The story so far

Eva and Doug have been together for the past 25 years, married most of the time. We had a charming, tiny wooden house from 1895 that overlooked the city Oslo, Norway's capital, and lived there for 20 years. We had good jobs, Doug as a foreign correspondent, Eva working with branding for one of Norway's largest companies. We were comfortable. Nice house, nice cars, a sailboat and a summer cottage. We had secure jobs in a time of finance and media crisis. In our middle age, everything was perfect except for one thing: Doug was tired of traveling and writing as a reporter, everywhere from war zones in Iraq to Olympics in China, and Eva was looking for new challenges after 18 years with her company.

The answer? Shake it up and see how things land...

We did just that. Eva took a voluntary golden handshake, and Doug took a six month leave from his job. We sold the house and put our stuff (way too much of it) into storage. (Is Warehouse 3, Storeroom 210, Lier, Norway a legal permanent address?) We put the boat and our cars on ice and the mail forwarded to Eva's sister. Then we set off on a 95-day trek that started in Stavanger, Norway, passed through Istanbul, Turkey, and is now in Cape Town, South Africa, ahead of a 24-day overland trek through South Africa, Namibia, Zambia, Zimbabwe and then Johannesburg, before heading to Thailand, Malaysia, Australia, News Zealand, Hong Kong and then back to Norway.

Both of us have traveled extensively, but its been a long time since we went anywhere exciting together. Now we're off on .. what? ... walkabout? ...flyabout? Whatever. All these places are new to both of us.

It's also an experiment. The hypothesis: Take a journalist who has grown to hate airports, hotels and travel and is sick of writing due to too much work travel, and send him off with his wife to airport, hotels and to travel for fun, and then write about it for the sheer joy of sharing the experiences with our friends until he rediscovers how much fun it is travel and write. Take the executive on a similar trek, and she will be rearing to boss people (other than Doug) around again when she gets home.

Will it work? Who knows. What's for sure is that our lives won't be the same after the 95-days.

We'll let you know about that, and mostly what we've been up to, whenever we have the Net access.

Cheers
D&E