Good Things Come in Small Packages

Travelling for a long period of time with your partner can be challenging sometimes. Ask anyone who has done it, and they are likely to tell you the same thing. In fact, if you ask around, most people seem to simply advise against it, claiming that it is over-optimistic or naively romantic to think that you will continue to enjoy each other once you have spent 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with each other for months in a row.

I don't agree with that. I agree that it is sometimes tough, and there have definitely been times when Alix and I have wanted to strangle each other, but we have always worked it out and no strangling has been required. There are lots of articles on the net about travelling with your partner. For the record, here's my advice.

1) Choose an awesome travel partner. Pretty straightforward, I would think. Some people suck to travel with, others don't. The qualities you are looking for are; a sense of humour, patience, a sense of humour, organisational skill, a sense of humour, common sense, and a sense of humour.

2) Marry them. It is much harder to say "you know what, you are doing my head in right now, see ya!" when you are married. There are documents involved and signatures and so on, and you have probably cooled off enough to rethink your escape plan by the time you are looking into those.

3) Agree on a safety word. I'm not talking about kinky sex games here. I'm talking about a word that you can say anywhere, even in an awfully public place like the crowded Chicken Bus, that means "please leave me alone immediately for several minutes so I can calm down. I am about to rip your head off."

4) There is no 4. Go back and have another look at 1). If your partner doesn't pass muster at 1), politely excuse yourself and find one that does before moving on to 2) or 3).

I was lucky I got Alix to travel with. She has kindly posed for an awful lot of photos over the last year or so. Here are some of my favourites.