Letter to say Merry Christmas 2015

So we ended 2014 in the UK with family and set off on more travels. Our year of travel and the Epic Road trip ended up with us travelling for a full year on the road – we visited 40 countries (admittedly some only for 1 night to just pass through and 4 of those we flew to!). We drove 60,000km in our beaten up old car, Nellie, from Abu Dhabi, to Europe, down to Morocco, back across Europe, into Russia and then across Central Asia before heading back to Turkey to make a side trip to Tanzania before the final leg back through Iran and across to the UAE again. We spent almost 2 months in Morocco, a month in Turkey, a month in Uzbekistan and another between Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan as well as a month in Iran – we were so lucky to be able to spend extended periods of time in some countries that you might usually only manage a fleeting holiday.

I want to blog SO MUCH! I want to share so much beauty… the beauty of the people we met, the places we visited, the lives we interacted with, the fun we shared as a family. The architecture, the mountains, the food, the culture, the languages, the landscapes, the history…. I want to tell about how travelling the Silk Route was a dream come true for me… I want to blog about how world schooling worked out so amazingly for our family… I want to blog about how we juggled everything, including work, and stayed sane – for believe me, there were definite “moments” where we questioned it!!! I want to blog about how we stayed healthy and managed being vegetarian on the road, especially in very meat eating countries like those in Central Asia. I want to give a HUGE shout out to each and every friend that fed us, watered us and housed us on our trip or went out of their way to meet up with us in a variety of random locations, because those friends are nothing short of awesome – I want to throw hugs across the internet to all those who cheered us on, who left messages of encouragement and called and emailed and kept in touch as we went – they helped us keep our sanity from time to time. I want to share about how beautiful the people of the world are and how we encountered kindness everywhere we went… but it’s Christmas Eve, and I have a million things to do and I want to hang out with those 3 wonderful souls I just spent a year living in a car with!!! So, in lieu of hours and hours to put in at a computer I’ll just link up to a few interviews I’ve done since we got back that will give some insight into some of our experiences if you’re interested.

Motherland – Globetrotting with Kids: A (Family) life less ordinary

Mr Fox – Reclaiming Saturdays: A Family on the Road

TAP Talks – with Kirsty Larmour, photographer and traveller (I admit, I’ve not watched this one, watching myself might make me feel sick!!! 😉 )

And those future blog posts, when I do get to them, will be linked on our Letters from the Larmours facebook page so I’d love it if you followed us over there, or on my Instagram, which is the best place ever to follow what we’re up to!! There will of course be lots and lots of pretty pictures from all those corners of the world!!

2016 will bring more adventures, both local and further afield and some super exciting professional news for Kirsty as well as new projects for Tommy so watch this space!!

For now, I’ll leave you with our best Christmas wishes and send loads of happiness for 2016 and some pictures of us in our Abu Dhabi happy place, the desert, which is exactly where we’ll be spending Christmas day tomorrow,

lots of love, Kirsty, Tommy, Saffy and Indy, Christmas 2015 xxxx

Letters from the Larmours_family travels 2015_01