Extended World Travel » Why Travel

Why travel – again…

Maria — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 19:05:59 +0000

In our last blog post, we talked about the why. Why you would want to travel and the fact that being clear about this can help you to get over roadblocks that stand in your way.

Anyway, we have a friend, Litsong from Taiwan. She’s a real globetrotter and travels several months every year, all over the world, most of the time together with her son.

When we asked her why she travels, she said this, which we really think sums it up in a great way:

“I travel so I can have a change of pace and path in my life. Traveling helps me to still my curiosity about people, to create new possibilities for my livelihood and to discover new places. It gives me the opportunity to be with friends, both new and old and the opportunity to live in the present, being in the here and now and having fun!”

Why the why is important for the how

Maria — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 21:05:38 +0000

They say that if you have a really strong why, the how will very much sort itself out.

Of course you can apply this for traveling as well. If you’re very clear about why you want to do that 6 (or 3 or 12) months trip, you can be sure to start finding solutions to obstacles that stand in the way between you and your journey. Some questions you can ask yourself to strengthen your why are:

• What specifically motivates you to do some long term traveling? When you think about traveling, what is it that makes your heart beat a little faster?

• What do you want to experience?

• What do you see your trip to lead to?

• Who do you want to be when you get back?

• What is your biggest motivation to travel?

Contemplate this for a while and get yourself a really strong why!

They say that if you have a really strong why, the how will very much sort itself out.

• What specifically motivates you to do some long term traveling? When you think about traveling, what is it that makes your heart beat a little faster?

• What do you want to experience?

• What do you see your trip to lead to?

• Who do you want to be when you get back?

• What is your biggest motivation to travel?

Contemplate this for a while and get yourself a really strong why!

We dreamt about Fiji, and made a reality of that dream – how about you?

Why travel? Meet the Sathre-Vogel family who’s traveling from Alaska to Argentina – on bike!

Maria — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 14:50:12 +0000

A while ago, we made an interview with Nancy Sathre-Vogel, mother in the “family on bikes” which also consists of John, dad and the 11 year old twins Davy and Daryl.

The family started off on an amazing journey in June 2008, and now just celebrated 2 years on the road! The start was far up in northern America, in Alaska, and from there they are pedaling themselves on their bikes all the way down to the most southern end of South America. This trip will end when they arrived where they can’t go any further south and the plan is to be there some time next year.

That’s what we call traveling! By the way, here we’re not talking days or weeks or even months of travel, but years! At the time of our interview, they were in Ecuador and have now come even further on their long journey along the Pan American Highway and are at this moment in Peru. Their journey has been filled with the most diverse challenges and adventures, and of course, rewards.

We we’re so excited to talk to them and we think that there were so many important issues that came up in the interview. Like for example:

• The advantages with being a traveler

• Why traveling really can be peace promoting

• How to overcome buts, or obstacles, that keep you at home instead out there traveling the world

• Why traveling is so educational for kids (and for adults)

• What you can expect a trip like this to cost and examples of ways to finance it

• Why you shouldn’t postpone your long journey until the kids have grown up or until you’re retired

• The one most important thing to do to be able to go traveling the world

They really have a lot to share, about traveling, about their own trip and about many important aspects of life. And one of the things Nancy brings up and which really strikes my heart is when she talks about them as “ a family working together toward a common goal – something all too rare in today’s society”.

That’s so much our experience as well, that when you’re traveling the world as a family, you are a team, and you have a common goal, and this really makes you grow not only individually but as a family as well. And we totally agree with Nancy there, that’s not very common in today’s society.

So, be sure to get more inspired and motivated to go on your own trip by listening to our 40 min interview with these experienced family travelers here.

To learn more about them and their fantastic journey, as well as to get lots of tips for your own trip visit them at www.familyonbikes.org.

A while back we made an interview with Nancy Sathre-Vogel, mother in the “family on bikes” which also consists of John, dad and the 11 year old twins Davy and Daryl.

By the way, here we’re not talking days or weeks or even months of travel, but years. That’s what we call traveling!

At the time of our interview, they were in Ecuador and have now come even further on their long journey along the Pan American Highway. Their journey has been filled with the most diverse challenges and adventures, and of course, rewards.

We we’re so excited to talk to them and we think that there were so many important issues that came up in the interview. Like for example:

• The advantages with being a traveler

• Why traveling really can be peace promoting

• How to overcome buts, or obstacles, that keep you at home instead out there traveling the world

• Why traveling is so educational for kids (and for adults)

• What you can expect a trip like this to cost and examples of ways to finance it

• Why you shouldn’t postpone your long journey until the kids have grown up or until you’re retired

• The one most important thing to do to be able to go traveling the world

That’s so much our experience as well, and we totally agree with Nancy. When you’re traveling the world as a family, you are a team, and you have a common goal, and this really makes you grow not only individually but as a family as well and that’s not very common in today’s society.

So, be sure to get more inspired and motivated to go on your own trip by listening to our 40 min interview with these experienced family travelers here:

Download audio file (Familyonbikes.mp3)

To learn more about them and their fantastic journey, as well as to get lots of tips for your own trip visit them at www.familyonbikes.org

Extended Travel as a way to Improve Relationships

Maria — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 13:50:36 +0000

There is a common belief among many, who haven’t tried it yet, that your marriage or the relationship with your kids wouldn’t survive if you did some extended travel together. For us, this is not our experience at all. And neither the experience of almost all the travelers we have met throughout the years. On the contrary, the vast majority of them say that traveling together for longer periods can be a great way to improve relationships (those who don’t think so, often agree that their relationship wouldn’t have survived even if they’d stayed at home).

As we see it, extended travel is one of the best things if you want to improve relationships, and a great way to get a strong connection to your kids

In our everyday lives today, there’s not much time to look after our relationships. It’s not uncommon that couples hardly get the chance to see each other because of heavy working loads as well as other commitments. And many parents and children only meet in the early morning or late at night when they are already exhausted or stressed out. Living under these circumstances doesn’t allow much room to enjoy and improve close relationships and make them stronger.

One of the biggest advantages of doing some extended travel together is, as we see it, the possibilities to reconnect with people close to you and rediscover who they are. When you’re away with your near and dear ones, exploring the world, you’ll experience adventure and have lots of fun together and learn new things about yourselves and about the world. And most important of all, you’ll have time!

To spend lots of time together with your children is a good thing. The concept of small amounts of “quality time” doesn’t always work. Have you ever experienced having planned some really fun quality time like Christmas or Disneyland and it turns into a disaster? Expectations can be so high at occasions like that that there’s no way to live up to them.

Going away on a long journey gives you lots of time together. You get the good as well as the bad (whatever that is) and from the quantity time, you will get lots of quality time as well. The times we have spent traveling with each other and our children have almost exclusively been an absolute joy for us. It has brought us closer together and we now share lots of great memories. So for us, traveling has really been a way to improve relationships, and not only within our family, but of course also with friends as well and relatives who have been part of our trips in one way or another.

Traveling together has really helped us to create a strong family bond and if this is something you’re dreaming of too, we think there’s no better way than extended travel!

“I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.” – Mark Twain

Our new book: “Extended World Travel – How to take a break from the rat race and travel the world with your family for 6 months – or more” is finally ready!

Maria — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 18:24:10 +0000

Yes, at last it’s ready! It has been a long journey to come this far, both geographically as well as mentally.

This is not just an ordinary travel book. It is not for finding out about cheap airlines or affordable hotels. Nor is it a guide to what tourist sites we think you should visit or which backpack to buy. No, what we want to share with you are actually the things that come before all that.

When we have been traveling around the world, we have been asked, again and again, how we can travel with our family and have the lifestyle that we have. We have realized these are things people are much more interested in than the more practical stuff (which you btw can find loads of great information about in other travel books and on travel sites on the internet).

So what we want to share in our book, as well as on this blog, are things that will inspire you and support you to make that dream trip of yours possible in the first place.

The answers to the questions that we through the years have been trying to explain to people, and now are sharing with you in our book, are things like:

• Why traveling actually is good for you. You’ll see how you too can benefit from taking time off and go out in the world

• How to get the money you’ll need to go traveling the world

• How to find the time that will allow you to take months off from your everyday commitments

• What you can do to make it possible to leave your job and go on the journey of your life instead

• How to handle the school issue so you can take your kids out in the world and let them experience things first hand

• How to deal with dream stealers like unsupportive friends, coworkers and family members and instead find the support you need to really be able to go on your dream trip

• How to handle issues you might have around travel and health, travel and crime, or maybe fear of flying – and learn how you can prepare yourself to feel and be more safe

• What you want to do on your trip, how to let your specific interests and needs allow you to indulge in the things that really make your heart sing

• Means of transport and how to get around on your trip, how to find accommodations and, of course, where you want to go. You’ll be excited when you find your perfect way to create your best trip ever

• How to travel and stay for free. How your personal areas of interests and your own network of friends can make your trip both extra fun and interesting as well as extremely economical

• How to continue to live a freer and more independent life even when you’re back from your trip (if you do choose to come back)

What’s in your backpack?

Magnus — Fri, 14 May 2010 15:58:59 +0000

The other day we watched the movie “Up in the Air”. It is definitely about traveling, lots of traveling and especially about flying. So this post is in contrast to our two previous ones where we wrote about slow travel. In this movie the flying and getting from one place to the next is more or less the destination in itself.

We are not here to tell you that one way is better than the other since it’s all up to you. Our personal preference though is to travel slow, rather than rushing from one city to the next only seeing airports and hotel lobbies.

Anyway this is a Hollywood production about a man who spends 320 days per year or more traveling the US, as part of his work. And one of his main goals in life is to accumulate as many frequent flyer miles as possible. So although this definitely is a traveling life style, it really doesn’t have much in common with our approach to traveling and why we believe it is good for you.

The movie itself is not that exceptional and it is not because of the travel theme we mention it here. No, our reason for bringing it up is that the main character also does some freelance speaking engagements where he talks about his take on life. The title of his speech is “What’s in your backpack?” and you can have a look at a 2 minute clip of it below.

Play Video

I can very well relate to what he is saying. All the “stuff” that we have definitely makes it hard to move. Even though we have managed to unburden ourselves several times in one way or another from all the things at home, it still takes an effort every time to set off. As soon as we get back home after a longer journey and settle down for a while, stuff and commitments get hold of us again and the straps on our shoulders get heavier.

Sometimes it can be nice to be settled down, have your stuff around, fulfill your duties and just relax in the comfort of your home. And then at other times the desire to just let go arises. And right now that feeling is rising within us. We want to once again unburden ourselves from things and take off. We don’t know in what way yet and how we will unburden ourselves – but rest assure, we have no intention of doing it with fire . We know very well that there are other ways, and some of them we have already written about.

You can either do this in a more permanent way by selling and giving your stuff away and resigning from commitments like work. Or you can choose to just put your life on hold for a while by renting out or storing your stuff and asking for a leave of absence from work.

However you choose to do it doesn’t matter. It is just that if you are hoping to go somewhere at all for a longer period of time, you will somehow have to unload some of that stuff in your backpack. And when you do, interesting things might happen and you may realize that you have no desire of putting them back in later on, when you finally have got them out

Why travel? Meet Anna and Sven who volunteered in Romania and found the dream place for their family

Maria — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 20:00:14 +0000

When you ask the question – Why travel? – you can get as many answers as there are people. We have some very close friends, the Dalmin family – Anna and Sven and the kids Efraim, Johannes and Tilja, and they have their special story. They are Swedish as well, but spend their life in two different places – Sweden and Romania. When we had them visiting a while ago, we took the opportunity to ask them about how they ended up in Romania of all places and how their life took the direction it took.

Find out the Dalmin family’s answer to why travel

Anna tells us: “In the nineties, an older lady showed us a film from a village in Romania where the people suffered greatly from lack of most of the essentials. She had been in her seventies when she went there herself to contribute with whatever she could. As we, at that time, shared everyday problems as well as joy together with eight Swedish teenagers with whom we also studied the Bible, we saw this as a great opportunity to take our studies one step further and not only read but also to practice the love of God in reality”

So, she, Sven and the teenagers collected clothes, money, food, kitchenware, and lots of other things they assumed families and orphanages would need. They then rented some space with a charity organization which was going to Romania and flew there themselves, all ten of them.

Finally there, they handed out the things to orphanages as well as to children living in the streets. “When we gave out food to the street children, it was terribly difficult to experience how hungry they really where” Anna says, and continues: “but maybe more important than handing out food, or at least as important I think it was to spend time together with the abandoned children. We spent lots of time with these unwanted children who took neither love nor care for granted. But in all their poverty, they were so talented and they taught us so much about love and had so much to share. They really gave us well fed and loved people so much to learn from”.

This first time, they stayed for 10 days and one of the Swedish teenagers said to Anna: “I felt like I did more good in these 10 days than I’ve done in my whole life”!

They continued to go to Romania, “instead of going on vacation” to help out and to spend more time together with the children at the orphanages. During their visits there, they discovered that Romania has such a fantastic countryside and they fell in love with it so much they wanted to move there. They especially appreciated the simple lifestyle that people had. People still did, and still do, use horses and oxen in their farming for example. And that’s what they also wanted. So they got themselves this piece of land where they built their own house, and since they didn’t even have a road, they had to take everything there by real horse power. So, now they spend 6 months every year there, living mainly on self sufficiency and without either telephone or internet. They have shared a lot about their life there with us, and I must say it really sounds fantastic.

It is possible to go and stay with them and enjoy living a more natural and peaceful life for a while. You then can participate in the everyday activities and also have the opportunity to experience Romania and the people in a very genuine way. At the moment, they mainly offer these stays to young adventurous boys/men between 13 and 25, so if you are one, or know of one, we can really recommend you to contact them. They just made their webpage: www.ivildmarken.se. It’s only in Swedish at this stage but will soon be in English as well, and even if you don’t speak the language, you can get a lot from just the pictures so check it out.

So, as you can see, whatever answer you have to -Why travel? – whatever reason you have for wanting to go out into the world, you never know where the road will actually take you in the end!

For a bit more about Volunteering you can click here

Want some ideas on how to have more time, create an independent lifestyle and be a world traveler?

Maria — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 17:49:49 +0000

What’s your ideal lifestyle? Who do you want to be – a world traveler? What do you want to do and have?

Tim Ferriss world traveler and author of
The 4-Hour Workweek

These are some of the questions Tim Ferriss, author of “The 4-Hour Workweek” encourages you to consider if you want to create an independent lifestyle. If you too are interested in living a life outside the 9 to 5, a life where you among other things can choose where and when you’d want to work, then you can get some really good tips from this short video.

In short, there are 4 steps you can take to help you to unplug and reset your life:

1, Define your ideal lifestyle

What do you want to be, do and have? We think it’s crucial to take the time to reflect upon this. Try to step outside of whatever you have around you and tune into the you behind all the layers of musts and shoulds. Who are you? What are you passionate about? What’s that dream you’re having that keeps coming up again and again? What did you dream about when you were a kid?

2, Eliminate everything that interferes with this ideal lifestyle like stuff, interruptions and people.

I guess you’ve already noticed you have quite a lot of things around you that you really don’t need, or even want. Things, and people as well, that really takes up your time and holds you back from being what, and where, you’d rather be. Start to declutter, on every level!

3, Automate, delegate or outsource everything that you don’t need or want to do yourself.

What don’t you want to be doing yourself and what could you actually delegate or outsource so someone else? How can you make your life more automated? Today we have the big advantage of being able to use technology to help us with so many things and not having to do everything ourselves. Part of this is also to unplug and not use technology all the time, like checking e-mails every other minute. Learn to use it to your advantage!

4, Liberate yourself to get used to all your excess time and see how you want to use it.

The idea of making these changes is of course to get more free time. But, what do you want to do with it? Knowing what you want to use your time for, instead of being at work or working for yourself more than full time, is also important. It’s time to dream again. If you have an excess of time what do you want to do with it? Spend it with your family? Write that book of yours? Starting a new career as a world traveler? All of the above?

Watch this short film with Tim Ferris and get some more ideas and inspiration…

If you’re feeling stuck, bored and passionless, maybe it’s time for some travel adventures?

Maria — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 17:21:52 +0000

I was talking to someone the other day who said he was so fed up with his life and that he was really longing for some travel adventures. I did see his point.

When you’re on the road, travel adventures inevitable wake you up and keep you alert. Like when we passed this sign

Today, most people live in ways which are, to a very big extent, planned. When the alarm sets off in the morning, you know pretty well what will happen throughout the day. You’ll have your breakfast (I assume most of you who read this don’t have to worry about if there’s going to be any breakfast), off to work and the kids to school…You also have a pretty good idea of what the day at work, or school, will look like. Then, back home again where you might have some planned activities, then maybe some TV or a movie or some time in front of the computer and off to bed again. Up the next day and run the program over again, and again, and again….

I do believe it’s important to remember to be grateful. Grateful for having things like a safe home, food on the table, and an income as well as a good health and people who love and appreciate us.

Nevertheless, to many, there’s still something missing. In the midst of your well known, successful (whatever you say, I’m sure you’re successful in many ways) and abundant life, a feeling of emptiness sometimes pops up. Or feelings of boredom, restlessness, unhappiness or maybe of not being fully alive. What’s often missing in your well planned perfectly scheduled life, I believe, is a touch of the unknown and the unplanned, of adventure!

Or entered into "sunny" California in this kind of weather

Or when the road, in the middle of nowhere, suddenly ended

What we’ve more and more subtracted from our lives, are opportunities to experience the unknown, situations where we neither know what to expect nor how to act,situations where we really have to access all of our capabilities, assemble our strengths and creativity, and see what we really go for. That’s when you really feel like you are living.

Think about being in an unfamiliar situation in a new place where you don’t know what to expect, how to act or what to do. How does this feel? A bit scary maybe but also, doesn’t your heart beat a bit quicker? Isn’t there a feeling of excitement or anticipation that you usually don’t experience during your day at work?

That’s part of why we, and so many others, love to travel. And especially on independent long term travel adventures.

When you’re out in the world for an extended period, visiting unknown places, and meeting with new people in unfamiliar surroundings, unexpected things inevitable turn up. Things which you neither choose nor desire but which will give you the opportunity to really be in the present and feel alive. These are the things which you’ll be certain to remember when you get back home.

Finding a python on the road can make a day exciting (even if it’s dead)

Not to mention, finding Tiger claw marks along the way when you’re out hiking in India

Or meeting with these huge guys

We’ve experienced them ourselves, over and over again, those small, or big, unplanned situations that we’d rather avoid but which we, somehow, always manage to take us out of and which then becomes some of the best memories from our trips (not to mention a great story to tell).

I would like to quote someone here. Jeffrey Kottler and for you who have followed us for a while, you probably understand by now that his book “Travel that can change your life” is one of my absolute favorite “travel” books.

“On one hand, we hunger for new challenges, that will test our resolve, on the other, we feel perfectly miserable when subjected to the usual hardship that accompany adventures. These ambivalent feelings are, in fact, the best indicators that we are smack in the middle of an adventure. It is when you say to yourself, as Thornton Wilder did in The Matchmaker “Oh, now I’ve got myself into an awful mess; I wish I were sitting quietly at home”. Of course, Wilder continues, you know you are really in trouble “when you sit quietly at home wishing you were out having lots of adventures.”

So, if this is you, sitting quietly at home wishing you were out having lots of adventures, don’t hesitate one more moment, do something about it! And what we suggest if of course GO DO SOME SERIOUS TRAVELING!

How can you be happy (a bit off topic – or, maybe not)?

Maria — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:08:08 +0000

I guess this is what it’s all about, how we can be happy. When we’re striving for our goals, our money, our new house, our perfect partner, our adventurous world trips, we have an idea that by having or doing these things, we will be able to have more happiness in our lives. But, in the end, it’s not in the things or the doing anyway. It’s in ourselves. As some like to point out: “Happiness is a decision”. It’s actually up to you in every situation to choose if you want to focus on your feeling of happiness or on something else. This might not be the easiest thing in the world to do, but just knowing that I can choose how I’d like to relate to the world around me, has at least helped me a lot towards a happier life.

Kava ceremony in Fiji. It really both looks and tastes like muddy water

I remember listening to a tape (yes, it was a while ago) with Anthony Robbins (for you who don’t know about him, you can get acquainted here, but be prepared, he’s pretty intense). He was talking about one of the first times he visited Fiji, where he now has his own center (which I’d love to visit some day). Anyway, he talks about when he was sitting with all these Fijian men, having a Kava ceremony and singing and clapping and he then asks them what the meaning of life is. They all look at him as if he just arrived to this world and doesn’t know anything, and all say with one voice “to be happy of course”!

When we visited Fiji, we really got the feeling that happiness was part of the Fijian spirit. People were always singing and playing ukulele, sitting together in the evenings singing more, no stress, just being happy. Of course I realize, there are difficulties and hard times there as well, but I’m talking about a general attitude.

Nowadays, I’ve heard many different teachers of wisdom pointing out that “the meaning of life is to be happy” and I think it’s an interesting idea.

Anyway, I found this video with super coach Michael Neill where he talks about this subject, how we can be happy. I thought it was rather good. And even here they talk about “taking time out” and “go away and have a bit of fun”, but for a shorter time. Just imagine doing it for a longer period!

So watch it and Be Happy!