Around the world in 80 pictures

It took us 5 years, 3 months and 4 days to complete our life goal of travelling around the world. We were ‘on the road’ for ¬300 days in total, went through 25 countries, took over 10 long-distance train journeys (overnight or 1 day and longer),  3 long distance boatrips and stayed in over 100 accommodations around the globe (we estimated that on average we spent 2-3 days in different places). Our highest pass was over 5500 meters, our lowest point at 200 feet below sea level. Twice we camped - once at 3800m and once at 4800m, our highest night was spent at over 5000m at the Everst Tourist Basecamp village.

We started out on 9 September 2009 from London and travelled for a little over 2 months on our first leg overland to Hong Kong. From St. Petersburg to Moscow, onwards with the Transiberian train to Mongolia. After a week in the Monglian countryside we travelled onwards by train to Beijing. From there we visited North Korea for an amazingly insightful week into this closed nation. We departed Pyongyang on the train for Vladivostok via Harbin. Our original intention was to go to Japan after that, but due to ferry cancellation we ended up going to Soktcho, South Korea instead. From Seoul we took another ferry to Qingdao in China and then onwards by train to Guangzhou, Shenzen and finally Hong Kong.

We spend an amazing 4.5 years in Hong Kong (Astrid could have stayed a lot longer J) before leaving once again by train at Easter 2014. For the next 8 months we travelled for around three months in Asia through Tibet, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Burma, Cambodia, and Laos. Then via Bangkok and Sydney, across the Pacific to Tahiti and onwards to Easter Island (Chile). From there we started our ¬ three month South America tour going to Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina and Uruguay, picking up a little Spanish along the way. The final 6 weeks we spent travelling through the US in a big C (Miami – New Orleans – Fort Smith (Arkansas), Norman (Oklahoma), Austin (Texas), Las Cruces (New Mexico), Tucson (Arizona), Vegas, LA to San Francisco by car. Then we took a flight to Portland and from there by train on to Chicago with the final flight to NY before heading home.

We are grateful that we were able to do this trip and that apart from minor ailments and delays, etc nothing too unfortunate happened and we were able to thoroughly enjoy all of it. Do we think this is the end of our travels? Definitely not! Whilst we probably won’t leave our jobs again to take extended career breaks, we are already thinking about many destinations which we want to visit next :)

6 am 09/09/09:

Russia:

Transiberian:

Mongolia:

Trough the Gobi desert:

Bejing:

North Korea:

Harbin:

Vladivostok:

Soktcho:

Seoul:

 Chingdao:

Guangzhou:

We arrive in Hong Kong:

We leave Hong Kong again: 5pm 18/04/2014:

Tibet:

Nepal:

Sri Lanka:

Burma/Myanmar:

 Cambodia:

Laos:

toward Bangkok:

Sydney stop over:

Easter Island:

Valparaiso:

Cartagena:

Ecuador:

Peru:

Bolivia:

Quebrada de Humahuca:

Iguazu:

Buenos Aires:

Patagonia:

Mendoza:

Uruguay:

USA: