Tales from One Family's Year Abroad

The photos rotate on my screen saver, flicking through a world that now seems galaxies away. There’s one of our family gazing serenely across India’s Thar Desert, flanked by dozing camels. Another shows us cycling past medieval castles in France; branding cattle in Australia; boating down the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. Did we really do all that or have I just stumbled into someone else’s life? Was it just last year that our family travelled around the planet with a knapsack apiece, a duffle bag of books and a sketchy itinerary? Now we’re back in Calgary, with closets the size of rooms we bunked in in India; with toilets full of ‘drinking water’; with a heat source larger than a hot water bottle; with more things to lose, clean, break. Sometimes I think I tumbled down some bizarre time tunnel last year, where life for 358 days was curled inside out and upside down.

Then I get a call, which usually straightens me out. Such as the one from the Glouchkows, a family from Ottawa, who tracked us down in August to say they were off on a similar adventure and wondered if we could swap notes as they swung through Calgary before departing for Fiji from Vancouver. What follows is a list of questions culled from Ellen and Jamie Glouchkow, fellow travellers, new e-mail “pals” and folks curious about the “backstory” of our year abroad. I’ve tried to answer each as best I could.

The last of the four-part series, A Family Odyssey, will appear in Reader’s Digest early next year. Until then, if you want to view more photos of the Cummings-Lazenby trip or discover more helpful hints visit www.travelpod.com/members/cummingandgoing.

• What kind of technology did you travel with, and were you ever robbed?
• Were you ever extremely frightened?
• What was your system for travelling with money and important documents?
• Would you recommend a Round the World (RTW) airline ticket?
• Are either of you teachers? Did you “home school”?

• What would you change if you did it again?
• Did you have all your vaccinations before your trip?
• Is there an ideal age to take children on such an epic journey?
• Would you recommend breaking up the trip periodically with longer stays in one place?