Wait, you're doing what?

As we started planning this trip, the most frequent question was exactly that, "Wait, you're doing what?" While most of our colleagues spend vacations in nice hotels, relaxing on beaches, going on cruises and well organized tours, we're going backpacking and camping, staying in youth hostels and learning the difference between treating a snake bite from neurotoxic vs cytotoxic snakes (it's an important distinction).

This often leads to a question along the lines of: “Why would a happily married couple, each one working a well paying job (well, Koji was working a well paying job, Amanda was working as a nurse so mediocre pay at best) that kept them quite comfortable, sell everything to travel in substantial discomfort?” It’s hard to explain this to rational, logical people so if you have trouble understanding our choices, please take that as a compliment. We’ve always loved exploring, especially if it was at least slightly uncomfortable, like backpacking - anyone who says it’s not uncomfortable is lying, but it's usually not too bad. Somehow the pain and soreness that comes with seeing an isolated sight brings a joy like nothing else. Same with seeing unique, wild animals; I can walk through the zoo looking at animals and they’re cute and all, but to see just one in the wild is a mind-blowing high to us. In Costa Rica last year we went on a 3 day hiking trip through Corcovado National Park where we hiked 8-15 miles a day in extreme heat and humidity. I pulled off over 30 ticks (small ones that came off quite easily), we slept on a rubber coated foam pads outside in stifling heat with about 40 other people (the beds turned into small pools of sweat by the end of the night, like serious sloshing) but we loved it! A tapir walked past me and stuck its snout up my shirt, troops of various monkeys surrounded us at times, and we even saw a silky anteater (see above)! The thrill of seeing these animals outweighed any discomfort by a mile, I’d go back in a minute. So we’re still learning what gives that intense joy or high, even as old as we are. So then we have to figure out, what kills it? 

Crowds kill the joy for us. Crowds give sights that “zoo” feeling and no matter how spectacular, the joy is dampened a bit, or a lot depending on the crowd. In Banff, we walked along a trail past dozens of people recording themselves on their phones, people flying drones past the numerous “no drones” signs. This dampened the joy too much for me, all I remember feeling was annoyed. This gave the place a “loved to death” vibe, especially when combined with the high cost of everything, I felt like I was part of the problem. So getting covered in ticks and trying to sleep on a rubber sheet filled with sweat in a jungle with venomous snakes and spiders, no problem. A crowded trail dodging cell phones and loud tourists talking into them - this I can’t handle. 

To plan the trip meant looking at the best times of year to see the places we wanted to see on a map to determine the best routes. This was surprisingly difficult but very important - many places we want to see are impassable during the rainy season, places like Nepal and New Zealand are next to impossible to hike in the winter, and wildlife experiences vary quite a bit in different seasons. After putting together the puzzle pieces of our top places we came up with a logical route, although very few of the places will be visited at their "ideal" time, none will be in the "don't bother coming" time. Now we have a beautiful plan in place that should be perfect as long as there are no unforeseen wars, epidemics, extreme weather issues, and we maintain a travel schedule free from illness or injury.  Truth be told, that’s actually never happened; no matter how short the trip, one of us always gets sick or injured, so we know the plan fall apart to some degree.

Once we got the general idea of where we’re going, we started looking into the details. We knew we wanted to backpack and found 7 backpacking trips between New Zealand and Australia that looked worth doing. All of these are competitive (except Maria Island) to get as they all have strict daily restrictions on the number of people allowed (12 a day on Kangaroo Island, 40 per day on the Mildford Track) so getting all 7 was of course impossible, but we figured we’d try. Turns out we’re really good at scoring permits, we got all 7. The plan gives us 3-5 days between each backpacking trip which isn’t much time considering that at least at first (possibly the whole time), all of our gear will likely be soaking wet, we’ll be aching in new places from carrying a very heavy pack (we’ll have to complete each hike with all our gear for the whole year) and having to navigate from New Zealand (2 hikes) to Tasmania (3 hikes) to Melbourne (1 hike but the longest) to Adelaide (last one) which also includes 3 plane rides and 3 ferries to deal with. I pity the people sitting in the planes next to us already.