We're going on an adventure!

Bilbo becomes a barrel-rider later in his adventure.

How it began

Welcome to Thomas and Alex' travel blog! We're headed out on a long journey this winter and spring, and plan on documenting it here. For those of you who don’t know, Alex and I met back in 2009/2010 when we both took a gap year of music, travelling and outdoors life at Seljord Folk High School. Our school trip took us to Nepal, but it was only a week long, and we ended up only staying in and around Kathmandu, the capital city. We found out that we needed to come back and see more of that lovely country, and thus the seed was sown for the journey about to begin. We’ve both been studying in Trondheim ever since, and now, roughly half ways in our studies, seemed like the right time to take a break. So we’ve been working and saving money, and this spring we’re both taking off school and ready to spend four months exploring Asia. It's been a long time in the planning, which justifies the Lord of the Rings-referencing title, and Bilbo's adventure in The Hobbit sure seems to spring to mind often when talking about ours. Far away lands, unfamiliar cultures, exotic creatures, beautiful places. But we hope it'll contain slightly fewer orks, dragons and near-death experiences!

Barrel-riders Thomas and Alex on an adventure in 2011.

Where to go

Although Nepal obviously was on the list, we hadn’t really discussed where else to go, before we sat down once this April in Alex’ apartment. We basically found a map and threw out any crazy ideas we had. It turned out our wishes overlapped pretty well, and although we had to shorten the list a little bit (we have to save something for future trips!), we ended up with the following itinerary:

• India
• Nepal
• Myanmar/Burma
• Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam
• China, Hong Kong
• Japan

This summer we bought plane tickets, this fall we’ve been fixing Visas and vaccinations, this Christmas has been all about packing and final preparations. It’s incredible how quickly time has gone - "Only four months left!", "Only a month left!", "Only twenty days left!", "Only a week left!!", "Only four days left!!!", which is where we are now.

This blog

So stay tuned. We'll be updating this blog regularly during our trip with posts from both of us, pictures, maybe a little competition or two. It'll probably be mostly in English, due to us both having international families. 

Till next time: Merry Christmas!