chronicling her global adventures with stories, digital photos and video through the website www.OurDistantJourney.com. To date, she has visited 40 countries on six continents. In 2003-2004, she took a four-and-half-month around the world with her husband and children.
Her travel philosophy is to experience the journey ‘authentically’, meaning that she minimizes the use of planes and try to use public transportation whenever feasible. She likes to mix visits to the iconic places in the world with the adventure that keeps travel fresh and exciting. Sandy believes that, through travel, she is supporting the local economy and encouraging the preservation of the world's special places.
We are now in route from South Africa to Namibia (about 4 hours into a 21-hour bus trip). It is a fairly comfortable vehicle with 2 stories, air-conditioning, a bathroom and fairly frequent stops to stretch one’s legs.
After an all-night flight from London, we first arrived in Johannesburg and then took a short flight to Cape Town. We spent one entire day touring the Cape Pennisula, seeing penguins and visiting the Cape of Good Hope.
Today we are in Livingstone, Zambia, near Victoria Falls. We happened to arrive here on the country’s Independence Day. They are 39 years old today, having gained their independence from Britain in 1964.
As I write this, we are nearing the end of our journey on the Tazara train from Kapiri Mposhi (K.M.), Zambia to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Our train departed two days ago at 3:10pm. The total journey is 1860km (a little more than 1100 miles).
During our month in Africa, we saw a variety of sights, including a camping safari deep in the heart of Botswana, mokoro and walking trips in the wild, an epic 40 hour train journey from Zambia to Tanzania and the relaxation and history of Zanzibar. This video provides an overview of that experience.
As I write this, our train has stopped in the Bhopal ‘B’ train station. We are traveling on an overnight train from Mumbai (Bombay) to Agra. It is 9:30 in the morning on the second day of our 22-hour journey.
With our trek in the Himalayas over, we made our way back to the airport. On the way to Delhi, we saw Kanchenjunga from afar (the third highest mountain in the world) as well as Everest from the plane window.