At the point this blog uploads, we will be embarking on our final flight. Home.
So what have we learned? We have been to eleven different countries, twelve if you count Galapagos as a separate country (or indeed a separate planet), and now, as we prepare to return, what will we bring home in our minds, as opposed to in our rucksacks?
Over time, we have rehearsed this list verbally together, talking often about things which seem, now, like epiphanies, however obvious they might seem from a distance.
Now, as I write them down, I intend to use this entry as more than simply a concluding chapter. After all, what exactly is concluding? We are travelling now to the United Kingdom, which might seem, after so long, like a different country. We are travelling back into the world of work, which, for me at least, will have changed almost unrecognisably. We are travelling to the possibility of staying still for a while, of seeing old friends again and making new ones, of embarking on the adventure of self publishing, perhaps of buying a house or starting a family. And if you thought that the urge to travel was an itch that be scratched once and dispensed with, think again. We have a new list of countries we would like to visit, or those which we loved so much we would like to return to, albeit not for a number of years.
My point is, nothing much is ending. I feel as though I am stepping onto a flight full of beginnings. So these little lessons, from the bigger life truths to the tiny, practical adjustments, are not a thing to write down and walk away from. They are a new way to live.
1) Learning to see the colour in the chaos
Arriving in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam felt like an assault on the senses. At first the constant beeping, the roads crammed with hundreds of bikes, the lack of pavements, the screeching of cockerels, the necessity to step over market wares laid out on what little pavement there was overwhelmed me. I longed for silence. I wanted it all to stop. It was an exaggerated version of a feeling I often have in London.
By the time we left, I loved it. Vietnam remains one of my top countries on this trip, and not, as I thought at the time, only because of our brief sojourns into the countryside. In fact my key image when I remember Vietnam so fondly, is of the city at its most hectic, a particular route we had to walk to the yoga sanctuary every weekend, which bustled with markets, people, cockerels, colour and of course traffic. What I see now, what I had learned to see by the time I left, was a kaleidescope of colour.
Wouldn't it be useful to learn to skip the first stages, the dislike of the bustle, the belief that it would all be much better if it could be quieter, and look immediately for the vibrancy and life that hated bustle might contain within it?
2) Just because it looks like it will kill you, and sounds like it will kill you - doesn't necessarily mean it will kill you.
In most of South East Asia, but particularly Vietnam, the road system is such that you must simply walk out and trust that the traffic will part for you. This, when a road is twenty deep in motorbikes, is a daunting prospect. Looking at that road, from the perspective of the pavement, and a cultural understanding which relies on heavy regulation - and traffic lights - it doesn't seem possible that you will survive. Step out, however, and that apparent chaos reveals itself as perfect order in disguise. The traffic is not fast, the drivers' reflexes are quick purely because they are used to pedestrians crossing this way. The locals do it with absolute trust and without even looking.
A snorkel involves placing your face into water and holding it there. Every instinct screams against this action. And yet, do it, and it is absolutely fine. More than fine, it is beautiful.
Sharks do not necessarily attack you. Waves will not necessarily drown you. Heights will not necessarily drop you. Stray dogs are very unlikely to bite you (mostly they just want love). Bears will not necessarily maul you.
It applies to a lot more than just travelling extremes. There is so much in life which seems inevitably perilous, threatening or simply doomed to failure. But rethink for a moment. That chaos might just turn out to be wonderful.
3) Always do something, never nothing.
In Cambodia we encountered a very old woman, slowly progressing along the road, carrying an enormous and unwieldy bundle of empty plastic bottles. "She is collecting recycling," said our Tuk Tuk driver, "she will get only a few coins for it, but she does it anyway because she has to do something."
In Bolivia a lady sat, each day, on the side of the road, selling a handful of boiled sweets or a packets of travel tissues for two bolivianos. I don't know whether she made very much in a day, but she was selling rather than begging.
Everywhere we went people were struggling, but very rarely were they not doing something, however small, to earn money.
"It's not for her money," said our driver, "because still she does not make enough. But she has to for her dignity."
Human beings need food, shelter, companionship and water. But they also need a sense of purpose, a feeling of achievement. However helpless you are, however pointless the goal, you can always do something to preserve your own sense of self respect.
We are not starving in Britain, and we have a welfare system designed to scoop up those who are stumbling beneath the trampling feet of the rest of the population. But no one can hand you your sense of self. You have to work for that, and your boss is the hardest task master of all - yourself. Please that boss, however, and he or she will pay your wages in happiness.
4) Do it yourself
In Bolivia there is an empty building which used to be a factory. It's situated in a small village on the edge of the salt flats and all of the villagers earn their living harvesting, cleaning, bagging and selling salt on their back yards. The factory is empty because when some enterprising westerner asked all the villagers to come and work for him in the factory no one would come.
"Why would we work for you in a factory," they asked with genuine puzzlement, "doing something I can do perfectly well for myself at home?"
The majority of people, especially indigineous people in South East Asia and South America work for themselves. They have an idea, take a risk on it, open a small shop or a business and see how it goes. If it earns them a living, that's great. They work to their own hours with their family around them, usually out of their own homes. If it doesn't work out, there's no sense of shame, they just try out the next idea.
Now admittedly it's easier to just try something out in South America or South East Asia. The overheads and paperwork involved in setting up a business is negligible compared to the wealth of up front investment and risk taking required in westernised countries. Trying something put in England requires much greater risk taking. And benefits like pensions and paid holidays and sickness days are a wonderful privilege which goes hand in hand with working for someone else, who can better afford the new business overheads.
But what about the smaller things? Aren't we a little needlessly hesitant to try something new, or to go ahead and do something without the endorsement of a larger body?
I have a great job with fantastic perks and benefits which I know I couldn't get if I worked full time for myself. But I am also a part time writer. Why has my day dream always been to be accept by a large corporate publisher, when there are greater and greater opportunities to self publish? Why have I spent so much time thinking of self publishing as being somehow less of an achievement than handing my manuscript to a large company and letting them take it through the various mills involved in bringing so something to print? Isn't it more of an achievement to be in charge of the marketing, editing, proof reading and book design, and to have taken it through an end to end process? How much more innovative can my work be if I take the focus off trying to be a best seller, and simply aim to produce something I love? Does it matter if only three people buy it, if those three people really love it? Not everything in life requires endorsement. Some things only need a bit of hard work and some guts.
"Why would I work for you?" said the Bolivians in that salt mining village, "I don't need you. I am free."
We are free. Let's enjoy it.
The same principle holds for making things rather than buying them. In Bali they make their own clothes, in Peru they make their own furniture. In Malaysia our host was making bedside tables from abandoned old packing crates. The joy of creating something to your own recipes is worth far more than the cost of simply buying it.
5) Ditch the competition
In Penang it is perfectly fine to sit at the tables in one street cafe drinking coffee - but order your food from their neighbour.
"It is your loss," said a disgruntled westerner to our host in Thailand when she cancelled a trip due to weather conditions, "because now I am taking my business to someone else."
"Good," replied our host, "I am glad for my neighbours. We don't compete against one another here. We celebrate other's successes. It is the Thai way."
It is interesting that this absence of competition occurs in countries where the amount people are earning us usually enough to live on, rather than more. None of these small business are making huge profits. They are just making enough. Is it greed which drives us to be so small minded, so fiercely competitive? Is it the fact that we already have so much?
The urge to consider it a personal failure if custom goes to another business operating in the same area actually makes no sense except in the context of a lack of community. If your neighbour shares space or facilities with you, as many people do in Asia, or if it is a close knit community in which that neighbour might be your helpmate should you not manage to earn enough to live on, that sense of competition becomes absurd. Is it precisely that practice of holding onto excess, of considering only your own wealth, that drives us to deeper and ever more stressful competition?
Celebrate others' successes. Share in yours. It's not saintly. It's logical.
6) Practice selective sight
Wherever we have been and however large or small our joys and sorrows, it is always true that life is what you make it. Celebrating successes, small happy coincidences, little joys is enough to make even the largest mishap fade into insignificance. We have commented to each other constantly on how blessed we seem to be, how much everything seems to go our way. After a while we realised that the same experience, viewed by another, might seem unremarkable or even bad. You will see what you look for and you will remember what you give the most airtime to. Chose to focus on the moments you would like to remember.
As my friend so wisely told me as I bemoaned my disappointment at not being able to complete the Inca trail - you are always having an adventure, even if it's not quite the adventure you planned to have.
7) Hold your family close and your identity closer
I learned this from the Vietnamese friends we made. In Vietnam family is hugely important and it doesn't stop being so no matter what age you reach. Even if you are a successful adult, living away from home, experiencing new things which the previous generations weren't privy to, you never forget your roots.
If your grown up brother turns up at your house, you shrug, grin and feed him. If your father is unwell, or your family struggling, you do whatever you can to help.
Of course there is a crucial balancing point here. You can choose to be endlessly self sacrificing but you have to make sure you don't sacrifice your self. If you lose your identity, you deny those who love you the very thing they value most. The Vietnamese women I knew were bravely fighting against the tide in a social system which relegates, particularly the woman, to a sort of family service robot, removing much of what made that woman unique. We are lucky in the UK not to be born into such a system but it is amazing how many people still give up their identity under the mistaken impression that it's necessary for the sake of their families.
Family is everything. But don't forget to be you.
8) Please remember to tie a knot in your suspender...
In Dalat and Penang we found ourselves talking a lot about Feng Shui. I had always imagined it to be simply a sort of superstition, placing your bed facing a window for the good luck to fly in or some such idea. In Penang, as we visited the beautiful of house of a self made millionaire I understood that much of Feng Shui is about placing subtle symbols of important principles in and around your living spaces to stay mindful of the concepts you believe in.
It's easy to forget things you care about remembering. This will be particularly true for us as we try to bring foreign wisdoms into a westernised culture. We can develop our own form of Feng Shui, placing moments of our travels around our home and our workplace to remind ourselves of how insignificant are our problems, and how huge and beautiful the world. We have a white torito from Peru which is a symbol of peace to remind ourselves to be peaceful, I want to bring to work a notebook with a picture of a sea turtle to remind myself of that sense of calm. It makes sense to surround yourself with little triggers, to hold onto wisdom you don't want to forget.
9) Trust in your convictions and choose your battles.
It took us four months to learn to explain our choice to avoid hiring a motorcycle (unheard of in South East Asia) without apology and without doubting our conviction. In that time we used all sorts of unconvincing excuses and even hired one for a morning, hated and feared it, and returned it within the hour. When we finally admitted to ourselves that we simply didn't want one, and took time to identify and discuss the reasons why, we grew firmer in our choices. From that point on no one questioned our absence of motorbike, the way they had constantly done before, because we sounded so much more convincing in our argument against it.
The same is true of our style of travel. Just days before we left somebody said to me with the utmost confidence, "whatever you do, don't just stay in one place for a month at a time." That phrase 'whatever you do, do not...' echoed uncomfortably in my ears for months. But whenever we explained our choice to someone new, they would be, without exception, hugely supportive and even impressed. Gradually the shadow of 'Brad' and that echoing phrase 'whatever you do, don't do it your way' faded until they became figures of fun, both phrase and fictional character.
The same is true of things you are afraid of. If you are not doing it not just because you are scared but also because you won't enjoy it, it's not a cowardly choice to abstain. If you would enjoy it, but your fear is preventing you, that's the time to make an effort to conquer your fear
You always have a reason to chose what you chose to. Examine it. If it's purely motivated by randomness or by fear, then it's worth rethinking. But if you really know and believe in your reasons, just explain them to people, and they'll understand too.
But whatever you do, don't do it purely because it isn't the thing that everyone else says you should.
10) Nature looks better in the rain
Nature makes us happy. We found this everywhere we went. Greenery, animals, natural sounds and fresh air are a free high. And whatever the weather, nature manages to look stunning, even when grey drizzle is rendering man made cities a depressing smear.
Alongside that goes the concept we saw so wholeheartedly lived in the Cloud Forest in Ecuador. All animals, large, small, slimy or creepy, are worthy of our admiration. All of them are beautiful.
11) The night sky is worth more than sky TV
By far the most enduring image of our time in New Zealand is of the unpolluted clarity of the night sky. Camping with zero facilities in our van in the middle of nowhere was fantastic, and all the facilities in the world, including saunas, hot water, flush toilets and sky TV could not match up to it.
Jemmy's unadulterated excitement because the moon was full stayed with us long after we reluctantly left his little jungle paradise, and remains with us now. We still try to take the time to mark the occasion of a full moon, to go out to admire the beauty and brightness of it and to raise a toast to the moon, that most stunning and yet most overlooked orb which sees us through the night.
12) No day is special and every day is special
Moving on each month was surprisingly difficult, each place becoming, if temporarily, home. We struggled trying to adequately mark each last day, and could never find something appropriately special. In the end we realised that the last day might be perfectly special simply because it is another day in that place. This is just as valid in the context of returning home. We are both returning and not returning, because so much, both in us as people and in our lifestyles, will be different. We will probably settle into some kind of routine just as we did in each place on our journey. But every day is special just because it is a day of your life. And if you can keep in your mind that concept, you don't actually need an event to mark it.
13) Friendships can be made, retained and even deepened across cultures, miles, roles and languages
We remain in touch with friends from Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Chile and Peru.
We remain in touch with travellers we met in various countries from Canada, Switzerland, Britain, America, Croatia, Burma and Germany, to name only a few.
We deepened old friendships in New Zealand and Australia.
I have a friend from Brazil that I met in Chile, who sends me her poetry in Portuguese!
There is really no barrier to friendship, especially in this digital age. And really nothing more heart warming than finding that out for yourself.
14) Wherever you go, people are always people.
I remember in Cambodia our new friend N came to see us one day very upset because a trip she was arranging had fallen through. N works as a self employed guide, and the trip had been planned with travellers she had met teaching Khmer for free. It was to be a weekend away, and N would strange it and be our guide for a minimal charge. N had been looking forward to it for weeks, and had done quite a lot of work to arrange it, but one by one people had dropped out without telling her, booking a similar tour with a tour company instead. What was making N so upset was not missing out on a guide fee, it was that she had seen these people as friends, not as clients, and had been excited about the trip on her own behalf too. The message the travellers, deliberately or otherwise, were giving, was that they, in turn, did not see N as a friend but as a faceless Cambodian guide touting for custom, and therefore not worthy of the sort of consideration they might show to a friend organising a getaway.
It's so easy to forget that people in other cultures are only people. In Vietnam we realised how much we were finding ourselves replying to a friendly "hello" with "no thank you", seeing everyone as a potential pushy salesman or scamster.
It was so easy as we moved to South America, to become so obsessed with internet scare stories, that we avoided meeting anyone's eye and expected, at least in our first few days, to be constantly about to be mugged, raped or murdered.
People are mugged, pick pocketed, raped and murdered in England too. Just pick up a newspaper. It's not a South American phenomenon!
People are just people. They want to say hi, to be friends, to run a business, or to mug you in more or less the same ratios as everywhere else. They deserve the same level of politeness or consideration.
15) God is capable of looking quite different depending on where you happen to be standing
Why do we imagine something as powerful as a God would limit itself to one form? Surely a God is either so other that we can only create our own images as metaphors for our feeble human minds to follow - or so amorphous it chooses to take different forms to communicate better with different cultures?
In South East Asia, God is a light, an animal (or more accurately, all the animals together), a many armed being or an empty chair. In South America God is a mountain, a condor, a saint or an icon. In the UK God is a human, come to earth as a child and, unaccountably, given our parallel belief about where he was born, white.
Our concept of God is formed by our landscapes, our customs and our own features. Why do we argue so much about this aspect?
The more we examined other religions (which we did not do exhaustively, but enough), the more we noticed how similar are the fundamental principles, the basic teachings. God may look very different, but our ideas of what pleases him, of the behaviours he endorses, are overwhelmingly alike. (I am, for this, ignoring the extremist versions of religions, as they operate as minorities, and on rather a different scale).
The similarities between our world religions are much greater than our differences, which tend to relate less to the wider and more central principles and more to the smaller details, such as how to address God, what offerings he or she might prefer, or how many times we should wash ourselves in his or her presence.
And yet all we seem to focus on are those differences, ignoring the huge similarities so central to so many of our faiths, which build such a bridge across our cultures.
If there is a God, then he or she is A GOD. Nobody knows what a God might look like, so we do our best at imagining. All anyone is trying to do is understand his or her wisdom, and do the right thing by it. Everyone with a faith is united in that aim. The basis of most faiths is love and tolerance. Why do we forget that so ironically and so often?
16) Your faith is not a compartment
We love to slot our lives neatly into a series of boxes. At least we do in the west. Faith is something which everyone agrees should be a holistic factor, penetrating every area of our existence. No religion believes God can be put in a box.
And yet it's very easy to do so. Or at least to attempt to.
Many world religions acknowledge this and try to resolve it. A lot of them have some good ideas.
Why not use the prayer rooms now so ubiquitous in UK workplaces, for a short time at several points throughout the day, as Muslims do, knitting points of reflection throughout your waking hours? You might feel better for it.
Why not dedicate the best bits of your work to God like the Buddhists and Hindus. Give your first proceeds or products to charity each day. The Christians use a system called tithing, born from the original custom of literally giving the first tenth of your harvest, very similar to what people do in Bali and South East Asia with their market produce.
Why not take a leaf out of the book of the ancient Incas and see God in your landscape, letting the world around you constantly direct you back to your faith.
If you don't believe in a God, that's fine, but for those who do, why not learn from each other's interactions with him or her. We all face the same challenges in our day to day mindfulness.
17) Poverty is not logical
Poverty is difficult to define. Some people chose to live simply and are rich in other ways. Our guide in Peru told us a story about a small not born into a rich family whose father took him to visit a poorer farming family living in an open barn in the countryside to try to teach him how lucky he is, and that others might not be so fortunate. As they left the barn his father asked him, "so, do you see now that others have very different lives to us?"
"Oh yes!" said the boy enthusiastically, "because in our house we can only see a few of the stars out of a window, but they can see the whole universe!"
We are all poor in different ways. But real, dire poverty does exist and should not be ignored. The trouble is, quite apart from the difficulty in identifying poverty, telling real need from simple life choices or varying cultural priorities - poverty is not logical. And neither is our response to it.
The founder of the Kantha Bopha Children's Hospital in Cambodia, which provides top quality treatment free of charge to poor families, is Swiss German. He receives no funding from governmental or world wide union bodies because there is a rule which states that ant model which provides assistance free of charge can only be funded if the country or people it is being provided to can prove an ability to pay. Of course if these families had the ability to pay there would be no need for the hospital, but this is not the accepted approach. The hospital is funded purely through individual's donations because the official funding bodies visited the hospital, staying in the several hundred dollar a night most exclusive hotel in Cambodia - and ruled that the equipment being used was too modern, too good for a country so poor. Just one of their hotel rooms could have paid for a child's heart operation.
The official ruling defies logic. But so do hospitals like Kantha Bopha. Maybe, in our approach to poverty, we should throw out the rule books and start again.
18) Your privilege is more useful than your presence
Travelling left me hugely inspired by the work of certain charities, particularly the Cambodian Phare Circus, the Kantha Bopha hospital, and the Ko Lanta Animal Welfare Centre. I was also moved by the fate of the disabled in Bolivia, who exist on the streets without help or welfare benefit, though I continue to research the charities to which I might be able to donate to help.
But one of the hardest lessons to swallow was that my bleeding heart didn't really go very far. Volunteering in passing was an amazing thing to do, but provided me with rather more benefit than it might the targeted groups. I do not have a skill which can fit a skills gap and if I did it might be better used training locals to take my place. The fact is my power is my ability to earn a good wage in pounds sterling. It's a humbling lesson, and feels much less personal, perhaps also arguably less rewarding, but the best I can do for these causes is go home and earn money for them.
19) Eat like a Vietnamese
Shallow as it may seem in the light of all this pontificating, there as an enormous difference in our health in South East Asia than the rest of the world. As someone with a delicate and rather bumpy digestive system I had no problems at all, not even once, in South East Asia. Ginger, lemongrass, brown rice, chilli, chopsticks (because you eat slower), minimal dairy, tofu and coconut milk. You can't beat it. My intention, once I am back in a couple try where I know I can get these things, is to eat like a South East Asian as near as possible. There will be the inevitable need for chips and chocolate here and there, or for good old English tea, but there will also be freshly brewed teas made with fresh ginger, herbs or lemongrass (if I can get it), and an abundance of tofu. My mouth is watering already...
20) Exercise for practicality or pleasure
We walked everywhere and ate well (apart from in South America) and we were healthier than we've ever been. Exercise works better as part of your life, not a chore. I hope to run home from work or take up hula hooping. Something for pleasure.
21) You don't need all the stuff
Perfectly obvious of course but we have existed for a year on a rucksack each, about a third of the contents of which we have nor even used. In Bolivia everyone simply scoops up what they need, be it children or market goods, and ties it up in a piece of cloth on their back. You don't need the stuff and you barely even need the fancy bags that you carry it in.
22) Physical distance doesn't matter. Emotional distance works on different rules.
Digital technology can be amazing. It really isn't always evil (as I was previously rather inclined to think). We moved physically away from family members and friends for a whole year, but there were several people with whom we grew emotionally closer, talking more over the internet than we did face to face. You might miss people while you are away, but you needn't miss out.
(There is one caveat to this. You really have to use it wisely. Too much constant contact with bone pulls you in awkward positions, making it hard to enjoy the place you are in.)
23) Multi tasking = doing more things less quickly and rather less well.
Some people are natural multi taskers. But a lot of us aren't. For many people the constant pressure to juggle numerous tasks at once leads to stress and erodes the natural pleasure of achieving something, or doing something well.
You can't always avoid it but when you can, it might just make for a more pleasant lifestyle, without necessarily being any less productive. Enjoy every task, however small, and celebrate it for itself.
24) Fuel is free under your own power
We took a lot of pleasure in walking rather than hiring a motorbike, and we saw things more freely and more closely. My friend in Thailand told me that she loves to get around as much as possible on a pushbike or in a kayak. There is something wonderfully satisfying about getting somewhere, as she put it, "using your own engine."
We lead fast paced lives, especially at work, and our own engine may take longer, so there are practical constraints. But wherever possible, and along the same lines as above, it is really quite nice to enjoy the journey.
25) We are lucky to be women living in the west.
And should realise how lucky. Women's rights are not exactly high priority in any of the countries we have travelled in bar Australia and New Zealand. Wife beating is common and not especially disapproved of, and the women do the lion's share of the work. Careers and identities are often denied.
We are lucky. We should celebrate and enjoy it.
26) Animal protection laws are a luxury
Only in the west are the rights of animals given any airtime at all under law. Abused or abandoned animals are rescued and perpetrators can be prosecuted. Yes there are still problems and a long way to go in terms of the regulation of farming and industrial practice's, but we have something and we should be grateful for it.
27) Traffic safety is a luxury. We are lucky to have it.
However much we might moan over speed limits or traffic wardens, the countries in which traffic safety is not legislated for or considered important are losing huge numbers of their population every year to road accidents. The lack of enforceable road laws and the lassie faire attitude to accidents, combine so that it feels as human life in those places is somehow cheaper than elsewhere.
A life is never cheap. We are lucky to have traffic laws.
28) Not just one kind of water, but two
Not only can we drink our tap water but we also have hot water at the flick of a switch. Only the poshest hotels in South America had real hot showers or water in any quantity (though many other places claim to, rather disingenuously). Nowhere can you drink from the tap, not in ant of the places we travelled apart from Australia and New Zealand.
We are rich.
29) We may roll our eyes at our political leaders but we can take our long standing democracy for granted.
Dictatorships and extremist leaders have dogged both South East Asia and South America for decades. A period of democracy is a bonus, but might change again at any moment.
Our leaders might make irritating decisions, against popular opinion and in ignorance of protests, but they are, and have been throughout our history, continuously democratic.
We are lucky not to live in fear of dictatorship. (Whatever you might think of David Cameron.)
30) The 'red tent' concept
Travelling with one other person is challenging mostly because the natural ebb and flow, and hours of each day spent apart are suddenly absent. The most frightening part of that is that the natural rise and fall of your emotional states are highlighted, as you are unable to ride the flow of them in private.
Dealing with this requires, above all, an acceptance that both of you are equally flawed and that you change over time. Some of the hardest things for me boiled down to my own concern over my partner's imagined disappointment, having witnessed some of the uglier sides of my personality to an extent he wouldn't normally have to deal with. My paranoia about this made the problem much worse. A human wife he could deal with, crazy paranoia and subsequent defensiveness - much harder.
Both sexes have cycles of emotional states, albeit women's are rather more obvious due to the coincidence with the menstrual cycle.
Once you deal with each other's shocking humanity, what you need is space. You can part and sight see separately. But easier, is to learn to have space internally even whilst still in each others company.
I have never believed that your spouse should be expected to fulfil all possible roles for you. You need friends for different kinds of friendships, family, acquaintances and work mates. If they are not physically there, utilise the magic of the internet.
And finally, there is always the 'red tent'. Originally so named because it was intended as a way to deal with women's mood changes during menstrual cycles, the idea is to allow yourself a quiet space where any mood fluctuations cannot affect the other person. We used it on and off for both of us and it is a calming and useful option. Essentially all it is doing is accepting, rather than fighting, the natural changes of your moods, and limiting any aftermath.
31) Stand tall
Balinese children learn to walk tall in order to balance offerings on their heads and to learn the traditional festival dances. Vietnamese women walk tall also because they use their heads to carry things. French and Swiss women seem to walk tall in order to look glamorous. As I travelled I noticed that British women are the worst culprits for slouching. Are we somehow apologetic? Is it the great British self deprecation made physical?
Either way I started to think consciously about my posture, to walk like a Balinese.
I looked a lot better, though didn't always remember. It's something I will bring home with me to work on. Maybe we should never have abandoned that old practice of walking about with books on our heads.
32) You are prettiest when you are happy
...which for me meant when we were in the countryside. Pictures there are notably more attractive. My smile is wider. What you look like really doesn't matter. It's what you project about how good you feel.
33) Forget money. Aim happy.
There was, in Peru, a colour for nearly every kind of luck. For luck in family, in education, in health, in love. There was no clue for money. It just wasn't covered.
Studies have shown that the happiness factor lasts longest in relation to experiences, and dips the quickest and the most drastically in respect of something you have bought or acquired.
Money really doesn't buy happiness, and it sometimes impedes it.
34) You are always beautiful somewhere.
Pale skin in countries where the sun is strong and the skin tone olive, is considered deeply beautiful. In countries where there is no sun and the natural skin colour is pale everybody tries their best to get brown.
Just go with what you're made of. You are beautiful somewhere.
35) A family is a unit
We use the expression 'family unit' very often in the UK but I wonder sometimes whether we really treat it as one. South American children accompany their mothers to market. You don't see then with toys. They don't really have much. But I never saw one have a tantrum.
That might have been coincidence. But I really noticed a difference in the way the parents talked to the children, and the way the children talked back to them. After a while I realised that what I was noticing was the lack of apparent hierarchy. The parents were neither worried nor commanding in relation to their children. They didn't seem to be an to be anyone clearly in charge. Instead there was an easy, friendly comradery.
I don't know how they achieved it. I not sure of the secret, but I did wonder if it has to do with parental experience. The parents did not seem, as with a lot of UK parenting, to assume the child to be the centre of the world and sacrifice themselves to it. Everything felt a lot more companiably, and perhaps a little less mutually resentful than I see in some of the less well balanced family structures in western societies.
36) Greetings before demands
In Peru everybody said good morning or good afternoon to everybody, even if they were passing strangers in the street. Even if there were lots of you, or of them, every single person greeted, and was greeted, often even followed by an enquiry as to your health. Even in situations in which somebody was performing a service for you, such as in a shop or a restaurant, the greeting is exchanged before the demands are made.
In restaurant situations, everybody who arrives or leaves wishes everyone else in the restaurant 'buen provecho' (good digestion). This always happens regardless of the people eating or the mood or agenda of the person arriving or leaving.
We don't always take the time to say hello before we demand things, or to say hello to strangers we pass in the street. But it's a rare and very small minded person who would actively manage to take offence if we did.
I'm going to make it my mission. Let's bring a little bit of warm hearted Peru home in our rucksacks.
37) Chicha for the workers is a crucial factor in the success of a project
When you build a house in Peru you have to pay great attention to ensuring your project receives good luck. Quite apart from the fixing of the good luck toritos to your roof, an important custom is the provision of Chicha (a fermented corn alcoholic drink) to the workers, and the subsequent hilarity that follows.
I rather support that. It's a well known business principle that the best work is done by the happiest workers, though companies vary enormously in their practice of it. I like the idea that a thing is created in an atmosphere of conviviality, and that the need for that pleasure at the close of the working day is understood and supported by the hirer.
38) Challenges are not time limited
We have a real tendency to plot our lives against a set of rather arbitrary deadlines. Why do certain things have to be done before you are 30?
My Dad tells a story of the longest time ever to complete a marathon. I forget the exact details but the gist of the story is that the man had a serious accident half way through his first attempt which rendered him lame. After years of physiotherapy he returned, picked up where he left off - and completed the race. He ran that marathon in something like three years and forty two minutes.
That's an achievement. There is a small rock in my bag which I was carrying on the Inca trail as my 'offering' to the mountain. I was taken ill one day in and could not complete the trek. But that's OK. I still have my rock. I'll be back in a few years time to complete it.
39) Whatever it is, it doesn't matter
We worry about all sorts of things. But the fact is that the society we live in, in the west, is hugely privileged. I worry about small errors I might have made in my work day, about the osdivility that a passing comment I made may have upset somebody, about my weight or my clothes, my money or the length of my current 'to do' list.
But none of it really actually matters. There is a whole world out there. Some people struggle for their lives. Others are fine but are still certainly not affected by a mistake or a clothing choice I make thousands of miles away.
40) And finally...
In the words of the Dalai Lama -
"Be kind whenever possible.
It is always possible."
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