My journey officially came to an end yesterday night at just after midnight when I came back home, and I'm not going to lie, it feels strange to be home.
Naturally there is going to be a period of adjustment as I try to acclimatise myself back in to the non-travelling ways of life where I don't get stared at for being different, and where everyone can now understand most of what I say.
I explained a little bit about my journey in yesterday's post, but as it was quite late when I eventually got to bed after writing it, who knows what I missed out.
It was a long journey back to York last night as we took a twelve hour flight from Hong Kong International to Amsterdam where we had a two hour stop over before continuing on to Manchester Airport where we eventually landed.
Unsurprisingly for Manchester, and England in general it wasn't a very warm evening with lots of wind around but at least the rain had decided to hold off. Making the adjustment from 30+ degree temperatures everyday in Hong Kong is probably going to take a while although I'm hoping to have timed my return perfectly as spring and summer sweep across this country.
I spent a lot of the flight drifting in and out of conciousness but had the time to make use of the on-board entertainment services in between times. Flying from Asia back to Europe is a bit of a strange one, especially at the time we left because your body clock has a natural inclination to gravitate towards the timezone it has just departed from, and in our case it was just coming up to lunchtime, and not too many sleepy feelings were sweeping over my body. Realistically, I doubt there are many people who would want to stay awake for an entire twelve hour flight, despite the time, but the cabin lights remained on throughout, and I think it was when I got to Amsterdam that I started to feel a bit more time.
The flight from the Dutch capital back to Manchester was only just over an hour so I didn't doze very much, instead looking out of the window at the brightly lit orange sky and the fluffy clouds that we soared above.
Coming back to my house this morning I had the unenjoyable task of unpacking my bag although it was pretty easy to organise as things were either going back into a box, staying in the bag itself or headed for the washing machine / dirty clothes basket.
I'm sure it won't take long before the whole trip becomes a distant memory, but I was delighted to discover today that the hard drive where I was originally storing photos hadn't been corrupted, and therefore the memories of the early part of my journey have been saved. Pre-Thailand things are particularly hazy, and I think that pretty soon I'm going to have to give myself a little reminder about the things I saw and did there so that I can rekindle those memories.
As well as pictures I have plenty of leaflets, receipts and other bits and pieces to arrange into several scrapbooks somehow, although I have a feeling that will be a rather long project considering how much there is. I brought back currency from each country that I visited and hope to make a collection of the coins and notes somewhere to.
Having spoken to several of my friends, and also some members of my family today, I think what I have accomplished might be starting to be fully appreciated somewhere deep inside my gut as I discuss some of the things that I have spent my time doing, as well as thinking about my favourite countries and cities to visit.
Even though the physical part of the journey is over, I have a feeling that this may be a long, slow and drawn out process before everything is acknowledged and I'm able to feel like I have totally achieved the goal I set out to in February. I'm already starting to feel a great sense of pride about the fact that I survived almost totally alone for a third of a year on a different continent, and even though I have just got back, I'm already looking forward to my next adventure.
Over My Shoulder
Mike and the Mechanics (1995)
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