Spending 2023 exploring the world. What a privilege, so where did the inspiration for such an adventure come from? Traveling for all the reasons anyone does, just with a unique personal origin behind the idea to leave a job, pack up your life and embark!
In 1989 at age 26 my dad set off on a year long journey, traversing east across the world through scores of countries from Ireland to China. Much of the journey was traveled with his best man, Mike Muldowney, known to our family as “Uncle Big Man”, a towering 6’6’’ ginger. The trip was dubbed “The Grand World Couch Tour” as it was done on a shoestring budget, in a time of Amex travelers checks and love letters that would take weeks to get to my mom back in the states. Take a peek at their incredible itinerary and a few photos here.
The Travel
I’ve known for years that conceptually I wanted to embark on a similar journey, and how cool it would it be to retrace a few steps from a trip that had such a great impact on their lives. The longer spiel is below, but last year I began combing through my dad’s (TC) cursive-filled travel journals for destinations and inspiration. Using their itinerary as a blueprint, adding my own personal spin, and with the added help from Big Man recounting details, I put the below itinerary together. It took years of courage-building, saving, and planning, but now I’m reliving the dream!
Operating with a similar long-term travelers mentality, it will be quite a change to travel slowly, budget consciously and flip the script on anyone’s typical M-O to “spend money to save time” while I’ll travel mainly on public transport (including some fun overnight busses/trains), thrive on budget accommodations, and live off endless street food in a challenging goal to get my daily living costs to $40.
Roughly half of my journey will be done solo, and the rest with my cousin Nate, girlfriend Kial, and any friends I can convince to join! Having spent the winter months with adventure-filled ski mountaineering in Canada with Nate and completing a solo tour of Asia, I’m now backpacking through Eastern Europe, shown in Segment 4 below! I’m extremely excited to replay certain segments from their trip and carve my own travel path on this Chautauqua.
The four segments represent extended travel periods through world regions, with creative goofy titles and high level overviews.
The Writing
I originally started “travel writing” in a personal journal as it’s been such an amazing experience not to log just for the sake of future memory and reflection. I’ve continued the journal now covering more personal thoughts from the road, then had a Google Doc, and this space here is the current evolution - a simple and sometimes poorly formatted way for me share my journey and stories with family and friends. (And likely a cathartic way for me to talk to myself and a fun project while on the long solo legs).
If you’re a talented writer like Aileen, you’ll notice a poor blend of present and past tenses or a misuse of punctuation; I’ve covered a good bit live while traveling and ofcourse also took the time to recap. Admittingly these last couple months I wrote less regularly than I originally thought I would. Generally one creates the time on long bus rides and travel days, but my transit was the wind in my face, motorbiking, day dreaming, doing neck rolls to relieve the pain [insert famous zen and art of motorcycle maintenance quote]
After quite a bit of difficulty typing most of this on from my phone, publishing on an iPad and posting while attempting to get past the Great Firewall of China, I finally have it up online!
More: When did inspiration turn into plans?
The earliest memories I have of my Dad’s trip was him giving a slide show of his African safari to my 2nd grade class in our middle school gymnasium. I recall sitting there cross-cross-apple-sauce, probably a bit embarrassed to have your father at school, but likely enjoying the “wow your Dad is cool” comments from classmates.
Fast forward to high school, the value of “travel as a great education” continued as my partners were crazy and fortunate enough to take their five children, aged 10-18 at the time, backpacking Europe for three weeks one summer. The encouragement continued - As Aileen beautifully wrote for the NYT Mag section “The Lives They Loved”, our Dad wanted to take each of his kids on a trip “anywhere in the world” after graduating university. Although he was only able to take three of us on these grand expeditions, it’s now a tradition my Mom continues, having just wrapped up two weeks with Tommy in Japan. Easy to say such adventures kicked off the travel inspiration!
Fortunately for my siblings and me, TC journaled copiously during his travels. His journals have been a goldmine and special keepsake for us as we can pick them up to read about a day in the life of our Dad in his 20s. I picked up my first journal in 2018, which documented my Dad’s first few months in a car from Western Europe to the USSR.
It wasn’t long after before I mentally committed to the idea to tear a page out of his book and embark on a similar adventure of my own. It may have taken years to muster up the courage, savings, dates, and game plan with Kial - who I’m excited will be joining later this year. Because as Grandma Comer said to both my Dad in 1989 and me last year: “why leave such a good job and spend so much time away from your great life!?” “Well Grandma, its a big world and life is short!”
1989 vs Today
As small aside, the world was different in 1989: there were Cambodian refugee camps set up in the areas I had just biked through in eastern Thailand, there was Tiananmen Square, a falling Berlin Wall, crumbling USSR, and other marks to the slow end of the Cold War represented by cries for democracy they witnessed during their travels - and travel delays from pro democracy protests in places like Nepal. It’s hard to imagine matching the historical significance of their travels in 1989 versus today. But who knows, maybe traveling while witnessing many economies still struggling to reemerge after a world altering pandemic, being one of few Americans on Chinese mainland during a tension filled time with the US, or taking a train around Taiwan the year before their major election as Chinese jets fly overhead… and historical heatwaves throughout the summer of ‘23 will end up as major moments of this decade.
