It’s been 28 years since we left England. A few years prior we had made a promise to one another that we would jack in our jobs, up sticks and go traveling before we hit the end of our twenties. Then we got sucked into working life in London and every year we would put it off. In the end the only way to stay faithful to our mutual promise was to put a big red circle around the date one year ahead. And thus the date for our world travels was set at 6th April 1996.
We had bought a two year round the world ticket, which carried a condition that we fly out of Melbourne to Auckland no later than the first anniversary date. So the first year would be the Asia chapter and the second year the Americas chapter, with Australasia forming a bridge between. Reality, that nebulous thing with a mind of its own, had a slightly different plan for us: we travelled for only 9 months before the money ran out. We had severely underbudgeted or overspent, or some combination of the two. I think we had always had some vague idea that we would need to work somewhere, but we hadn’t given it any meaningful thought.
And yet this quirk of fate – that we had to be in Auckland by the end of Year 1, and that we should need to work to replenish our travel funds – is how we came to live the next 27 years of our lives in New Zealand, how we came to build a kiwi way of life, including bringing two children into the world and nurturing them to kiwi adulthood. It’s why we have NZ citizenship and travel on NZ passports, why we support the All Blacks, and in the end, why we see New Zealand as our home. For many years I would reply to curious questions at a weekend barbie: ‘you can’t choose where you are born, but it’s an incredible privilege to be able to choose where you live’.
Having said all of this, in recent years I have increasingly grown to love my Englishness and have regained a profound care for the country that forged me (as exemplified by my blog post ‘O England‘). I am now very happy with the balance of my kiwenglishness. More on ‘getting to know and accept yourself’ here.
I have joked many times that we are still half way around the world on that same OE; the Americas chapter still to be written. But now here we are, 28 years later, re-writing the storyline by embarking on an Asian sequel. The Americas chapter will have to wait for another day. [In case OE is not a familiar term to you, ‘OE’ is Kiwi-speak for an extended ‘overseas experience’.]
And at the time of writing (on the plane from Dubai to Kathmandu on the first day of this trip) it does feel like a sequel rather than a continuation of the first OE. Twenty eight years of life consumed, I’m expecting that this experience will be very different to the first. For one thing the budget is bigger! But also, at the risk of stating the obvious, we are a tad less youthful. And less foregone conclusively, we may also be a little wiser.
We did follow the path of our original OE in one respect, by setting a target date about a year in advance. We were both feeling that it was time to shift gears and, for me anway, to call time on my ‘career ‘. Plus our kids, in their early 20’s, were organising their own OEs. Talking with them about their plans rekindled our desire to get back on the trails again ourselves.
One big difference, this time versus last, is in how we are starting this trip. lt certainly wasn’t planned to be this way, but it feels surreal that I find myself writing this blog entry alone on a plane on 3 November, having originated this journey at London Heathrow rather than Auckland as planned. When I give Chris a big hug at Kathmandu Arrivals in a few short hours, it will be for the first time in over five weeks. For all our advanced planning, we didn’t bargain for my dad in England to have a heart attack just as our departure date was appearing on the near horizon. So my dad has inserted himself into the role of key protagonist right at the front of this new story. He doesn’t fit into a foreward or a prologue, but nor does he get to headline Chapter 1 as the last five weeks has been anything but an OE story. The best I can come up with is Chapter 0. More on Chapter 0 later.
Anyway (spoiler alert!)… the immediate concerns over my Dad’s future life expectancy averted, the plane trip from London has given me an opportunity to create a clear headspace between that episode and the OE that lies ahead. Indeed on the bus from Dubai’s Terminal 2 to the waiting plane bound for Kathmandu, I paused to look around at the people on the bus. Many looked different from the travellers I had observed at the airports of Heathrow and Dubai. These people are looking for adventure, I thought. They love mountains and exotic culture and people, and they probably love hiking. These are my tribe, I thought.
And so it seems, Chapter 1 is just beginning to show itself.
More later.
life unplugged 