It's time to leave home and say goodbye. This page is a story of Emily's feelings 6 months before we left on our first RTW trip.

Picture right - El Misti Volcano, Southern Peru.

Leaving home

Now you are all booked it's time to start preparing to leave home. Below is an account written by Emily describing how she felt 6 months before leaving home.

There is a poem I once read with the line “time is too long for those who wait and time is too short for those who mourn.” and I couldn’t agree more. We are now within the last 6 months before we leave. On the one hand time is dragging, those long laborious days at work, staring at my world atlas sat on my desk. Yet on the other hand, there doesn’t seem to be enough paydays before we go!

Damion has asked me to write this article on “leaving home” and to be honest I have taken about 5 months to actually take the time to make a start.

Where do you begin? I have wanted to go traveling ever since leaving University three years ago but with debt to pay off and a career to start it was never on the cards straight away.

I think if I am honest, I started seriously saving to go away last September after our last year’s holiday. Therefore, I will have only done a year’s saving in total when we leave. I know it is incomings and outgoings related but I think that it is quite comforting to know it is possible to save for a RTW trip in about a year. However, I wish I had started earlier so that I am not in such a stress to meet our £10,000 target but there you go! It is definitely harder saving and being a woman, as we naturally have more out goings than men, the monthly leg wax, hair cut, make up and beauty products. I would love to sacrifice these what some might call ‘extravagances’ but to me they are ‘necessities!

It sounds corny but one thing I have learnt is to be less frivolous with my money. If I wasn’t saving to go traveling I dread to think what I would waste each month. I have definitely cut down on a lot of unnecessary spending. And contrary to what maybe Damion and others think I have not been clothes shopping for well over a year. My ragged winter coat with the ever-growing ventilation holes is testament to the fact. I am craving a Bluewater shopping trip but at the end of the day all that will always be there.

Saving is obviously a fundamental part of the pre-departure preparations but aside there are many other essential must dos before leaving home. One of these, which I am enjoying a lot, is reading up on all the travel guides for each individual place we are going to. Damion sensibly started his reading back in September. Whilst on holiday he would read ‘The Rough Guide to Brazil’ whilst I indulged in a trashy beach novel.

I soon felt a bit left out when he would reveal tit bits to me about each place we were going to and I decided if you can’t beat him join him and took up my own reading last month. I am reading in order of where we are going so having read the part on the Amazon where I can expect to spend 2 weeks on a boat sleeping in a hammock I am now on the part where we travel South through Peru to the Nazca lines.

I also rejoined Ashford library about a month ago, not having stepped foot in there since being a sixth former. We were both really pleased to find videos on places we are going and some more travel guides to read up on. Recently, Michael Palin ventured across Peru to the same destinations we propose to go to so this also provided us with some more visual stimulation. Books are great but you may not always imagine a place to be how it really is! In some cases, this is probably a good thing. I think it is important to understand the cultures you are going to be apart of for such a long time. This isn’t going to be our usual week in Menorca where you mix with other English people all the time and eat Steak and Chips.

I am not looking forward to the more mundane tasks we need to do before we go, such as, canceling bills etc. As we are renting, we will just end our tenancy at the end of August probably and hopefully recoup our deposit. As for our belongings, we have got to arrange storage for everything, we have received a quote for storage but I think both our Mums’ houses are a cheaper and more affordable option!

So we have saving, reading, administrative chores and then of course not so much about preparing ourselves for what we are taking but what we will be leaving behind.