back to Europe

Today is the last day of our great trip and we are sitting in Calgary and thinking about the greatest time of our lives.
The last 8 months or 235 days we visited 14 countries all over the world. During our trip we had 17 flights and one in a small plane in Alaska, we had 19 boat trips and one trip in the train, exactly the skytrain from Lhasa to Bejing.
Mostly we went by bus, especially in Asia and South America it was the most common way to travel. All in all we had 57 bus rides, among the best in South America and the worst in India. Our longest bus ride took 36 hours from Ushuaia to El Bolson. We spent several nights in the buses.
We were also driving a car 4 times in Mendoza, Tahiti, El Bolson and Canada. With the campervan we drove in Alaska 3500 km and in New Zealand 4000 km. In Canada we drove about 1700 km with our rental car.
During the last 8 months we slept in 86 different beds all over the world in in very different quality and standard.
We have seen many great places and for example we have seen about 20 glaciers in New Zealand, Chile, Argentina, Alaska and Canada. We also have been near the highest peaks in the world, like Himalaya, the Andes and the Rocky Mountains.
The hugest city we have been was Mumbay with about 23 millions habitantes and one of the smallest communities with about 13 people was Wiseman in Alaska on the Dalton Highway.
The highest point of our trip was about 5.200 m by train in the Himalaya and we walked on about 4.000 m in Lhasa.
One of the highest temperatures was about 42 degrees celsius in Cambodia and about 0 degrees in New Zealand and Alaska.
We have been in the southernmost city in the world - Ushuaia, the easternmost city in the world in Gisborne and Stefans feet also touched the polar sea in Prudhoe Bay.
All over the 8 months we had a great time, visited great places and met great people all over the world. We never regretted the decision to make the trip and all in all there were no really bad experiences. We also had no problems with health.
We visited so many great places the last 8 months, that it is not easy to say, what we liked best. The most important lesson we learned during travelling was to accept and tolerate different cultures and people from all over the world. There is one thing we all have together - we are all the same, just humans trying to make the best of our lives.
Now we are heading back to Europe from Calgary via London and we are looking forward to meet our families and friends. All in all we can recommend you travelling like we did, for us it was much easier than we expected.