Traveling around the world requires a lot of, well, transport. We spent countless hours and days on buses, to and from airports and on planes, and on ferries and other boats. I enjoy the transport process, Olivia not so much (motion sickness and migraines don’t mix). We pass the time listening to podcasts, reading on our kindles if the journey is smooth, or gazing out the windows.

Our rules of transport are few. Generally, we avoid red-eyes and overnight buses because we love our sleep. Also, night buses raise our anxiety. We always fly economy if we’re paying the fare but are willing to pay a few more bucks to fly midday as this makes the check-out check-in process so much smoother (and we love our sleep). And we’ll pay to upgrade to a nicer sleeper cabin on a train because, for the cost, the extra privacy and space is usually worth it.

I like traveling because it gives me time to think. The sights and cities of destinations can be exhausting and are filled with lots of walking and doing. It was in the in-betweens of this year where I found the mental space to reflect. It is often when I wrote. And it is when I felt most settled.

The other reason I like traveling, especially by ground, is because it gives me a sense of physical space. Crossing borders and traversing great distances is when I felt the travel experience most. While we stuck to a script this year, seeing what many travelers see and doing what many travelers do, the travel was one of my favorite aspects of the experience.

While we couldn’t count the number of hours spent in transport if we tried, we did manage to count each type of transport from each of our main legs of travel: the Africa leg, the Asia leg, and the South American leg (which included Mexico and Guatemala). The numbers are below!

Transport Type	Africa Leg	Asia Leg	South American Leg
Flights	10	10	19
Trains	1	11	1
Buses	2	5	34
Boats	0	7	4

Flights

At the start of our year we intended to avoid flying as much as possible (the whole environment thing, you know). Asia was doable because of the train network, South America because of the bus system, and Africa not so much. But the truth is that the economics of flying make it so attractive. Flying was often cheaper than the cost of a bus ticket you can get there in 1/10th the time. Sometimes 1/20th. So we succumbed a fair bit.

Boats

Most of the boats we took we ferries, to get us from one side to the other. The most notable exception was our 2 day trip down the Mekong River from Laos to Thailand. The first photo below is from this trip, a meandering but steady, lazy but beautiful journey. And yet another way to cross a border. The second photo is of one of the many ferries, often blasting music videos or movies, an interesting look into any culture.

Trains

We rode trains the most in Asia, they were the nicest and fastest in Japan, and we were the most surprised in the USA (Amtrak isn’t all that bad!). South America has essentially no train system to speak of. I wrote about our two most memorable train trips in detail, the Tazara Train from Tanzania to Zambia, and the Amtrak Coast Starlight from Portland to Los Angeles.

Buses

We rode a lot of buses. Most memorable were those throughout Patagonia, as this is the dominant mode of travel and it’s beautiful there. And the nicest bus we took was from Mexico City to San Miguel de Allende. We weren’t expecting it but we were fed and they had the coolest footrests ever (no photo, sorry). The most colorful are in Guatemala, where old school buses from the states are painted bright colors and whip through the countryside.

And all the rest

For as many planes, trains, boats and buses we traveled on, we probably took even more rides in vans, cars, and various other sorts of vehicles. Sometimes it felt like that’s all we did. But these rides are opportunities to brush shoulders with the locals and strike up a conversation.