In November 2016, we hopped on a flight from New York to Shanghai and spent what would become 9 months traveling full-time. The journey was nothing short of incredible and filled with people, places, and memories that we will share for the rest of our lives.

Now that we’ve had time to reflect on our adventures, we want to share some final trip stats, reflections, and favorite photos – enjoy!

By The Numbers

Packing: here’s a look at what was in my suitcase. Two of these pairs of shoes ended up going home early!

Countries visited: 20 across 3 continents (check out the map here!)

Longest stay: Thailand [20 nights]

Shortest stay: Zambia [2 nights] & Malaysia [2 twelve-hour layovers]

Flights taken: 27

Longest flight: Melbourne, Australia –> Lusaka, Zambia [4 planes and 42 hours door-to-door]

Total days traveling: 256 days [177 international, 79 in the USA]

Books read: 50

Kelly’s favorites: Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi or the Neapolitan Novels series by Elena Ferrante

John’s favorites: Emails from the Edge by Ken Haley, In The Garden of Beasts by Erik Larsen, or The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver

Wedding rings [John] lost: 2 [lost the original swimming in Thailand and replacement #1 surfing in Bali… oops]

$$$

Most expensive country: Japan [average $147/day]. New Zealand was definitely the most expensive in general, but my dad generously chipped in quite a bit during our time together which made it more affordable for us.

Most expensive accommodation: Fuji Hakone Guest House in Hakone, Japan [$110/night even with a shared bathroom]. However, the on-site onsen (Japanese natural hot spring hot tub) was awesome and we got to wear very comfy robes.

Most expensive activity: Scuba Diving on the Great Barrier Reef [$471 for two people… but so worth it]

Least expensive country: Myanmar [average $64/day (including accommodation!!) while still doing basically whatever we wanted including tours, many visits to a winery, renting electric bikes, etc]

Leas expensive accommodation: Morningside Safari Resort in Udawalawe, Sri Lanka [$6/night], which was actually quite nice! The owner even offered to let us borrow some bikes for free. What a deal!

Highlights

Favorite countries: Namibia, Myanmar, Japan

Best food:

• Sushi in Japan
• Kottu in Sri Lanka
• Anything from Thailand or South Korea

Best activities: 

• Unanimous: skydiving in Swakopmund, Namibia; temple hopping in Bagan, Myanmar

• Kelly’s runners up: road trip along Australia’s Great Ocean Road; hiking the Routeburn Track in NZ
• John’s runners up: visiting the DMZ in Korea; scuba diving everywhere

Best animal experiences: 

We saw some REALLY AWESOME animals on this trip!!! There were so many highlights, but if I had to pick the top 3 (+ one more for good luck), they’d be:

• Scuba diving with seals in South Africa
• Walking with lions in Zimbabwe
• Camping with kangaroos in Australia
• Hiking to see snow monkeys in Japan

Visits with friends and family! We had a few pals join us along the way including Jenna and her dad John in China, Terri in Thailand, Jen in Vietnam and Cambodia, and my Dad in New Zealand. We were also able to link up with more friends and fam along our US road trip, including weeks with both of our families. Seeing people we love along the way was always a highlight!

Reflections

Believe it or not, deciding to go on this trip was hard. There was a fairly long list of reasons not to do it: we had a great life in Baltimore and didn’t necessarily want to shake that up; we’d be spending a lot of money, dipping pretty deeply into our fund we had earmarked for buying a house in the next few years; I was scared that something could go terribly wrong (embarrassingly enough, I got most worked up over the thought of being swept away in a tsunami). However, looking back I can’t imagine doing it any other way; leaving our jobs to travel full time was the best thing we’ve ever done.

Before we set off, we said we wanted to see places that were far enough away we would never be able to see them on a standard two-week vacation from work. Having friends and family join us on the other side of the world for 10-14 day stints and meeting travelers on one and two week vacations helped us realize the world is a lot more accessible than we realized. We thought ending this trip would mean saying goodbye to opportunities to travel to far flung places, but instead we learned we can and will make bigger trips part of a work-life balance.

This trip also reinforced that people are the same in so many ways; even though we didn’t often understand the language, we knew what it meant when people started cheering as their friend walked in the door to a party when we were in Vietnam because that happens all the time when we’re with our friends, too.

It also proved time and again how kind and helpful people tend to be. When we were researching new destinations, we’d uncover dozens of scams and problems travelers faced in each of those places. While we agree it’s essential to exercise a degree of caution, it’s also important to remember that most people are helpful and meeting others around the world is one of the best parts of traveling. This trip was made better time and again by the kindness of strangers, whether that was the man in Shibu Onsen, Japan who walked us to our hostel when he could tell we were lost or the family we stayed with in Sri Lanka who told us we were their own as long as we were in their house (and proved it by getting me to the best local doctor when I got sick).

We also learned a lot about each other and this trip strengthened our relationship in a lot of ways. Thanks to our time on the road, our marriage kicked off with a series of unforgettable shared experiences.

John helped me push myself to do things I would never attempt without a push, like scuba diving at night in the pitch black water in Thailand, jumping out of a plane in the desert in Namibia, or walking next to a lion in Zimbabwe. I swore I’d never do any of these things, but time and again John pushed me out of my comfort zone to do what ended up being some of my favorite activities of the whole trip (except the night diving… still hate that).

John tells me he appreciates my planning skills and without them, he probably would have missed out on stuff that would have been impossible with a higher level of procrastination. He also says “you made me better and different. Let me know if you’d like me to elaborate on that.” Feel free to follow up with him for details.

As a team, we were challenged to solve problems differently than we ever need to at home. It’s not every day you find yourselves at the ferry terminal in Japan, about to board a boat to South Korea, and realize they won’t allow you on without confirmation of your travel plans out of South Korea. It takes a whole new level of team problem solving to find the nearest cafe with wifi, scrounge up all remaining Japanese cash, and quickly dig through inbox archives to find the said outbound plane tickets, all in under 5 minutes, and still make the ferry.

There’s no doubt about it – we were privileged to be able to take this trip. From being able to afford to quit our jobs to traveling as Americans with easy access to visas, we experienced so much privilege from start to finish. We will be forever grateful we were in a position to go on this life-changing adventure.

What’s Next

We’re settled back in Baltimore not too far from where we were living before we set off on this journey. John returned to work in July as a project engineer for a construction company and I started work in October as a course developer for an education technology company. Our friends welcomed us back to the city with open arms, making it easy to plug back into life here.

We lucked out and scored an amazing apartment. We’re across the street from a beautiful park, we have killer views, and the place is super nice. We even have a spare room so friends and family – please come see us!

We’re most certainly not done with traveling, either. We recently returned from a two-week trip to Chile to celebrate the wedding of friends we met on our Absolute Africa safari. While there, we got to explore Santiago and spent a week backpacking in Patagonia. We have a (very long) bucket list of trips we want to take and plan to tick them off the list whenever possible.

As for this blog – in addition to being a great way to share adventures with friends and family, it’s been an opportunity to learn some basic web development skills, practice travel writing, and showcase some of our favorite photos. We may keep it up as a hobby as we continue to travel in the future. Stay tuned.

Thanks to all who followed this adventure. It won’t be the last.