The Highest and Lowest Points of our Trip

In my book Before the Kids and Mortgage, my wife Odelia and I took a whirlwind travel tour around the world—and we were a newlywed couple then! 

People often ask me, what were the emotional high and low points of the trip?

The low point of the trip

The emotional low points happened when Odelia and I needed to say good-byes to people. 

We met wonderful people throughout our journey. 

We mostly would arrive somewhere without any expectations except to meet local people. We wanted to really have a local experience.

Throughout our year-long journey, we learned to love and enjoy the day-to-day moments. 

And whatever amount of time we had with people, we really tried to be in the present moment and enjoy the time.

Then, we had to move on with the journey. We felt gratitude and blessings for all the great people we met. 

Actually, we also tried to find greatness in each person who’s path we crossed. 

The heartbreaking good-byes happened to us multiple times – with the Tessring family in Ladakh (in the Indian Himalayas), with Michael the “Boss” from Pokhara in Nepal, and Mohammad the rickshaw driver in Jaipur, India.  

We had similar experiences all around the world in the most unexpected places. Also with Dennis the “Wanderer” and Mustafa, the head of the rag-tag crew of foreigners in Singapore.

I asked my wife Odelia what the low point was for her. She said the lowsest point was a freezing cold, improvised “bucket shower” in the Himalayas, after 2 weeks of hiking, consisting of a local woman standing at a ledge and dumping the freezing water on Odelia’s head. (You can only survive the ice-cold water if you do it in one shot!)

The high point of the trip

The high point for me was in Hawaii, experiencing massive waves in the North Shore of Oahu.

We came right in the middle of the “big waves” season. 

And I found a crop of rocks that extended into the ocean.  

I climbed to the top of the rocks, and when the waves broke, I was literally inside them.  

It was a profound, life-changing experience.

This is what my wife Odelia said was the high point for her:  becoming friends with the Divya, the Princess of Jaisalmer (a member of the royal family) in India, while staying at the Nachana Haveli – a  former palace that was converted into a hotel.

What happened in your life after your book ends?

When Odelia and I went back home to Israel, we were penniless.  

We had to stay with Odelia’s parents.  Lovely people, but we were already 30 years old. 

And having lived on our own since the age of 18, this wasn’t an easy thing to get used to.  

It took us one year to find new jobs, settle back to “normal life,” and make enough money to afford our own place to rent. 

That was the start of a new chapter of our life.

Read about all the places we visited and the amazing people we met in my book Before the Kids and Mortgage, available here on Amazon.