52 Countries in 52 Weeks, Part 1: Leaving

In Which I Explain Why I’m Going On This Adventure, And What I Hope To Find Out

What makes a person pack up their possessions and take a year to travel the world?

A sense of adventure and curiousity is important. The combination of opportunity and timing is key, unless you want to deeply annoy (or worse) a good portion of your friends and family.

But having some questions you want to try and answer — both about yourself and about other things — is also helpful.

At least I hope it is.

In late 2020, I was doing the same routine as a lot of people, mentally grinding through the pandemic, and dreaming about things to do when things were “normal” again.

Everyone had their own ways their lives changed in March 2020, but mine were somewhat unique. In the span of about two weeks, I went from reporting on local politics in Vancouver for Canada’s public broadcaster, to compiling daily stats about the COVID-19 virus in British Columbia; producing a series of charts showing daily cases, hospitalizations, deaths, and associated topics.

For a variety of fairly uninteresting reasons, the charts and associated commentaries became very popular, to the point where I was getting thousands of messages from people across the province every month, at all hours of the day, asking for advice or giving news tips or providing praise or criticism.

Compared to reporting on public hearings on whether a tall building should be approved by city hall, it was important work. But it was also repetitive, stressful, and all-encompassing.

Which brings me back to the question going through my mind and many others in late 2020: what did I want to do after *all this*?

I’m sure “travel the world for a year” went through a lot of people’s heads. It’s a fun notion to think about but quickly dismiss because of the impracticalities, like “become an astronaut” or “buy a home in Vancouver.”

But the longer the thought experiment stuck in my mind, the more I realized it was actually possible.

My employer has a program where people can put away a portion of their salary for several years and have it paid back during a leave of absence. I didn’t have children or a partner and my remaining parent was in good health

(And still is, I promise this isn’t foreshadowing)

No pets, no mortgage, some savings (in theory for a home that was already impossibly out of reach), and with a level of professional security that meant I could return to my job — or at least a reasonable facsimile of it — after a year away: it was a unique combination.

It was also a big gambit. A scheme. A conceptual puzzle. And I’ve always loved gambits and schemes and conceptual puzzles.

In childhood, that manifested itself by tracking the stats of every basketball player in my high school (junior and senior, boys and girls) or memorizing every line from the musical Les Miserables. As an adult, it led to ranking 240 different parks in the city I live in, or figuring out if all 161 municipalities in British Columbia could fit into a song. It was invigorating to take a big project, to separate it into pieces and find order in it, and to try and make it happen.

Depending on your perspective and lived experience you might find this deeply obsessive or evidence of autism (the answer is both!) but the point is this: the idea of travelling for a year felt like something that would be fun and fun to pull off.

And, there was another important consideration: aside from one high school-related activity, I had never travelled outside Canada and the United States.

As a kid, our family generally didn’t have much money, with some months being a decision over whether to pay the heating bill or fix the leaky roof. As an adult, I had done road trips through America, a couple of trips to New York to indulge in my love of musical theatre, and travelled professionally and for pleasure through every nook and cranny of the only province I had every lived in.

The circumstances never led to anything beyond that though. Which for the most part was fine because of the province I live in: British Columbia is the size of Germany and France combined, with mountains and forests and deserts and islands and everything in between.

Provincial (in every sense of the word) it may have been, I didn’t feel restrained by going to Penticton instead of Paris, or Salt Spring instead of Santorini.

At the same time, there’s that very straightforward feeling inside everyone about what else is out there? What does the world look like? If I never go, will I always wonder? Why am I sounding like a Disney Princess belting out their I Want song?

“There must be more than this provincial life,” he pretended to sing from his balcony.

So I signed the paperwork, locking me into taking a year off work beginning in March 2024, starting on my 37th birthday with no real ability to get out of short of resignation or a family emergency.

Which meant the planning could begin.

And what fun planning! Here’s a little-known secret about the world: it’s pretty big. There are lots of places. You not only have to pick where to go, but for how long, and (for my purposes at least) have to fit within 365 days.

Now, you could approach it a little differently, doing some things spontaneously, having a few flights booked and landmarks confirmed and leaving the rest up to the flexibility and the wonders of travel. At least, that’s what some people recommended.

To me, that seemed like a disaster waiting to happen. Uncertainty causes anxiety. Booking travel and accommodation at the last moment seemed more expensive. And because I had the virtue of three years to plan things, why shouldn’t I use that time to figure out exactly what places most interested me?

So a process for planning slowly formed.

First, I decided that I would travel as much as possible by train. Mostly because trains are cool, but also it would create lots of built-in rest time that I knew would critical.

Next, I would read plenty of guide books and scoured social media, coming up with a short list of what countries really interested me. Then, I would determine the specific cities or places I knew interested me in each place, and assigned a rough guideline of how many days I would need in order to feel satisfied. Finally, I looked at what the most logical geographic path would be, assigned some extra days specifically for travel and flexibility, and added everything up.

My 365 day trip was 402 days long.

Thankfully, the cutting was pretty simple, as places were eliminated because of cost (RIP Galapagos), war (maybe one day I’ll take the Trans-Siberian Railway through Russia), or common sense (thank you to friends who convinced me that spending a week in Atlantic Canada could happen fairly easily at any time in my life).

That process took about two years as a fairly passive activity, and a nice distraction when actual life was annoying. It also worked out that I hoped to travel to 52 countries, which was a nice symmetry.

Then, without about a year to go, it was time to figure out detailed logistics: what visas and vaccines were necessary, what rail lines connected to which cities, and which accommodations were the sweet spot for price and quality, along with the ability to cancel if I wanted to change things up.

The end result? As I write this, the first eight months of my trip is fully planned out (with the exception of the exact rail tickets), and the final four months are in good condition. In theory, I’ll be able to see the sights I want while having room for flexibility and wonder (I have few things actually booked in each city, allowing for plenty of time for exploring and randomness). I truly cannot wait, and am so grateful for the opportunity to come.      

Illustration by Amanda Wong

But back to those questions I talked about at the start. As time remaining before the trip went from years to months, two thoughts started dominating my mind.

One: how will I change? My desire for order and certainty will certainly clash with the inevitable realities of spending 12 months in new places. I will be pushed in new ways, and while that’s 90% exciting, it’s also 10% terrifying.

And two: after a year away, what will I think of the only place I’ve ever lived?

My entire life, parts of Vancouver have been preoccupied with whether it is a “world-class city”, with the current mayor declaring that a goal just a few months ago. For years, the B.C. government had a campaign where people would say “Best Place on Earth!” as though it could be self-actualized.

It’s what I know and love, but will it feel different after seeing a lot else of what the world has to offer?

I genuinely don’t know.

But I do know there’s only one way to find out.