Flightless from England to Japan: Interview with Steve James
In 2005, Steve James travelled the world for a year - the kind of journey many would consider a ‘once in a lifetime experience’. For Steve, it was just the beginning.
After returning to his home in the UK for 18 months, Steve took off late last year on another adventure: an flightless trek from England to Japan.
TravelBlogs caught up with Steve to learn more about his current trip and his love for travel in general.
After finishing your around the world trip, it didn’t take long before you were off again. I guess the ‘travel bug’ caught you?
Yes, I think it’s fair to say I’ve been well and truly bitten! How long the symptoms will last, who knows? All I know is that even whilst halfway through my first big trip I was already starting to plan my second. The whole purpose of my return to the UK became to raise enough money to make it a reality.
What do you love about travel?
The things I love about travel have changed the longer I have been on the road. When I initially started out, the allure of travel was that it was a hard-earned break from the rat race, and an opportunity to see and experience some incredible sights. While those still apply, I quickly found that travel offered a far more rewarding opportunity: to meet people from all walks of life. I’ve encountered Japanese scuba diving instructors, trainee American monks, Swiss NGO workers, stage hypnotists, Vietnam veterans - from both sides - and more fascinating people than I could ever have hoped to have met by just staying in my hometown.
Above all else, though, the thing I love most about travel is the incredible sense of freedom I get from it. The ability to get up when you want - or not at all - and do what you want, when you want is extremely liberating.
Instead of flying, you’ve opted to travel overland on this trip. What are some of the advantages of travelling like this?
To me, going overland feels more a more natural way to travel. It’s slower paced - it’s taken me 5 months to travel from the UK to Japan on this trip, a journey which took me just twelve hours in a plane on my first trip - and you actually get to *see* the countries you are passing through, and the changing landscapes. Whilst air travel seems to shrink the world, I think overland travel helps you gain more of an appreciation of how vast it is.
Do you have a rough idea of your itinerary, or are you making things up as you go?
At the start I had a rough idea of the first few countries I wanted to travel through, but the actual day-to-day decisions were completely on a whim; I didn’t book hostels or tickets, preferring just to wing it. However, now I’m starting to reach the end of my “rough idea”, and so it’s completely open ended where I go next…
How are you able to afford it?
Money I had put aside from three years of working in the IT industry helped me a long way towards the budget for my first trip, but I also had to make some sacrifices. I sold all my unwanted possessions, stopped going out so much and even moved back home to my parents’ house to save on rent.
I made the same sacrifices to save for my current trip (except I didn’t have anything left to sell)! I also registered myself as self-employed and started freelancing in IT, designing websites not only for clients but also for myself to monetise by way of online adverts, from which I earn a small but helpful revenue. By deciding to take a laptop on the road and continue with my freelancing activities whilst travelling, the threshold amount of money I needed to take off again was much lower, and so now I work my way around the world designing websites from my “international offices” - be they hostel beds, chicken buses, park benches or sandy beaches!
What have been some of the highlights so far?
Seeing frozen Lake Baikal in Russia and walking on it at night under a velvety-black sky packed with stars was an unforgettably breathtaking moment. In fact, in retrospect Russia as a whole was a highlight, albeit very hard work to travel through at the time.
Dropping in to see people I met on my previous trip has also been wonderful; it’s great to see a familiar face on the journey from time to time… not to mention all the fascinating new people I have met on this trip. With luck I will be back to revisit them on another trip some time in the near future!
You can follow Steve on his overland adventure on his site, Overland Tales.
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Posted by Eric Daams on April 8th, 2008 in Interviews.
