Now Ye're Talking - To a World Traveller

Who did you find where the nicest people?
Who were the most annoying / arrogant / type you didn't get on with the most?

ive to get to venice in 3 days for cheap.... how do i go about doing that?

Did you return home for any periods during that 7 years?

I too hope to travel the world one day, what tips would you give in terms of staying safe as this would be one of my main concerns?

Have you ever been to North Korea? If not, would you go?

What's the most random place you've ever been to, a place nobody's ever heard of and wouldn't be able to pick out on a map?

What's the most beautiful place you've been to on your travels?

Is there any place you've been to where you feared for your safety?

Is there anything about life here you appreciate more/less since being away?

How much did all this cost you in the end and how did you manage for money.

Tell us about the food you had....anything you couldn't eat or drink?
Food poisoning?
Ever felt you were in danger?
Ever needed to converse with another English speaker?
Where would you return to?
Coldest and warmest places?
Friendliest people?

Do you miss travelling if you are not travelling ? is being 'home' a weird feeling?

how long did it take to reach Everest base camp

Did you have any relationships during this period?
Did you have to end / disrupt these, if any, because of your desire to travel?

I wasn't expecting much interest in this AMA to be honest, considering some of the people who have gone before, so thanks for the questions!

ibarelycare wrote: »

What's the most dangerous situation you've ever been in?

Interesting question. One think I learned over the years is that quite often the countries that are on people's top ten list of places never to venture, are quite often the places where people are kindest to you, and most helpful in keeping you safe while you are in their country. I was in Pakistan shortly after the Marriott Hotel bombing, where foreigners were being warned to leave the country. Every single local person I met there bent over backwards to be hospitable, invited me into their homes for meals, in the hope that at least one person would leave with a good impression of Pakistan.

It doesn't hurt of course that I'm (a) male (which unfortunately is a factor in terms of personal safety abroad) and (b) built to look like I can take care of myself, so for the most part I've never felt in any immediate danger - it's often only afterwards you look back on situations and realise how lucky you were, or how things could have gone wrong. Things that have happened that have put me in danger would include a motorbike crash in Cambodia where my dirt-bike went in under a truck and my injuries were miraculously relatively minor, or getting chemical burns from runoff into a river after the earthquake in China that burned around 60% of the skin on my body and has left lasting scars - events that you have to attribute to bad luck or lack of caution, rather than blaming the country you are in.

Probably the instance of most immediate danger was in the north of Georgia, near the Abkhazian border - a country that is still rebuilding after their last encounter with Russian troops. I was visiting a village on the border for Easter supra (big feast), and a villager who was the worse for wear with drink pulled a loaded gun on me with the intent to shoot, thinking that I was a Russian who had come across the border. Luckily he was too drunk to follow through on it with any speed, and we took the gun off him and rejoined the supra. Georgia was one of those countries you look back on afterwards wondering if was just something you dreamt up.

If I were to give two pieces of advice in staying safe while travelling, the would be:

(a) always trust your gut. If something feels wrong, it generally isn't worth the risk of finding out.

and (b), don't look like a tourist if you can. It's a magnet for thieves, hawkers, and corrupt local officials alike. On one particularly memorable instance in Red Square, Moscow, where everyone is dressed in shades of grey and black, myself included, I heard one American tourist dressed in bright red North Face gear and a multicoloured bobble hat, call out to his similarly attired wife across the square. Looking down on the square from above, it was like the scene in Jurassic Park, where the raptors are converging on their prey from all directions in the field of grass, with pickpocket and corrupt police all making a beeline for them to fleece them in some way or another.

ScienceNerd wrote: »

If you could pick one City/Town/Village to go back to and live out the rest of your days, where would you pick?

I get asked that a lot, and it's a hard one to answer because so many places I've been appeal to me and so many people were so good to me there. For me it would be a toss up between Georgia and Nepal. Georgia because living there brings a new surprise every day, and the people there are genuinely the kindest and most generous I have ever met - according to local custom, a guest in your house is a gift from God, and they really do treat you as such.

Nepal, in particular the foothills of the Himalayas, is like going back in time. Many of the villages take quite a few days to hike to through the mountains, and obviously there are no cars, or electricity in most places. It's eerily silent at night, and your morning view is some of the most beautiful mountains in the world, and if that's your thing, which it is for me, then it's definitely a place I could settle for a while.

ScienceNerd wrote: »

Did you speak any other languages before leaving? Did you pick anything up along the way?

Other than English and Irish, I spoke pretty decent French, and high-school German. And I had a smattering of Russian from earlier travels. To greater or lesser degrees I learned as I was going along - my Georgian is pretty good due to the length of time I spent there and the fact that nobody spoke English so I had little alternative but to learn. And my Russian improved quite a bit along the way - it's a handy language to have in former Soviet countries - the older generation will be able to speak it along with their native tongue. Other than that, I picked up the very basics (hello, yes, no, where is the train station) in a few Asian languages, much of which I've forgotten again by now.

Dozen Wicked Words wrote: »

Did you travel on your own, if so did you ever feel lonely and how did you finance your trip?

A combination of both. I had always planned the trip to be a solo one, and open to meeting people along the way. As it turned out, I ended up leaving Ireland with a Polish friend of mine who had grown tired of being in Ireland, and she travelled with me for a few months. Other times I was very much on my own. Depending on where you are though, it's very easy to dip in and out of being surrounded by other people - quite often it can be a distinct effort to be alone, rather than the latter. In the more popular parts of the world I encountered plenty of other travellers, and in other parts I met lovely local people who I still consider friends. There were certainly moments of loneliness for friends back home though, particularly around days like birthdays, Christmas and so on.

Financing it - I was lucky in that I had a pretty decent job before I left that allowed me to save quite a bit (this was in the height of the boom), and I lived and travelled quite frugally along the way. I didn't miss out on seeing anything, but I camped rather than staying in hostels, hitchhiked a lot, ate local food, etc. And of course I worked from time to time, if the opportunity presented itself.

whiskeyman wrote: »

Who did you find where the nicest people?
Who were the most annoying / arrogant / type you didn't get on with the most?

Georgians were probably the nicest people in how they treated me. At the time very few foreigners cane to Georgia, and even fewer left the capital city, so there were times where villages nearly came to a standstill. And they love any excuse to celebrate and get drunk. I've had marshutka (minibus) drivers refuse to let me off the bus, instead detouring into their village and family home for three days of eating and drinking.

There wasn't really anybody I didn't get along with - arrogance is sadly, a more western trait. Some nationalities can be quite stoic and it's hard to crack the outer shell - Russians and Mongolians in particular are like this. Koreans grew a little tiresome in that they love English there, and if they hear that you speak English, they will try to turn anything into a free English lesson.

eviltwin wrote: »

Are you back and if so how did you adjust to normality? What was the most surprising place you visited?

Coming back was hard, and it still is, and I'm not sure if I have at all adjusted to normality. As clichéd as it sounds, it does feel like being back in a 'rat race' if you're used to travelling at a whim, and you either learn to readjust, or it eats away at you over time. Peoples priorities seem very strange sometimes, and very money oriented, compared to poorer parts of the world where they seem by contrast, a whole lot happier. Other things then seem so easy by comparison - access to a hot shower every morning, immediate access to electricity and internet without having to plan around it, not having to worry about finding somewhere to put up a tent in the evening. They are obviously pluses, but it takes quite a bit of getting used to.

kupus wrote: »

ive to get to venice in 3 days for cheap.... how do i go about doing that?

Yeah, you're pretty screwed I'd be on skyscanner with my fingers firmly crossed.

ibarelycare wrote: »

How do you feel about Zayn leaving One Direction?

Pretty gutted, to be honest. It's pretty much scuppered my plans to throw on the rucksack, and follow them, groupie style, on their world tour.

What would you count as your top five experiences on your journey?

What did you work as when you were working?

What's China like?

Thanks.

Westernyelp wrote: »

Did you return home for any periods during that 7 years?

Nope - I didn't set foot in Ireland for over seven years, and much of the time, nobody knew exactly where I was.
I never set out with a seven year plan in mind - my thoughts walking out the door all the way back then was "let's see how far I get... I'll probably be gone a year, maybe two". I had one rule, that was not to fly anywhere for as long as possible, and that was it. In some ways it was the best rule to travel by, because I ended up in all sorts of places, in others it nearly broke my heart - in one instance, after the unrest in Tibet where Chinese Army shot some of the Tibetan monks for protesting, and then forced all foreigners to leave, it meant that rather than taking a 2 hour flight, I ended up taking a 3,600km detour, overland, over many weeks, to get to Kathmandu. But that detour led to a whole host of other adventures, and brought me to places I would have never seen otherwise.

Ruu wrote: »

What is your top travel tip?

Top two tips:

Be flexible. Stuff happens along the way - delays, getting sick, parties, meeting people, so on and so forth. Be willing to roll with that. I sat on a bus once in a mud bus station in Africa somewhere (previous trip) on a Tuesday. Sat on the bus fro a few hours before the driver got on to tell me that they'd changed their minds and it was leaving on Friday instead, maybe. What can you do. You can throw a hissy fit, but the bus still isn't going to go anywhere until Friday. Or you can shrug your shoulders and spend three days with the local people and kill some brain cells while making some memories, and friends. On the other hand I've seen people quite literally have meltdowns because they couldn't get a train ticket on the particular day they wanted it (12 hours later, not a problem), which made me wonder why they ever left home in the first place.

The second is don't be an arse. A certain percentage of western travellers are obnoxious, there's no other way to describe it, and look down on anyone local. And it can be extremely cringeworthy as a foreigner there, knowing that you are now all being tarred with the same brush. respect, and a little research into local culture and customs goes a long way.

Ruu wrote: »

Most essential piece of travel equipment or tool?

Not so much of a tool, but while it seems quite obvious, passport and money, and keep both on you at all times. Your rucksack and its contents are all replaceable - but no matter what happens, if you have your passport and enough money for a plane/train ticket to a neighbouring country, you're pretty safe.

Tool-wise, I always carry a decent knife, and a firesteel - though of course the latter in particular lends itself more towards the camping side of things.

thelad95 wrote: »

I too hope to travel the world one day, what tips would you give in terms of staying safe as this would be one of my main concerns?

Common sense goes a long way. It's easy to look back and be judgmental I guess, but I've seen travellers do genuinely stupid things, such as 'oh I think I'll go for a riverside walk by the ghetto at 2am and take some photos, now that I'm nicely drunk'. And that's still not to say that things can't happen - I was pickpocketed in Varanasi, even though I was being careful. And I've been robbed at knife-point in the past. And the latter was because I decided to walk home, at 2am, through the slums, after a few beers. So go figure. But it's no exaggeration that I feel that walking home form the pub along the quays in Dublin poses a statistically higher risk than most of the paces I've been.

Other things worth considering are, as mentioned above, don't advertise that you are a tourist, and if you have the option of not travelling alone, then most certainly take it. Coupled with that, if you're a woman, then the dangers are real, and there's no point in pretending in the name of equality that they aren't. A close friend of mine was almost raped on a boat a few years back, only for the fact that I was nearby enough to intervene. And rape stories are sadly not uncommon, depending where you are. But on the lower end of the scale, even wearing a fake wedding band and saying that you are married, can prevent an awful lot of unwanted advances.

Have you ever been to North Korea? If not, would you go?

In the most technical sense of the word, yes. There is an area along the DMZ where you can step from South Korea into North Korea, and I've been there a couple of times. Would I travel through North Korea? I'd love to, but it doesn't work that way. Currently the only way to see North Korea is as part of a very expensive and very tightly escorted tour, where you are accompanied at all times by armed guard, brought to a few key locations and meet a few key people who have been scripted to sing the praises of the great and glorious leader, before being sent on your way again. Google maps would give you a better experience. As an experiment sometime, take a look at North Korea on Google Maps, and click into the tour photos there. You'll be a long time clicking before you see a local person in one of those photos.

What's the most random place you've ever been to, a place nobody's ever heard of and wouldn't be able to pick out on a map?

There have been a few, but one that immediately comes to mind simply because of the story surrounding it, is Battsengel, a small semi-nomadic village in western Mongolia. I was in Ulaanbabtar at the time, and still travelling with my Polish friend, when we met some Peace Corp volunteers who were dotted around Mongolia, and came into the city once every few months to get together. Long story short, my friend and one of the volunteers hooked up over the few days we were in town, and about a week after he'd returned to his volunteer position, she decided that she wanted to see more of him. And kept bugging me about it, and I relented. Mongolia is quite different to a lot of countries in that there is virtually no road system - most roads are actually rut marks across the steppe, left by whatever vehicle traversed it before. And these tracks can disappear into nothing, or fork in all directions. In short, not somewhere you should be heading out into alone. But we did exactly that. We managed to get our hands on an old Russian jeep (they are everywhere in this side of the world), we headed west, and navigating quite literally by the sun in places, by some minor miracle managed to find Battsengel.

What makes sense now, but never crossed my mind at the time, was that nomadic people don't really eat vegetables - they don't stick around long enough in the same place to grow them. Instead they rely on livestock, usually goats or sheep, and travel with the flock, until they get big enough to slaughter. As it happens, they (a) slaughter all of the animals at once, and (b) the very night I happened to arrive was slaughter night, where the menfolk get together and kill and butcher every animal in the area. Thankfully I'm from a farming background so it's not something that bothers me, but proving your manliness is a huge thing in Mongolia (every Mongolian man thinks they are a descendent of Genghis Khan), so what was supposed to be the longest booty call known to existence for my friend, instead turned into me spending the entire night until sun-up slaughtering and butchering animals, cheered on by a Mongolian village.