Husband and wife take 2nd trip around the world (22 photos)

Wanderlust. How do you know you have it?

For my wife and me, it all started with a walk. In 2003, my wife, Michelle, and I went for a walk after supper. After putting double payments on the house and the vehicles for several years, we realized that we were almost debt free.

We also felt we needed some kind of break from our respective jobs. I told her about a teacher who took semesters off and travelled. Until that time, we had travelled only to Jamaica, Mexico, and England. We weren’t sure about the process, but I told her I’d look into taking some time off.

After our walk we decided to sit down and write a list of destinations. When we read each other’s lists, we realized that we’d have to take a year off. The more we looked at our now-combined list, the more excited we became.

That was it. Requests were made and approved, and we began to plan for a round-the-world trip. We sold our house, the majority of its contents and one vehicle, and left in July 2008, with an eye to returning in April 2009.
Leaving from Toronto, we visited 22 countries in 10 months, travelling the equivalent of 2.5 times around the world. Yep, wanderlust had definitely set in.

Fast forward to 2015 and we did it all over again. Not 10 months this time, but 6 months.

Nevertheless, the amount of planning was the same. When we started planning back in 2006, it was extremely difficult to do anything online, so a travel agent was necessary. When we set off in 2008, Facebook was in its infancy and we had to find other ways to keep friends and loved ones informed.

For this journey, technology allowed us to plan the entire trip on our own with no travel agents. The flights, however, continued to prove impossible to book on our own … cheaply. Thankfully, we came across a company called Air Treks (http://www.airtreks.com/) and they were able to plan our entire flight plan for half of our best price using the Internet.

How much planning was involved? Well, I guess it depends on your personality.

Some people don’t plan and travel by the seat of their pants. That’s not us. We needed to plan everything out well in advance and to create an itinerary that set out what we would be doing almost daily.

That’s why our dining room table had a three-inch binder full of calendars, flight e-tickets, escorted tour itineraries, visa applications, house rental agreements, hotel confirmations, airport transfers vouchers, cruise ship boarding passes, day tour confirmations, currency exchange rates, checklists, to-do lists, immunization records, clothing lists, emergency contact numbers for everything from banks to embassies to family to credit card companies.

It was exhaustive and time-consuming. What it wasn’t was stressful. We would have found it much more stressful to have to find transfers, hotels, tours, guides, etc. once we arrived at our destination.

So how different is this journey from the last journey? Last time, we travelled west to east, more or less — South Korea, China, Nepal, India, Dubai, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil.

This time, our journey began in northern Europe and we travelled south, more or less. Instead of travelling with only backpacks, we each brought a large suitcase and carry-on because we added 20 or so days on a cruise and dress clothes were required.

We brought more camera equipment and electronics than we did in 2008-2009. Rather than spend hours in Internet cafes, we brought an iPad and a Macbook Air. Blogging and uploading photos to Facebook was done from the laptop from either our hotel room or the hotel lobby area.

So were did we go this time? Once again we decided to visit places that would be difficult to do on a short holiday. In July, we headed to Copenhagen. The journey from there took us to Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Estonia, Russia, Poland, Italy, Croatia, Montenegro, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Palestine, South Africa, Madagascar, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Rwanda.

We left on July 5 and returned to Canada on Dec. 18. The world is a beautiful place and we saw things that took our breath away and we saw things that brought tears to our eyes and broke our hearts. We loved every minute of our journey. Despite some stressful moments, we would not have changed anything.

Every time we leave Canada it reinforces the greatness of this country. We fall in love all over again with the things we’ve taken for granted: Water you can drink from the taps; the availability of food in stores; electricity, lighting, peace, relative safety and security. And good Lord, how we’ve missed our bed and our pillows!

Travelling the world and, sometimes, getting out of one’s comfort zone will open one’s eyes. In the immortal words of Mark Twain, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”

That being said, it’s good to be home.

Dan and Michelle Boisvert live in Greater Sudbury.

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