Roamers Report #15 April 12, 2025

Dear Fellow Travel Enthusiasts,

Welcome to the 15th installment of the Roamers' Report!

After 5 months we have finally left the continent of Asia and have headed to South America.  We finished up our time in Nepal with a lackluster visit to Kathmandu and the lake town of Pokhara and then endured a 48 hour oddessy flying from Kathmandu to Cuzco, Peru via Doha, Qatar, Miami, FL and Lima, Peru that had us in the air for more than 35 of those 48 hours. 

We actually did something unprecedented in our travels, we split the family up for the journey.  As we were not able to get 5 tickets using our frequent flyer miles on the same flights, Francesca booked Ryan and me on the above mentioned route while she and the girls embarked on an oddessy of their own flying from Kathmandu to Singapore to San Francisco to Houston to Lima and finally to Cuzco.  

It was the first time any of us had set foot on US soil in 10 months.  Ryan and I were able to connect with a good friend from business school (and my current work boss), Juan Betancourt, at a Cuban restaurant called Versailles near the airport and Francesca and the girls got to spend some time with her mother/their grandma and her brother and sister in law in San Francisco during a long layover. 

The kids and I are now in Cuzco reacclimating to the altitude whilst Francesca attends at 3 day ayahuasca retreat.  We'll spend the rest of April in various places in Peru including trekking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu before moving on to Ecuador. 

NOTE: I want to draw your attention to a new segment of this update email called "Cultural Observations".  This is something we have been featuring on our Facebook page since the start of our journey, but it just occured to me that I should add a link to them here for those of you who are not on social media.  See below. 

(An overview of the countries and cities we've been since the last newsletter and an update on where we are currently)

Here are some pics of our final weeks in Nepal including the resort town of Pokhara and some final shots of Kathmandu and then some of our first few days in Peru. 

(Hopefully humorous stories about real events that happened to us on our trip)

TOUCHING THE VOID OR HITTING THE WALL?  

A WORLDSCHOOLING REALITY CHECK

For many, the idea of traveling nonstop for over a year with three kids might sound like a ridiculous proposition—equal parts dreamy and deranged. Think missed flight connections, lodging that looks nothing like it did on TripAdvisor, and the slow ache of being far from friends and family. And yes, all of those things have happened to us—sometimes all in the same week. But up until recently, we’ve mostly shrugged them off and gamified them into the broader adventure. Hotel shower that only spurts cold water? Roll with it. Hotel reservation scam in Chang Mai, Thailand? Roll with it.  Kid vomits in a rideshare car in the Bali? Okay, less fun, but… still, roll with it.

What we didn’t expect was that, ten months in, our seemingly boundless wanderlust might start to feel more like wander-fatigue.  Click here to read the full story.

In case you missed the previous Travel Stories, here is a link to the archives....

Travel Stories Archives 2024-2025 

(Many of you may not care about the home schooling portion of this, but since it's ostensibly the reason we are doing this, I will provide a brief update during these Newsletters.)

Not much to report in the homeschool section.  The kids took a week off of school during our Nepal trek and then their school Pathways had their official spring break so not a lot was done then as well.  So after a couple days of traveling from Asia to South America, we are just starting to get back into a school work routine. 

Francesca and I have both felt that we have gotten away from school work related to the countries, peoples and cultures of the places we're traveling through over the last month or so and so we plan to rededicate ourselves to rebalancing their school work efforts more in that direction.  Which means drawing pictures of the people and places we see for our youngest and writing essays and research reports about them for our older kids. 

(Blog Posts Published since the last newsletter - in case you missed them on social media)

Holy Holi Fest Batman! (Bhaktapur, Nepal)

Porters Porters Everywhere! (Lukla, Nepal)

Touching The Void...Sort of  (Namche Bazaar, Nepal)

Bali H'ai May Call You...It May Not  (Ubud, Bali, Indonesia)

(A dose of truth about some of the things that did not go according to plan or worries that we've had about the trip)

For many of you the idea of traveling non stop for over 12 months may seem like a ridiculous proposition, one that is rife with all the stresses of travel from missed flight connections, hotels that aren't how they were described on Tripadvisor to missing friends and family at home.  Well all of those things have happened to us of course, as we anticipated they would, but so far our love of travel has far outweighed any obstacles that have presented themselves thus far.  And any that do, we generally gamify them as part of the adventure. 

That said, we may or may not have hit a wall in Nepal.  While strolling togther down the smog filled streets of Pokkhara while the kids were enjoying some screen time back in our apartment, Francesca and I both admitted to feeling less than energized about our current travel situation and wondered if it was just a malaise from being underwhelmed by the second half of our Nepal stay or because we had been in Asia for so long with more or less the same scenery or was it something more, something deeper.  Had we finally hit a travel wall from which we would not be able to recover?  

We hoped that the abrupt change to mysterious Latin America and the jungles of the Amazon would reenergize us, but that remains to be seen.  It certainly wasn't instantaneous when landing in Cuzco.  We all have some pretty signifcant jetlag, many of us are getting over protracted colds/coughs and the altitude is wreaking havoc on many of us.  Maybe 10 months of travel is our limit?  Other Worldschool families do this for years on end or indefinitely in some cases, but most of them are not moving around as much as we are.  

I'll give an update on our next Roamer's Report to see if we have bounced back heading into our final 2 months of travel. 

(Cultural comparisons and whimsical observations from our travels)

Here are our Cultural Observations post for countries we have visited for at least one month.  A caveat as you read these, they are not all "cultural" in the typical sense of the word and none are meant to be taken in a negative light, but merely just some observations from an observant family of travelers. 

Indonesia Cultural Observations 

Vietnam Cultural Observations 

Philippines Cultural Observations 

Thailand Cultural Observations 

Morocco Cultural Observations 

Spain Cultural Observations 

Bosnia Cultural Observations 

Greece Cultural Observations 

(I'm a little reluctant about this section because this trip is supposed to be more about quality and experience than sheer quantity, but I find stats like this interesting nonetheless) 

I am getting a bit more comfortable with keeping the trip stats.  As time goes by and the stats grow, it is getting fun to track the various cities we've been to and the modes of transport we've taken, etc. 

Here is a quick list of countries we've been to so far on this trip. They are places we have stayed overnight for at least one night. The bold ones are places we've lived in for an extended period of time (over 3 weeks). 

• United States

• United Kingdom

• Greece

• Croatia

• Bosnia and Hercegovina

• Slovenia

• Austria

• Italy

• Spain

• Portugal

• Morocco

• Romania

• Thailand

• Philippines

• Taiwan

• Hong Kong

• Vietnam

• Indonesia

• Nepal

• Peru

Here is the link to the full trip stats page.

Thanks for joining us on our journey. I have tried to keep to my self imposed routine of sending a Roamers' Report every 2 weeks, but it hasn't always worked out that way. But I do post more regularly on social media (mostly FB, but some Instagram too) so if you want more real time updates please follow our Five Tickets to Roam FB page .

Regards,

The Roamers - Dan, Francesca, Ryan, Austen & Finley