A-Z of Travel Preparation – Part 3

Time is moving on and the anticipation and excitement is growing; we’ve moved into the last 100 days before our lifetime adventures of long term travel begin with a flight to Bangkok. And so we’re trying to get everything place now and trying to forget nothing. Continuing our check list A-Z:

I is for insurance. Finding travel insurance has proved a lot more difficult, and expensive, than we thought. The main obstacles have been our ages (62 and 54)and the length of time we’ll be travelling. Most policies have restrictions on these things, and many companies supposedly offering tailor made policies actually turned out to be a waste of time and had nothing to offer us. Some were more co-operative but wanted a king’s ransom. We eventually got a deal at £485 for the two of us.

J is for journals. Not everything we will want to record will make the blog, so good old fashioned journals will have a place. The finer details such as cafe and restaurant names, people we meet, foods we discover, will be recorded. Michaela in particular wants to keep a log of emotions as the journey unfolds, and then of course there’s the itinerary details: trains, boats, planes and dates of travel. We figure these journals will become invaluable. 

K is for kitchens. The name of our blog tells you that we love food, and the discovery of new foods is one of the absolute joys of travel. But we also love to cook at home, especially recreating those dishes which we have found on our travels. We know that we will miss the joy of cooking in our own home. So our plan to combat this is twofold; we intend going to local cookery classes in different countries as we move around the world, and then, once billeted in a suitable apartment, using what we’ve learned to shop at local markets and create those dishes. 

L is for lotions. So the dilemma is this. When you go on a two-week holiday, you pack the shower gel, the shampoo, the conditioner, the face creams, the suntan lotion….the list goes on. To carry enough for a long trip would mean more weight and bulk, not to mention plastic containers, than you could ever seriously take. We have a solution. In Jordan earlier this year, we discovered a solid fragrant bar used by the Bedouins as a substitute for after shave. Now, having scoured the internet and patronised the Lush shop chain, we’ve experimented with everything from solid herbal bars of everything from deodorant to shaving cream. Not all are successful, but our bags will have a sizeable collection of nifty little herbal bars, and a zero plastic bottle count.