Long-Term Travel FAQ

This page was last updated on 5th August 2024.

Wondering who on earth I am and how the hell I manage to travel so much? Here are some of my most frequently asked questions, divided up into the following sections:

Travel | Finances | Travel Blogging

Travel

How long have you been travelling?

Thirteen years and counting! I left the U.K. on a one-way ticket in July 2011, never in a million years thinking I’d be able to keep going for this long. I originally planned to take a one-year trip around the world — it was supposed to be a trip I’d take between graduating and getting a full-time job — but when I unexpectedly started to make money from this travel blog, I realised I could just keep going. 

So I did! I never let myself forget how fortunate I am.

So you just… don’t have a home?

Actually, I do. But I didn’t for quite some time.

In reality, I was a full-time traveller from when I left the U.K. in 2011 until around 2016. Over that period of five years, I didn’t have a home base and all of the possessions I owned could fit inside a 40-litre backpack.

Despite believing this was how I was going to spend the rest of my life, it turned out that all-travel-all-the-time wasn’t as sustainable as I’d hoped. After five years of non-stop movement, I had developed health issues (from eating restaurant meals every day for years on end), lost many of my friends (from forever being somewhere else), become jaded (when you’ve seen 75 waterfalls, it’s not always easy to get excited by yet another one), and was absolutely exhausted.

I moved to Lisbon, Portugal in 2016 and used that as my home base for the next several years, spending half of the year travelling and the half of the year living a more settled life. Then, in 2018, when I felt the urge to move closer to family, I opted for wonderful Bristol, in the U.K., and based myself there for the next couple of years.

When the pandemic rolled around in 2020, I packed my bags and set off for beautiful New Zealand, which had managed to remain relatively unscathed by the virus. Over the following year, I spent my time travelling across both New Zealand and Australia, before being granted permanent residency for both countries (my partner is from New Zealand, so I was able to apply for partner visas through him).

While I originally intended on moving to New Zealand and making it my next home base, it didn’t quite feel right while I was there; primarily because I didn’t have any friends who lived where I hoped to. The main reason why I stopped travelling full-time was to build a tight-knit community and it’s tough to do that from scratch, especially when you and your partner work online and spend many months of the year travelling overseas.

Melbourne, Australia felt like a better fit (I have so many friends and family there!) and so I made it my next home city in 2022. These days, I spend six months of the year living in Melbourne, three months travelling internationally, and three months travelling within Australia.

So I do have a home! I just don’t spend all that much time there. And yes, this does make my lifestyle particularly expensive, but to me, it’s worth it to have that stability in my life.

Where have you been so far?

I have a cosy corner of my site dedicated to exactly that! You can see a full list of every country and city I’ve visited on my travel map.

As of August 2024, I’ve visited around 100 countries across six continents, choosing to spend the majority of my time in Southern Africa, Southeast Asia, Europe, and Oceania.

In other words, I’ve sorely neglected Central America, the Caribbean, and West Africa.

Which is your favourite country?

My top five countries are India, New Zealand, Namibia, Tonga, and Thailand. I love so many places that I can’t narrow it down much further than that!

What about your favourite country for eating?

Ah, food! Sampling local foods is my main driving force for exploring this beautiful planet. And there’s nothing I love more than arriving in a brand new country and hitting the streets in search of an unfamiliar dish. For me, there’s several countries that offer up the best food in the world:

India is a given. Indian food is quite simply mind-blowing. And if you think you love Indian food but haven’t yet visited India: wait until you get there! It’s on a whole other level to the food you get outside of the country. I think every single meal I had in India had me declaring it was the best thing I’d ever eaten.

Greece offers up such incredible food that I refuse to eat Greek food outside of the country now. It simply can’t compare! Fresh Greek salads with gigantic slabs of feta and the most flavourful tomatoes you’ve ever eaten? The absolute best.

Mexico is another country where I’m obsessed with the food scene. I think I have tacos for breakfast, lunch, and dinner while I’m there, and every single one seems to change my life for the better.

Vietnam is the final country that comes to mind when I think about the best places to eat. From crunchy banh mis to steaming bowls of pho, this is a country where every meal seems to fix everything that’s going wrong in my life.

What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever eaten?

Travel provides you with so many opportunities to eat dishes that aren’t popular or available in your home country. For me, some of the hardest dishes to stomach were crickets in Thailand, cockroaches in Laos, jellyfish in Japan, fermented camel milk in Mongolia, and brain tacos in Mexico.

Some of my most pleasant surprises, however, were lizard in Vietnam, kangaroo in Australia, warthog in Namibia, horse in Kazakhstan, and duck tongue in Taiwan.

The one dish I wasn’t able to eat? Fried tarantulas in Cambodia! I just couldn’t do it. I pride myself on my passion for trying new dishes, and yet… I simply could not bring myself to put a wholeass spider in my mouth!

What’s your least favourite country?

I’ve yet to visit a country that I truly hated, and I always try to keep in mind that experiences within a place can be so situational. I contracted cholera in Malaysia[!], for example, and had one of the worst trips of my life there — but that doesn’t mean that Malaysia sucks and I should never return.

Still, if you really forced me to answer, I’d go for Brunei or Kuwait as my least favourite country. They’re not terrible places, but don’t have a lot to offer tourists.

Where do you most want to visit?

At the top of my list at the moment are Bangladesh, Saint Lucia, Uzbekistan, Ghana, and Kenya. I’m hoping to get to all five within the next year or two.

Back when I first started travelling, I kept my flip-flops firmly on the well-worn backpacker trail. I only wanted to explore Europe, Southeast Asia, and Australia, like most other people on a round-the-world adventure. I couldn’t even comprehend doing anything different. 

Gradually, though, I learned to step outside of my comfort zone and began to venture into some of the lesser-travelled countries of the world. Destinations like Tonga, French Polynesia, Kyrgyzstan, Bahrain, Mongolia, and Liechtenstein… and I absolutely adored them. These days, I love visiting places that few tourists opt to check out and it has fast became my sole focus when I travel. 

The fact that promoting lesser-known destinations helps to reduce the effects of overtourism is an added bonus.

Where are you going to be visiting in 2024?

As I write this in August I’m thrilled to share that this year, I’ve had some of my biggest adventures yet! At the start of 2024, I travelled through Azerbaijan, and then visited Kuwait, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia for the first time.

After catching up on work in Melbourne for several months, I’ve been spending the northern hemisphere summer making my way across Central Asia. Mongolia was such an incredible experience, Kyrgyzstan was home to some of the best hiking in the world, and Kazakhstan revealed itself to be the most underrated travel destination I’ve ever been to. I can’t wait to write about all three places!

I return to the U.K. every year to see my family, so I’ll have a full month of an English summer coming up next, along with my annual return to my former home of Bristol. This year, I’ll be hiking the week-long Norfolk Coast Path, too! (Every year, I aim walk a 100+ mile trail in a different country.)

As the temperatures start to drop, I’ll begin my extremely long and slow journey back to Australia for their summer. I’ll be crossing off some of my remaining European countries (Albania, Kosovo, and North Macedonia) on a two-week trip, then spending a week in Istanbul (one of my favourite cities!) to recover from it all.

A return to India will be next. One of my favourite countries; I love visiting new states every time I fly through South Asia. I’ll be spending most of my time in Himachal Pradesh and Punjab, and I can’t wait to dive into an entirely new culture while I’m there. Pakistan has long been on my wish list, so I’ll be travelling overland to Lahore from Amritsar and then seeing where the road takes me next.

At some point, I’ll return to Melbourne and start soaking up all of those Aussie summer vibes!

Why haven’t you visited [country] yet?

I get this question a lot. All I can say is that I’m just one person with a limited amount of time! I can’t visit everywhere in the time I’ve been travelling, so some places are still on the list. It doesn’t mean I don’t want to visit them eventually — just that I haven’t made it there there yet.

Do you have any tips for [country]?

Take a look at my destinations page. You’ll be able to find every post I’ve ever written about the places I’ve visited there. For most countries I’ve travelled to, I aim to publish a detailed travel guide, a packing list, a breakdown of how much it cost to travel there, an itinerary for the country, and a list of my favourite things to do in the cities/towns I visited.

How did COVID affect you?

Like practically every person on the planet, I was affected by COVID, and not in a positive way.

Business-wise, I, of course, run this very website that you’re currently reading. A travel website. And this website only makes money when people are travelling. When people can’t travel, I lose everything — and that’s exactly what happened.

Back in March 2020, my income fell by 90% overnight, plummeting to a level that left me panicking over how I could sustain myself over the duration of the pandemic. As I write this now, in June 2024, things are finally back to their pre-pandemic normality. After many years spent living off of my savings, I’m thrilled to finally have a reliable income stream again!

In my personal life, I used the pandemic to level up my life. With a wonderful Kiwi man as my partner, I used my downtime to apply for partner visas for both Australia and New Zealand through my relationship with him: both countries granted me permanent residency. That now means that I can live and work in both places for the rest of my life, which feels like such an incredible opportunity.

I knew I wanted to travel as responsibly as possible during the pandemic, which, for me, meant not travelling at all. It was hard! But I didn’t want to risk bringing COVID to vulnerable communities. Instead, after nine months of not leaving my home in the U.K., I made my way to New Zealand, which didn’t have any cases in the country. I was then able to freely travel without needing to worry about contracting COVID or passing it on to anyone else.

When are you going to stop travelling? Are you going to stop travelling?

Never say never, but at the moment, I have no plans to stop travelling entirely. I work online and therefore have the freedom to work from anywhere. Why not take full advantage of it?

However, as I mentioned above, I do aim to find myself a home base every few years in order to live a more settled life.

When I base myself in a city, I tend to aim for a 50-50 split of travel and normality: I’ll spend six months in Australia over summer, then six months in the northern hemisphere over their summer, travelling to a mix of new countries and old favourites. 

Do you want to visit every country in the world?

It’s not something I’m actively pursuing, but I do tend to visit between five and ten new countries every year. If I ever reached the point where I’d visited something like 150 countries, I think I’d make an effort to visit the remaining fifty or so, but it’s not something I’m working towards. Let’s just say, I don’t want to visit an entire country just to say I’ve been there. I’m not a fan of country-counting and prefer to spend time in the places that genuinely fascinate me.

For now, I’m happy checking out the new countries that interest me the most and not feeling shame over returning to old favourites.

Don’t you ever get lonely or homesick?

Sometimes, but not often. After spending so long on the road, it feels strangely normal to me; almost as though home is wherever I lay my backpack. I do travel with my boyfriend for around half of my travels, so loneliness is hard to come by. Fortunately, we both have the freedom to plan our trips around where our friends are, so if I happened to be missing hanging out with anyone in particular, I know they’re only a plane ride away.

I do miss my family when I travel, but fortunately, they live in London: a major travel hub. I prioritise spending at least two months of every year with them.

Speaking of your boyfriend: who is Dave?

Dave is another travel blogger; he runs the site What’s Dave Doing?. I met him through my travel blog back in 2011, when there were only around 100 travel bloggers in total! It was a small, tight-knit community back then, so everybody knew everybody else. We were always meeting up with each other whenever we found ourselves in the same places.

It was November 2011. I was travelling solo through South Korea; Dave had just quit his job in Australia to travel around Southeast Asia. I slid into his DMs and just like that, a connection was made. We met in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and moved in together that very same day! What can I say? We totally hit it off. And as I write this now, we’ve been together for 12 years and counting.

Why don’t you travel with Dave all the time?

Because we’d probably end up killing each other.

Because we both work online, we often spend 24 hours a day together. Literally. There isn’t ever anyone heading off to work because our work is nearly always in our hotel room or apartment. Even when we do make an effort to carve out some alone time, things can get pretty claustrophobic. On top of that, I’m more into travel than he is, so I don’t want to feel like I’m dragging him around the world with me. If he doesn’t want to head to Mozambique with me, that’s cool; I’ll just go by myself.

Do you travel with travel insurance?

Yes! I’m a firm believer that if you can’t afford to buy travel insurance, you can’t afford to travel. I don’t care too much about the personal belongings cover, because I can afford to replace anything I lose, but the emergency medical coverage is absolutely essential. The last thing you want is to break your leg in rural Laos and have to be airlifted out to a hospital, racking up a hospital bill in the hundreds of thousands as you do so. It’s happened to friends of mine, so it’s not as rare as you think. I don’t want to take any chances.

I use World Nomads for my travel insurance and I’ve been extremely happy with them. They’re the best option for long-term travelers because they allow you to renew while you’re outside of your home country. It’s hard to find a company that allows you to do that!

Do you have any tips for finding cheap flights?

I sure do! I wrote a detailed resource as to how I manage to score cheap flights without relying on collecting points or miles.

Finances

How much money did you save before leaving?

I saved up $25,000 for my travels.

How did you manage to save up that much?

When I left to travel, I wasn’t intending to work from the road, so I knew I’d need a healthy bank balance to keep me going for an entire year, maybe two. The first thing I did was make travel my priority.

I was studying full-time at college/university, so couldn’t get a full-time job to help fund my travels. Instead, I picked up multiple part-time jobs and worked as a sales assistant in a garden centre, a pharmacy, and a supermarket. You don’t need an amazing job to build up your bank balance — I was earning just $7 an hour! I took every opportunity to work extra hours that I could. At one point, I took on a two-month internship at university while working every weekend and didn’t have a single day off in eight weeks.

In addition to working every hour possible, I sold everything I owned that wouldn’t fit in my backpack. Drastic? Yep, but I’d read about how travel can transform you into a minimalist and I was hoping the same would happen for me. I sold the old clothes I barely wore, my CD and DVD collection (lol I’m old), and college textbooks. I sold anything I thought I could make money from and decluttered my life in the process. I’m pleased to say that ten years later, I haven’t missed any of it.

Finally, I cut out all unnecessary spending from my life. Cutting out the $5 sandwich I used to buy every day saved me around $7500 over five years. I didn’t buy any new clothes or shoes unless I needed them, I took packed lunches to work and college, I used blankets instead of switching on the heating over much of the winter, I turned down nights out with friends that’d cost money and arranged movie nights at home instead, and I bought the cheapest food options I could find.

That kind of lifestyle isn’t for everyone, but for me, the sacrifices were worth it.

How Can I Make Money as I Travel?

There are so many ways for you to make money as you travel — you just have to get inventive! I suggest sitting down and making a list of your skills and figuring out a way for you to get paid to do them from anywhere. It could be some type of freelancing — graphic design, coding, copyediting, developing apps, social media marketing, translating, consulting… You could also see if your current job would allow you to work remotely. Many jobs that you can do from home don’t mind if you are in a different timezone, as long as you get your hours of work done.

If you don’t fancy sitting in front of a laptop, there are options like working as a surf instructor or divemaster, working in a hostel, and teaching English.

You can also get working holiday visas in Australia/New Zealand/Canada, where you can live and work there for a year or so.

And, of course, there’s always travel blogging. It’s a tough gig, but it’s definitely possible to find success from it.

How much does all of this travel cost you?

I usually spend between $10,000 and $15,000 a year on travel. Each year, I’ll choose to split my time equally between countries that are more expensive — the US, Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand — and more affordable areas, such as Mexico, Central America, Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia. I wrote a detailed breakdown of how much it costs to travel with a mid-range budget in my enormous cost-of-travel-for-a-year article.

How much do you budget per month?

Typically around $30-$50 a day while I’m travelling.

How do you manage your money while overseas?

I’m huge on personal finance, so I’m pretty good at budgeting and investing my money, whether I’m travelling or not.

When I travel, I use a Starling debit card to save on ATM fees — it’s one of only a couple of U.K. banks that doesn’t charge you to use your card overseas. If you’re British, I highly recommend getting your hands on one.

In the U.K., credit cards aren’t as exciting a prospect as they are for my U.S.-based travellers out there. Points and miles bonuses are rubbish, so I don’t bother with a credit card at this point.

On the road, I usually just head to an ATM to withdraw around $300 when I arrive on a country, spend it on everything on the ground (a lot of places in the countries I visit only accept cash), and then get some more out when it runs out. It’s that simple. No travellers cheques or prepaid travel debit cards for me, and definitely no money belts — I hate them.

I also carry a spare backup debit card for a separate current account in case of emergencies, but I haven’t had to use it so far.

What do you do about taxes?

Never Ending Footsteps is registered as a limited company in the Australia and I pay both personal and corporation tax there.

Are you planning for retirement?

You bet! I aim to max out my pension allowance every year, then let compound interest work its magic. While I hope to continue working online for the rest of my life, I think it’s important to plan for the future, and I’m skeptical that travel blogging will still exist in its current form in 2050.

I therefore focus heavily on building my savings and preparing for the worst to happen. It’s unlikely that it will, but I’d rather be over-prepared than the alternative.

Travel Blogging

I want to start a travel blog. Do you have any tips for getting started?

Yes! I have an enormous post about how to start a travel blog. In it, I cover how to choose the perfect blog name and the best hosting company to use, along with screenshots to take you every step of the way. I show you how to install WordPress, find a professional theme and logo, share my top plugins, and give advice on how to start making money.

How do you even make money as a travel blogger?

Right? I still can’t believe I’ve managed to turn my blog into a business. Here’s how I currently make my money.

• Advertising on the site, via display advertising with Mediavine (ads in my posts and sidebar)
• Affiliate sales (where, for example, I pay to stay in a hotel, mention it on my site and link to it, and if you decide to stay there, I make a commission on that sale).
• Licensing of my travel photos

One thing I no longer do is freelance writing. I hated it! It was so much work, required me to deal with regular rejection, and there was little consistency to my income. And I don’t work with brands or companies, so you’ll never see anything sponsored from me. 

How much money do you make from your travel blog?

It varies, but it’s almost always between $10,000 and $20,000 a month. Here was my average income breakdown in 2019:

Advertising: $3,000 a month
Affiliate commissions: $8,000 a month
Blog coaching: $2,000 a month
Patreon: $500 a month
Photo licensing: $500 a month
Course sales: $100 a month

In 2024, it’s far, far simpler, as I’ve cut back on almost everything that doesn’t earn me a passive income:

Advertising: $8,000 a month
Affiliate commissions: $8,000 a month

And that’s pretty much it!

How long did it take for you to start making money?

I sold my first ad on my travel blog when I was four months in. I hadn’t even started travelling at that point! By the time my blog was a year old, I was making around $2,000 a month — enough to live in cheaper parts of the world indefinitely. In year 4, I finally started making more than $5,000 a month, and year six saw me hitting an annual six figures for the first time. It takes a lot of work to make money from travel blogging, but it’s definitely not impossible!

Why don’t you take press trips?

There are several reasons why I pay for absolutely everything myself. And I’m super strict about it, too, guys. I don’t take press trips, and I don’t accept free hotel stays or activities. I don’t even accept free travel gear to review. Here’s why.

First of all, I know that my readers prefer to read a blog that is sponsorship-free. Whenever I’ve run reader surveys, you guys have told me your favourite thing about this site is that I pay for everything myself. Conversely, I know that the vast majority of travel bloggers find their readers claim their frequent comps to be their least favourite aspect of their sites.

Secondly, I want to show you that travel is an attainable goal and I can’t do that if I don’t pay for everything. Sometimes this sucks, because damn, will I ever get to Antarctica if I have to pay $10,000 on a trip? And how about the fact that last year I went to Rwanda, where a permit to trek with mountain gorillas costs $1500? Bloody hell. It’d be nice to do as other bloggers do and get it all for free. But that’s the thing, though: If I took a comp and hiked to see the gorillas, I’d most likely say it was worth it because I hadn’t felt the pain of that money coming out of my account. When I’m paying for it myself, I’m going to make damn sure it’s worth every single penny of my hard-earned cash.

Finally, it made me feel kind of uncomfortable to jump on sponsored trips. I don’t want to feel as though my readers think I’m only giving something a positive review because I didn’t have to pay for it, so it’s easier for me to not do it altogether. That way you never have to question whether I’m being honest or not.

After dabbling with taking comps for a few months, I decided I’d much rather build such a successful business that I could just afford to go wherever I want and write about whatever I want. Fortunately, I succeeded!

How much do you work?

It varies quite a lot from month to month. I’m grateful that the vast majority of my income is now passive, which means the money rolls in whether I’m working or not. Because of this I work far less than I used to.

Before I moved to a more passive form of income, it wasn’t unusual for me to pull 90-hour weeks in front of my laptop. Now I’d guess that it averages out at a 20-hour week. The fact that my income is passive and I can take a month off whenever I need to has been a game-changer for me. As someone who suffers from occasional chronic pain, it’s made a huge difference to my health to know I don’t have to push through it all to work non-stop.

How do you find freelance writing work?

Here’s a thoroughly unhelpful answer: I don’t. Ninety-five per cent of the freelance writing gigs I have ever taken are due to the client finding this site and dropping me an email to hire me. But I guess my answer kind of is helpful, as well, because it shows the importance of building a portfolio. That you don’t have to spend every spare minute pitching magazines and websites; that sometimes you’ll be so inundated with opportunities that you’ll be able to pick and choose the ones that suit you best.

But let’s go back to the start, when I was having to find all of my freelancing jobs myself. I bookmarked several major sites that I knew regularly hired freelancers and checked them once a week — that was how I landed a gig at About.com. I checked the Problogger jobs board every day along with Freelance Writing Gigs, and that was about it! I was able to score well-paying gigs every few days through those sites, which helped me to build my portfolio during those first few years.

As I’ve moved my focus towards passive income, I no longer write articles for other people: it was taking up so much of my time and I could have been just publishing the articles here instead!