meetings, we would absolutely drive each other crazy in a tight motorhome. Plus, there's Summer now, and she needs to be comfortable and have her 14 hours of sleep everyday, right?
Accommodation
So we decided we will stay at pet-friendly places: Airbnb, short term rentals, housesitting, or staying with friends and family. While it might not be as cost effective, it will mean we can carry on with our lives and give Summer some much needed comfort and routine.
Transport
We got ourselves a small SUV for this journey, and are packing our lives in it. We have added the following accessories for additional storage space:
Budgeting
We learned a lot of lessons during our first Year On The Road when it comes to budgeting, but the main one is that early planning pays off. We have been saving money for this journey for about 6 months prior to the start, have spreadsheets controlling the ins and outs of our money, and will keep a close eye on our finances. But in short, we are expecting to spend with accommodation the same amount of money that we would on a rental place back in Sydney.
Drive days
Drive days will have to be thought through a bit, for two main reasons:
- Summer. With her in the car, it just means that we'll have to have regular breaks so that we all can stretch our legs/paws, use the toilet as needed and keep ourselves properly fed and rested. We are expecting that our drive days would be no longer than about 800km / 9 hours.
- Work. Since we will continue working, we need to make sure that we are both setup and logged in by 9am on a Monday. Therefore, we are currenly planning our drive days to be on weekends, ideally on Saturdays, so that we can get to the next destination and have Sunday to unpack / settle in before the work week commences again.
We kick off the journey on Sunday, May 14 2023. We can't wait to start this new adventure and share our observations and learnings along the way.
A&F.