freiks wrote:Once these guys are done with their journey, they will simply be in another world, their life will never be the same again.They are using BMW bikes, they will become the company's lifetime ambassador
Interesting take.
I read part of their story again jana prior to them leaving. They had big plans ati hoping Uhuru would flag them off from state house and sponsors would pay for them to reach the border. That already raises red flags with me about their sense of planning. You know a lot of people take to long term travel because they simply do not like their jobs or the city they are living in or their daily routines. They idealise travel as something that will "solve all their problems" because everyone who travels long term will mostly post only the good side of travel to impress others. Seldom do they post the dark side. Most long term travelers will tell you that travel is hard work and not glamorous at all over all. For example, its nice to see the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio but after you have gazed at it and taken pictures around it for 20 minutes, there is nothing left to do up there but come down. That is to say crossing things off one's bucket list is very anti-climactic because the glamourised image of a place painted in the media and by others seldom matches up to the reality. I was busy smiling when the lady was talking about things like enjoying Ceviche and other foods. Its the same thing with a tourist from USA being every excited about mandazi or chapati yet we locals are probably long tired of such things. Very few talk about travel burnout, fleeting "friendships" on the road. You meet a wonderful person, get to know them well within time limits, add them on facebook and perhaps even email or whatsapp each other from time to time but the sad reality is 99% of the time you will
never see these people face to face ever again in your lifetime. At the end of say 10 years of travel you may find you have 500 facebook "friends" from all over the world yet other than a few fleeting moments you spent with them at a certain locale, you have nothing much else to communicate with. Very empty experience if you ask me. Perhaps Dos hated his job and Wamuyus business was not doing very well. Even perhaps there were issues in the marriage (who knows) given the big age difference with the guy being ten years younger. Or maybe they wanted to postpone responsibility or had just had bad experiences in relationships before they met each other (their marriage seems pretty young). Selling everything and getting on the road may have seemed like the ultimate solution. But as Im sure they have discovered by now long term cross continental travel si mchezo. Their timelines are already off from their own admission, planning such a long trip is no joke because there is an unpredictability element at every stage. I really wish them well but knowing what I know, they are in for tough times ahead. I hope they do not end up like those 2 very well educated twenty something years old German blonde girls I met in a hostel in a small city in Brazil many years back. They fled from Berlin because they "hated their jobs." Once they were on the ground they were having the time of their life (honeymoon phase of long term travel) partying and experiencing the newness of everything. Soon they had decided they are never going to go back to Germany even if they had to do bartending jobs for the rest of their lives. I soon left that city and moved on but kept in touch. Some months later there was some social unrest in that small town. They fled with tails between their legs back to the drudgery of Berlin. Not just because of the the very real unrest, but also because in their words "life in that small town had become boring" after their honeymoon phase was over. My advice to this couple and others; travel is beautiful, yes. But coming back to roots and stability and family that loves you and having kids in a stable environment is even better. So jipangaring for life after travel when you are on the road is even more important than the journey itself. And remember problems are everywhere and all countries are broken to some degree, so there is no paradise out there.Just peoples glamourised depictions of these places they travel through. Visiting a new city is fun. For the first few weeks. Living there for 2 or 3 months or even years is another because sooner or later the dark side creeps in. And if you are simply "passing by" cities quickly you might get the wrong impression of what those places are about because you are "honeymoon phasing" your way through them like this couple is doing. At some point even the "newness" of the next new town starts to bore you because you have to start adapting all over again and meeting new people you will never see again all over again. The best advice I ever got.. from a guy who walked from Ushuaia to Barrow over a few years in the 80s and even wrote a book about it.. was that travel has its time and then once its done, settle down, put roots down and move on to other things. My humble two cents. All the best to the couple, though!
In the final analysis, it all boils down to sheer plain old hard work and dogged persistence. Nothing more, nothing less!!