After traveling for several months of every year for the first 12 years of our lives together, in 2009 we found ourselves in the lucky position of being able to do it full time. So we sold our house, car and all our possessions (apart from the contents of our backpacks) and have decided to base ourselves mostly in far away places for some time.
Since the enforced stoppage of most world travel in 2020, we have had to re-evaluate and adapt our lifestyle. No longer can we freely move around and choose where we might like to spend time. It is now dictated by rules and regulations, and at the whim of government policy. But for now, we are happy to still be on the road, and are making the most of our travelling time. Who knows what the future will bring?
Our travel style is slow and thorough. If we enjoy a place we will stay as long as we like, or as long as is possible due to visas. We try to become as involved as we can through making friends, learning a little bit of the language and history, trying varied foods and simply observing the rhythm of life. We're certainly not interested in ticking off locations, and have no idea how many countries we have actually visited over the 25 years we've been moving about the world. We tend to revisit our favourites places many times over, and feel with each stay we can appreciate more as we delve into the heart of a destination.
Most of our early travel life was spent in South East Asia and South Asia, and we feel we have some idea of what lies beneath the surface in these places. For the past six or seven years, however, we have spread our wings and travelled more in Caucasus countries, Central Asia, the Balkans and the Middle East, and have fallen in love with each and every country.
Those who regularly read our blog will know that we love a good wander. Towns with historically interesting buildings, characterful doorways and windows or winding alleyways draw us in, and we are especially fond of Islamic architecture. As a contrast, we also love staying in the tiniest of villages in beautiful natural surroundings such as mountains, rivers or deserts. And of course, there's the favourite beach place that we return to year after year to swim, stroll on the sand, swing in the hammock and recharge our batteries ready for the next round of travelling!
Train travel is our definite preferred mode of transport, hence the blog title. Our days of enjoying the adventure of being squashed into a minivan for hours on end are long over! Countries with sweeping and romantic sounding train journeys definitely tend to attract us.
We started this blog ten years ago, partly as a replacement for the dozens of diaries we no longer had a place to keep, partly for friends and family to keep up with our movements, but mostly as an important record for ourselves to keep and cherish. We don't believe in making money through our website- our enjoyment of telling and keeping our travel tales is more than enough to satisfy us. So, please feel free to explore our world through our posts, and if anyone gleans enjoyment, knowledge or inspiration from them, we are happy!
My readings of the blogs give me a direct encounter, as if I'm reading an early 20th-century cultural anthropologists' travelers' tale. The first modern traveler engaged with places through slow travel, focusing on staying and living in a locale. It's an ideal counter-culture lifestyle that offers readers an authentic alternative to the digital era travel mass tourism.
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