We Were Supposed To Backpack India
For almost as long as we've been dating, we've been planning on quitting our desk jobs, booking 1-way flights to Mumbai, and vanishing into India for a year or two. We'd mostly stay in economical hostels, eat street food, and travel at a pretty basic level. We'd be grungy backpackers. It's a default mode that both of us are pretty comfortable with and the entire idea was to travel as long as possible on our modest savings. So we planned and saved while dreaming of destinations like Kashmir, Varanasi, and Kerala. At the same time, we were mentally preparing for living in a long line of terrible hostels with cold showers, bedbugs, and gap-year kids spewing the contents of the local bar onto the shared bathroom floor at 3 a.m. It was going to be great!
But then we had a realization: what if we found a way to keep working? We wouldn't be limited to our poverty-level budget travel, we'd still be free of our grey cubicles, and maybe we could travel longer than just a year or two!
So we came up with a new plan: Spencer will do some some contract work while Erin will keep working; her job allows her to be remote as long as she has a good internet connection. However, with India exactly 12 time zones away from her customers and colleagues, it's pretty much a non-starter. So we started thinking closer to home and realized that a road trip through the Americas would be an ideal option.
So now we're all set to drive our Subaru through Central America and back over the next year, working and living a month or two at cool little mountain towns or breezy beach hamlets. We should be able to maintain a fairly comfortable lifestyle and we even get to bring our dog Monet!
Our first few stops are set. We'll be in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico for the first three months. We chose San Miguel because it's a ridiculously easy travel destination (they literally have something called the Gringo Bingo Club). Since this is now a working trip, we wanted to start as easy as possible so we can focus on transitioning to working from the road. After San Miguel, we'll head to the sleepy beach town of Puerto Escondido on the Oaxaca cost before pushing down to Tulum or Guatemala. Beyond that, we've got some ideas but no set plan yet (you can see the latest thoughts in our (very) tentative trip itinerary).
And after our year of travel is up, we're thinking about buying and restoring a vintage camper and traveling the US while continuing to work remotely. Time will tell what direction we take. But either way, continuing to work this next year should allow us to save a bit more for whatever new adventures the future might bring. For now, pass me that cerveza.
But then we had a realization: what if we found a way to keep working? We wouldn't be limited to our poverty-level budget travel, we'd still be free of our grey cubicles, and maybe we could travel longer than just a year or two!
So we came up with a new plan: Spencer will do some some contract work while Erin will keep working; her job allows her to be remote as long as she has a good internet connection. However, with India exactly 12 time zones away from her customers and colleagues, it's pretty much a non-starter. So we started thinking closer to home and realized that a road trip through the Americas would be an ideal option.
So now we're all set to drive our Subaru through Central America and back over the next year, working and living a month or two at cool little mountain towns or breezy beach hamlets. We should be able to maintain a fairly comfortable lifestyle and we even get to bring our dog Monet!
Our first few stops are set. We'll be in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico for the first three months. We chose San Miguel because it's a ridiculously easy travel destination (they literally have something called the Gringo Bingo Club). Since this is now a working trip, we wanted to start as easy as possible so we can focus on transitioning to working from the road. After San Miguel, we'll head to the sleepy beach town of Puerto Escondido on the Oaxaca cost before pushing down to Tulum or Guatemala. Beyond that, we've got some ideas but no set plan yet (you can see the latest thoughts in our (very) tentative trip itinerary).
And after our year of travel is up, we're thinking about buying and restoring a vintage camper and traveling the US while continuing to work remotely. Time will tell what direction we take. But either way, continuing to work this next year should allow us to save a bit more for whatever new adventures the future might bring. For now, pass me that cerveza.
