Following our DREAM to travel long term around the world and to experience life to the fullest!!
Lake Baikal ,Sibiria Russia
Lake Baikal ,Sibiria Russia
Lake Baikal ,Sibiria Russia
Since then we have set up our new home in Berlin for at least the next 2-3 years.
Travelling around Europe in the holidays seems to be our new found love and our kids are happy to be back at a normal School with friends.
So far we have seen Finland,France, Italy, Switzerland, Israel and Spain since our arrival.
Our motto is “Allow yourself to Dream Big and then set out to turn your Dream into reality, you will be amazed at what you can achieve”
LIVE NOW AS YOU CAN NOT PREDICT THE FUTURE !!!!!!!!!
We are Richard, Nici, Ayesha and Orlando,a little family that decided to go and see the world. Waiting until we retire was not an option for us. Whenever we find the time, we will document the high and the lows as we backpack around the world with our 2 children.
In 2009 we came to a crossroad in our life, we had to ask asked ourselves the question, “ with the money we had, shall we put a deposit on a house (mind you a house we have been wanting for a long time) and settle down to a life of school, work, weekend friends and a huge mortgage, or instead use the money to travel the next two years as a family??”.
The answer was easy for us,( maybe reckless to others), but we chose TRAVEL! I (Nici) had travelled a lot as a child and loved the freedom of the road and as a family we haven’t had the luck to travel much together. Yes of course we went camping a lot and travelled to festivals as well as flights to Tasmania to see family, but a real overseas trips had not happened for us for many different reasons.
We were also aware how fast our kids were growing up, one had already left the nest so to speak. Jasmine ( Richards oldest daughter) had moved to Melbourne to live with her Mum, so we only had 2kids left in the house.
We made January the 15th 2010(our 15th anniversary) the day we would leave to head off on our adventure. With no return date, some loose plans and money in our pockets we set off into the world.
Our first year was spent travelling around Australia in a 4wd and a camper trailer, we went everywhere from the North to the South, East to the West, from the centre of cities, to the remotest of outback regions. Australia is a beautiful country that more Australians should explore and not wait until there’re grey nomads.
We returned for Jasmines graduation and a big family Christmas to Melbourne and then settled down for 3 month in Newcastle at Richards’s parents’ house, since our energy had to be put into selling our assets, like the camper trailer and the 4w drive. We put the kids into school for 3 month which they loved, Richard buckled down to work and i put my gloves on and started scrubbing and detailing the car and trailer. We managed to sell the car with a profit after putting 50 thousand km on it in 2 years, and the trailer almost for the same price we bought it for.We were happy chappies.
On the 3rd of May 2011 our overseas adventure started and we flew from Australia to Singapore then journeyed overland through South East Asia, into China, then Mongolia, Russia and into Europe. We travelled Europe for a couple of months and then returned to Berlin with the aim to see if we wanted to settle down for a while. Chase our careers,(mine Film ,Richards IT) and give our kids a place they can call home for a while. Germany seemed like a good base to work from and also i was happy to return to my childhood home and teach my children something about their heritage. Our kids were happy to return to a classroom and be surrounded by other kids all day long. I think they got bored with us after a couple of years, lol.
We travel on a budget at all times as that is the only way you can travel long term, we stayed in hostels, guesthouses and we love to do as much Couch Surfing as possible with locals. Couch surfing https://www.couchsurfing.org/ as a family is the best way to travel with kids as you instantly have friends. For us it has been the best way to see, meet and understand a country and its people.
Our blog documents our journey, our adventures, our fun times and hard times, the people we met and will meet along the way and the places we have visited. We try to see the major city’s as well as the small towns and the countryside of every country we visit. We always try and get a locals perspective of the area and learn as much as we can in the time we have. The world is like a big interactive classroom for our children when we are out there doing it, everyday something new and something different.
So read on, and follow our travels and maybe we can inspire you to do the same sometime.
love and light
Richard, Nici, Ayesha & Orlando