“You’re going where without flying?” asked the receptionist at the hotel I’d just checked into in Uluwatu, a town on the Southern tip of Bali. “To London. But tomorrow I just need a lift to Denpasar” I replied.
Bemused, she picked up the phone and dialled the taxi company. Only one served Uluwatu, and no bikes would drive as far as Denpasar, Bali’s city and transport hub, meaning I needed to fork out considerably for a private car. It definitely won’t be taxis all the way, I thought to myself.
2018 was the worst year of my life. We lost my incredible stepdad to bladder cancer and mental health issues that I’d been controlling reared their ugly head.
By New Year’s Eve, I knew I was in a funk. Not wanting to be at home for the holidays, my mum, sister and I were trying to celebrate in Bangkok. As I watched the Thai capital’s fireworks from our apartment balcony, I vowed to make a change.
“In 2019, I’m going to check off the top thing on my bucket list”
And that was to travel from Bali to London without flying.
Why I travelled from Bail to London without flying
I’ve always found air travel unnatural.
Getting on board a vehicle without having any idea how it works, sitting in a stuffy tube for up to 14 hours and then disembarking the other side of the world…
Of course, aviation has revolutionised the way we travel and I wouldn’t have had half the adventures I’ve had without it – but I was keen to try a slower form of travel, witnessing cultures and climates fuse together on the borders before becoming their own as I delved into different countries and regions around the world.
Bali was my starting point, largely because it was easy (and affordable) to reach from London and I was confident I could travel from there to the South East Asian mainland without flying.
But upon further research, I discovered that Bali was actually a very sensible place to start – or at least, a man called Alfred Wallace thought so.
Alfred Wallace was a 19th-century traveller who discovered stark differences between Bali and Lombok, its eastern neighbour. Most notably, there were “no tigers east of Bali”, and the birdlife of Lombok resembled that of Australasia rather than anywhere else in Asia.
So, Wallace concluded that it was here where one continental plate met another; the Lombok Strait (which connects Bali and its neighbouring island, Lombok) is where the Asian continent meets the Australasian continent.
So, in a sense, I started on the edge of Asia and terminated some 14,000 miles later, far away in Western Europe, taking five months to travel westwards by road, rail and the occasional ship.
I took a 59-hour bus in Sumatra, travelled to forgotten war sites in Vietnam, visited the mountains that inspired Avatar in China, went camping in a remote corner of Kazakhstan, took a rusty cargo ship across the Caspian sea, got far too drunk on Georgian wine in Tbilisi, toured around haunted castles in Romania, soaked in the spa in Budapest and went back in time in Normandy’s WW2 beaches.
Finally, I boarded a ship in Calais and departed for Dover, before boarding a South Eastern train into the heart of London.
Here’s what the experience taught me.
When life feels too daunting, “one foot in front of the other” is how to make progress
During some parts of 2018, I struggled to get out of bed.
Life felt too overwhelming, and I couldn’t shake the negativity of bereavement and anxiety that constantly engulfed me.
I was still overwhelmed in 2019. But as I slowly put together the pieces of myself, I remembered I didn’t have to figure everything out that second.
I started this odyssey in Uluwatu, Bali, with just the first steps planned. Taxi to Denpasar, bus to northwest Bali, boat to Java.
I didn’t yet know if I’d secure a Russian transit visa or whether the Caspian Sea ferry would be operating by the time I reached Western Kazakhstan. But I’d figure them out in time.
I’ve taken this with me now. Whenever life feels too overwhelming, I take it step by step. Get up. Make a cup of tea. Text a friend back. Do that little task and work up to a big task. One foot in front of the other.
People all over the world are generally the same
I’ll always believe travel is a force for good, as long as we travel in the right kind of way. Throughout my trip through Asia and Europe, I was shown to the kindness of strangers time and time again.
Beri from Sumatra took me under his wing as I navigated the logistically challenging journey from Pekanbaru to Singapore, buying all of my tickets, making sure I got on the correct boat, and even buying me lunch and refusing payment.
Rayana from Kazakhstan met me numerous times while I was staying in Almaty, each time showing me a different area of the city “so I learn what the real Kazakhstan is like”. Almaty still stands as the place where I’ve made the most friends, the most quickly!
And Dilara and Adem, a Turkish couple from Ankara, saw I was struggling to connect to WiFi in Starbucks. They not only let me use their hotspot so I could book a hotel and drove me to said hotel, but texted me later to ask how I was and then took me to a pharmacy when I mentioned I needed to find antibiotics!
Wherever you are in the world, people generally have the same ethos. People want to enjoy their time on earth, look after the ones they love and stay happy and healthy. Generally, people want to help others too. I’ve tried to pay it forward as much as possible by helping strangers when I can ever since.
When you don’t know the language, a smile and speaking with hand gestures work 90% of the time
These are also universal.
The number one question I’m always asked about travelling is “how do you speak to people?”.
Many people around the world do speak a very high level of English these days (frankly, it’s embarrassing how awful we are at languages as a nation), and I do speak Spanish.
This, believe it or not, did come in handy once in Southern Thailand when I was given a lift by the ex-Thai ambassador in Argentina. He only spoke basic English but was fluent in Spanish!
But, for all other situations, you’ll be surprised at how well you can communicate by pointing, hand gestures or even good old Google Translate. There’s always a way to communicate.
There’s nearly always a way to do something
In fact, there’s nearly always a way to do near enough anything, if you have your mind set on it enough.
People often see my trip as something that would be unachievable by the most.
But in reality, I’m not anyone special.
I do have passport privilege, and I am lucky to have family who would support me if anything went drastically wrong. But I didn’t have any particular childhood or upbringing that led the way to this trip; it was just something that fascinated me and that I worked for years to be able to achieve.
I started a travel blog in 2015, kicked off a freelance writing career in Australia in 2017, built it up my career over 2018 and had enough money coming in each month in 2019 to fund the trip. I lived off around £1500 per month (at the time, I had no expenses in the UK and this was all I was earning each month) and did the trip, one step at a time.
I found that there was nearly always a workaround on the journey too. In Bali, it looked like there was no way to get from Jakarta to Singapore without flying. I learned that there was, it just had never been written about (it’s not a particularly well-trodden route…).
In Ulaanbaatar, I’d tasked myself with trying to get a Russian transit visa, so I could effectively leapfrog to Kazakhstan. I’d learned a few phrases of Russian and tried them out at the embassy. This resulted in my visa application being fast-tracked, meaning I could make the train I’d already booked.
Aktau is a Caspian Sea city that barely any international tourists visit. Those who do aim to cross the sea (or is it a giant lake?) by cargo ship. I arrived in Aktau groggy from a 30-hour journey on a rickety Soviet sleeper train, with no idea when the next ship was leaving.
All I had was a WhatsApp contact of a man who could apparently tell me. I messaged him, received confirmation that he’d let me know, and got another message three hours later that I needed to be at the port at 4 am the following morning. I never met this mystery WhatsApper, but his instructions were correct; by midday, I was sailing toward Azerbaijan.
Amazing things can happen when you push yourself outside of your comfort zone
I was still a little broken when I started this journey.
But doing something (albeit something rather obscure!) for myself, meeting people, being introduced to their lives all over the world and completing each stage of the trip, bit by bit, helped me put myself together.
Landing in Bali while I was still grieving and my mental health was still in tatters was terrifying. But as every stage went by, I started to feel more like myself.
One day in Shanghai I suddenly thought “today, I feel more happy than sad”.
Once the scales tipped, each day felt better and better.
In Tbilisi, I felt like a complete person for the first time in two years.
And it was there, on a walking tour around the city, where I met my would-be long-term partner, who had interestingly done an overland trip himself previously – travelling from the UK to Uzbekistan by train, coach and ship.
We had a night out in one of Tblisi’s wine bars, stayed in contact, met again in Germany and travelled to Poland, met again in the Phillippines and ended up travelling around Mexico together.
Today, we live in Exmouth in the UK, but we’re constantly looking at the map, eager to plan our next overland journey.
