12 months, 11 countries, 0 flights 🌏

Happy Valentine's to my best friend and travel partner. Every adventure is better with you by my side - you're the yin to my yang, and I love doing life with you ❤️

This trip has been a year in the making, and started with some dreams which slowly starting taking shape into something tangible and very exciting. Once we had our flights booked and a plan forming In November 2024, I started building this website as a way for us to share some of the special moments from this trip with family and friends.

We have come full circle, and it is a exciting to be finally using the website I spent so much time creating.

The trip is well and truly underway and we started our time in Sri Lanka with three nights in the capital and main city Colombo. The city is chaotic, hot, humid, and a barrage on the senses, and I loved it. Tuk Tuks weave in and out of traffic, colourful buses scream their horns, and people from all walks of life live in a chaotic kind of harmony. On our second day in the city the national power grid was reportedly damaged by a monkey, and the entire country lost electricity for five hours. Locals seemed totally unphased by this as it is a fairly regular occurrence but they could see the humour in it.

The Sri Lankan people are amazingly kind and friendly. I have lost track of how many times someone has gone out of their way to help us. An example was a lovely Lankan lady who waited with us at a bus change when it was her stop so she could point out which bus we needed to take next.

We spent most of our time in Colombo eating delicious local Sri Lankan food, checking out temples, breaking in the Teva's with a lot of walking (can confirm they get more comfortable with wear) and sightseeing. It was a lovely start to our trip, and a great introduction to Sri Lanka and the people that call this island country home.

Next stop is Hikkaduwa for some much needed beach days and hopefully some surfing!!

A very sleepy six hours at Changi airport! We got one of our favourite coffees from Arabica, had a budget meeting next to the iconic jewel water feature (and most importantly the air con), and took a nap. 

As always, so impressed at how everything just works so well here always and is so clean and organized. Pretty different to what we can expect in a few hours…

It’s a four hour flight from here to Colombo, where we arrive at 11:30 PM local time. We left Queenstown 21 hours ago now so it is certainly feeling like the longest day ever at this point!  

Not long to go now… speak to you soon from Colombo.

Love,
Alice 

And we’re off! An early start to the airport in Queenstown, and now all ready to take off in Auckland (no upgrades, for those invested in that journey)! 

Thanks for all your messages and love. 

Love Alice xx 

“9 hours, 18 minutes” reads the widget on my phone that has been counting down for many, many months at this point. Josh is sitting in bed next to me downloading books for the flight. My bag has been packed, and repacked, and repacked and is now sitting in it’s (hopefully) final state across the room, ready to be picked up and slung into the car at 5 AM tomorrow morning. It actually doesn’t feel real that we are finally leaving tomorrow - a lot of planning has gone into this moment, and I have that kind of nostalgic disbelief that comes with reaching a really big milestone. 

The last few days (and weeks) have been filled with special goodbyes, and we’re so grateful for everyone who has made this such a special period. I’ve spent the start of this week in Hāwea with Mum, Dad, Mackenzie and Jacob, and Josh has been here in Queenstown with his mum, Cathy. We also had such special goodbyes in Christchurch with our work friends, everyone at Ellen and Seb’s wedding, the Stilwell/Redfearn whānau, and my Grandad. Lots of tears of course, but I feel so lucky that our family and friends are overwhelmingly excited for us, and just can’t wait for us to get this show on the road!!

Tomorrow morning we’ll be up at 5 AM for a 6 AM check in at Queenstown airport, before a flight up to Auckland. Then, it’s ten hours across to Singapore, followed by a final four over to Colombo. We arrive at 11:30 PM local time, basically 24 hours after we leave Queenstown tomorrow morning. Forecast is showing a balmy 31 degrees and sunny! Not that much warmer than the 27 we’ve been having here in sunny Central Otago, but I’m pretty confident the humidity will bump it up another notch!! 

I’ve attached a few special photos of goodbyes over the last few weeks, as that feels like a super important part of kicking off this trip. 

Right now I am most excited about exploring a new city - the food, a yoga class, markets, people watching… and I’m most nervous about navigating public transport and trying to stick to our budget. I do think I may have packed too much stuff, so stay tuned for an update on that as we go! The real questions that all of my family want to know are - in a few weeks will Alice still have her Sol de Janeiro Bum Bum cream in her bag, and will Alice and Josh actually use the Therabands for at home/hostel workouts?!

Talk soon once we’re on the way.

Lots of love, 
Alice