2 Parents, 2 Kids, 52 Weeks,
28 Countries
Written By Nina Martin
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Meet the Highams, whose decade of planning and saving paid off in a one-year trip around the world.
The Higham family had a dream. And unlike most idle fantasies, the Highams made theirs come true. Three years ago, John, an aerospace engineer, his wife September, and their children Katrina and Jordan (now 14 and 11) took a break from work, school, sports, and friends and traveled the world for 12 months straight. Their home in Mountain View, California, is filled with photos from the trip: Jordan and Katrina with their noses in a book in Venice; a queasy-looking Jordan in the Peruvian Andes; Katrina atop an elephant in Thailand... you get the picture. But how did they pull it off?
The Highams are optimistic, roll-up-your-sleeves types who count their blessings and their pennies. For years, they saved in every way imaginable to pay for their epic adventure. They cooked at home, went easy on birthdays, and furnished their house with thrift store finds and items September had plucked off the curb in college. Rather than buying a new car, they stuck with their old Mitsubishi, which leaked so much oil they referred to it as the Exxon Valdez. Eventually, the family managed to save $120,000 — the amount they estimated would cover their expenses for the year. Even with that hefty sum, the Highams roughed it rougher than the average backpacker on their trip, sleeping in tents and on ferry floors, eating more ham and cheese sandwiches than most people consume in a lifetime.
All four Highams agree that the years of sacrifice and planning, as well as the stresses inherent in quitting jobs and taking the kids out of school for a year, were worth it. Not only did they see the world, they came away with lasting memories and an intense closeness. And isn't that what every parent dreams of — a connectedness with your kids so powerful that it's like your own family force field?.
Origins of "The Trip"
The seed for The Trip was planted early in John and September's marriage, when they spent a year in Japan for his job. "It was such an incredibly close time for us, " says John. "We wanted our whole family to feel that kind of bond. " September was pregnant with Katrina at the time, and the children began hearing about plans for The Trip as soon as they were born. Over the years, the family attached Post-it notes pointing to places they wanted to visit on a giant world map plastered on their basement wall. They spent dinners debating the relative merits of Tanzania versus South Africa, Brazil versus Peru. By the time the kids had their own opinions, they were so invested in the "world-the-round trip " (3-year-old Jordan's phrase) it would have been impossible not to go. "We also told a lot of people, " says September. "If we had chickened out or not saved the money, there would have been a massive loss of face."
Timing it Right
Besides waiting until they'd saved enough, September and John regarded the kids' ages as the biggest factors determining their departure date. Jordan had to be old enough to read chapter books. "There's so much downtime, I can't imagine taking a trip like this with kids who can't read," John says. At the same time, Katrina had to be young enough to not mind hanging out with her parents. They set a target date of June 2005, when Jordan would be 8 and Katrina 11.
Planning and Preparation
The family's must-see list kept growing, eventually including Dubai, China, Cambodia, Costa Rica, Chile, Belize, Turkey, and much of Western Europe. It was easier to agree on where not to go: anywhere aggressively anti-American, and countries like Russia, India, and Australia, which were too big and fascinating to tackle in a couple of weeks. "We will get to those places before the kids go off to college, " John vows.
John and September plotted a rough itinerary based largely on weather patterns — following the sun. They didn't plot out every move, however, based on a lesson from earlier trips the family had taken: If you plan too much, you'll drive yourself and your kids crazy. Good travelers learn to wing it, and the uneasiness of not knowing where you're going to sleep is replaced with an excitement for spontaneity and the unknown.
The Highams rarely made reservations weeks in advance. They typically booked a campsite or hostel a day ahead via phone or Internet. Many times, they simply walked into a hostel lobby without a reservation and asked for a room. Only once, in England, did the Highams fail to find a room — they ended up camping in a farmer's field in a rainstorm — and even the awful places, like the hostel in Poland they shared with a bunch of hairy shipyard workers, made for lively e-mails back home.
Certain things needed to be planned, however — namely, the kids' schooling. September worried about them missing school, but then realized every subject — math, reading, writing, geography, history, science — could be integrated into The Trip. She poked around education websites and read reviews on Amazon.com. Then she purchased math workbooks, blank journals, and lots of age-appropriate memoirs and historical fiction relevant to their travels. Rather than pack all those books, September divided them into 12 piles, which her mother FedExed to them one at a time each month. The plan worked wonderfully. If anything, the Highams worried Katrina and Jordan were reading and writing in their journals a little too much while abroad. (Katrina wound up finishing 111 books during the year.) "Sometimes they barely seemed to notice what country they were in," September jokes.
The Highams also had to coordinate management of their house while they were away. They gave September's mother the power of attorney, and she collected their mail and paid bills. John and September kept up to date with credit card statements, bank accounts, and most everything else via computer.
Traveling Light
Out of their $120,000 budget, plane tickets alone cost the Highams $30,000. To ensure that the remaining amount was sufficient, they decided to ride tandem bicycles and camp across Western Europe instead of staying in hotels. In a way, cycling made packing simple: Everything had to fit into panniers and other bags attached to their bikes. They brought the absolute minimum: a tent, sleeping bags and sleeping sacks (great for yucky hostel beds), two or three sets of everyday clothes, one dressier outfit for church or special occasions, and a camera. They bought weather-appropriate clothes and suitcases on the road, when the need arose. Instead of a laptop, the family took a PDA and a wireless keyboard, which they used for research, journaling, and sending e-mail and photos. Each of the Highams was limited to one souvenir per continent.
Stumbling Blocks
September and John admit there were times when they wondered, What are we doing? Probably the worst moment came in Switzerland a few weeks into The Trip, when Katrina was climbing a rock and the rope holding her snapped. She broke her tibia and sprained her wrist so badly she couldn't use crutches. Friends offered to let them stay in Sweden until Katrina could walk. But Katrina insisted they continue. Cycling was no longer possible, so the Highams shipped their bikes home and went to Plan B: traveling by train through Eastern Europe, where accommodations are much cheaper than in its western counterpart. Katrina was in a cast for 53 days. Her injury "pulled us together as a family," says John, teaching them a core lesson: "All we really need is something to eat, someplace to sleep, and something to wear."
Another desperate moment occurred when the Highams were down to their last $10 in Tanzania, a country where credit cards are useless, ATMs are rare, and working ATMs rarer still. The frantic couple of days that followed,however, proved to be another life-enhancing experience.
As the Highams wandered the village of Lushoto trying to find out how to access cash, three separate sets of strangers offered to lend them $100 — the equivalent of four months' salary in the poor country. When John resisted one man's gesture, the man actually responded, "Hakuna matata, " or "No worries." The line turns out to mean much more than umpteen viewings of The Lion King could ever have suggested. John used the cash to buy a bus ticket for a long ride to a city with ATMs. The next day, he returned with enough money to pay off their debts, as well as a feeling of deep humility in the face of villagers' generosity. "If circumstances were reversed," John says, "before this experience I doubt I would have had the charity to respond in kind."
Life on the Road
Daily life for the Highams was a mix of the mundane and exotic. On a cargo ship off the coast of South America, Jordan and Katrina spent hours in the dining hall solving problems in math workbooks. Katrina got her ears pierced at a mall in Chile. At a traditional inn in Japan, Jordan refused to take a shower in the middle of a room before bathing, as is the custom. At a village in Bolivia without phones or electricity, a kindly innkeeper prepared a box of macaroni and cheese for a famished Jordan.
There were hilarious moments — a fish bit John's nipple while he was snorkeling in Thailand — and episodes that opened the kids' eyes. "The porters have packs three times as big as mine and practically run uphill," Katrina wrote in her journal after a trekking adventure in Peru. "When they get to the top of a mountain peak they play soccer until the tourists catch up."
They shopped in grocery stores for nearly every meal, typically choosing items that didn't need to be cooked. They traveled by bike, train, bus, plane, ship, tuk-tuk, elephant, and their own feet. Worried that a nonstop whirlwind of sightseeing would result in blurred memories and cranky moods, John and September factored in time once a week for puttering around. "There were plenty of days, " John says, "where the only goal was to get the laundry done" — usually in hostel sinks, by hand.
Favorite Moments
September loved the friendliness of Turkey and the utter foreignness of China. Katrina was touched by the Killing Fields of Cambodia and awed by the African savanna. Jordan raved about Peru, despite a case of altitude sickness on the hike to Machu Picchu. John had the thrill of his life cycling down the steepest road in the world, in the Bolivian Andes — and the fright of his life riding back up on a rickety old bus. The Highams played paintball in Panama City and rode Thunder Dolphin, a wild roller coaster in Tokyo. They sampled enough sweets to confidently declare that the best chocolate in the world is in Bariloche, Argentina, while the worst ice cream is in Turkey.
High on their glad-we-did-that list are the amusement parks, though not solely for the reason you might expect. "They gave us an insight into cultures that a typical traveler never sees," says John. The contrast between the high-tech Wild Wadi Water Park in Dubai versus the run-down Wet n Wild Water Park in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, "showed that basic human nature is that we like to play in the water and have fun."
Some of the family's favorite times occurred when they didn't do much of anything. A week vegging on a beach in the Mauritius islands proved so relaxing that they lost track of time and missed their flight to Singapore. After wandering around South America for a few months, the Highams kicked back in a seaside hut in Belize for four weeks before heading home.
Back to Reality
For Katrina and Jordan, transitioning back to life in California was surprisingly easy. "Kids live so much in the moment," says September. "They just picked up right where they left off." Meanwhile, September was overjoyed to finally have use of a washing machine that could do a load of clothes in less than two days.
The good news for John was that his old company offered him a new job. The bad news: Because the family was flat broke, he had no choice but to start work right away. "The flight landed at 11 p.m., and at 9 the next morning I was at my desk," he says. "For me, reentry was like mourning the loss of a loved one."
A Lasting Legacy
"After a year together, we thought we'd go our separate ways a little bit," September says. "But that hasn't really happened. We still sit around at night watching DVDs shoulder to shoulder." Even Katrina hasn't pulled away as much as other kids her age. "When she came back, her friends were texting each other," September says, "but she was still kind of a little girl." The family is drawn to traveling as strongly as ever, with the basement map sporting new Post-its on Egypt, the Galapagos Islands, and Madagascar. Their 2008 adventure was a month in Slovenia.
Since returning home, the Highams have also been vigilant about family time. They've pared back on outside activities, as well as work. "I used to have a career," says John. "Now, quite frankly, I have a job."
Next: Making it happen and useful travel resources
