February 2020. Matilda is 6 months old, John is starting his parental leave and I have 3 months left on my maternity leave (thank you, corporate family leave policy!). We had often talked about taking a big trip together during this time together – it’s not every day you can get away from the constraints of paid employment like that. John wanted to go to Bali, but I was feeling a bit fragile (post-partum depression, lack of sleep…) and it scared me to go so far, so we started planning a road-trip in Europe: Italy, Croatia… Then Italy locked down, followed closely by France and the UK. That was the end of our travel plans…

Autumn 2022, most borders have re-opened. Matilda is (mostly) sleeping through the night and hasn’t started school, I’m feeling much better, John has gone freelance and can take breaks between contracts – now is the time! So, with some trepidation, I applied for sabbatical leave. It’s not easy to ask for what’s important to us: I was prepared to resign if they didn’t grant me the leave, but I love my work and my team and I didn’t want to leave the company… Fortunately, I got the leave !

So we’ll be travelling for 6 months from February to August, returning in time for Matilda to start school.

The only thing left to do was deciding where to go… After some debate, we decided on Sri Lanka, about which we’ve heard nothing but good things; Japan, where I’ve always dreamed of going; and Mongolia, with its wide open spaces.

We are keen on a “slow travel” approach: not too many destinations so as to spend time and discover each place. And John is keen not to book too far in advance, so that we can adjust as we go along and stay longer in the places we like.

So this blog will be a chronicle of our family adventure, which I hope to share with you in these pages.