#BEDM: Wanderlust and Coming Home

With the Blog Every Day in May Challenge entering its final few days, I’m thrilled I’ve been able to post daily. However, I haven’t kept to the suggested subjects, often going my own way! I’m hoping today’s post might cover ‘Wanderlust’ from last week and ‘My Home Town’ for today.

7 years ago my man and I arrived back to London after 6 months travelling through South America and New Zealand. During that time we kept a blog (my first foray into the blogging world). This is our final post from that blog ‘Tim and Angie go Latin’. It sums up what I love about travel and the joy of coming home.

After, 187 days, 4 continents, numerous modes of transport including 17 flights, 63 different beds, 7 Lonely Planets and only 2 pairs of shoes we arrived back in the UK at 8.30pm on Sunday 13th January 2008. Flying back into Heathrow over London, looking down on the metropolis sparkling with tiny gold lights in the darkness we felt surprisingly emotional as we realised we were finally coming home.
 Our arrival at Heathrow was made even more special by the welcome party awaiting us. We had arranged for our friend Jon to meet us so we were completely bowled over when we exited into arrivals to see the beaming faces of our parents who had driven up from Norfolk that afternoon to meet us. It was the most wonderful surprise and the most lovely end to our trip.

In the words of John McCarthy the author of one of the many books we read whilst away……
‘Travelling while taking you to new places emphasises the value of having an emotional and physical base. TS Elliott said that “the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and to know the place for the first time”

This certainly rings true for us. We have visited truly beautiful and spectacular places, we have experienced cultures far removed from our own, we have met people from all corners of the world, we have known kindness and hospitality, and we have witnessed poverty and hardship in countries that are often neglected by our western media. We have been spiritually, emotionally and physically challenged in ways that we would not have anticipated when we set out 6 months ago, and we trust that we have learnt valuable lessons about the precarious state of our planet, and our responsibilities as custodians of it. However maybe even more importantly we have begun to understand a little more of the struggle that many face each day to simply meet the basic needs of food, shelter, water, health and education that we so readily take for granted.

We now feel we have arrived home, not just because we are back in our own house, which in itself is lovely but we are back among our family and friends Despite the wonderful experiences we have had we have realised that it is the people we love that really makes this our home.

image via timandangiegolatin