Letters from the Larmours » Stories from the travels of the Larmour Family

Hello and Welcome!

Come on in... here you’ll find bits and bobs about us, The Larmours, our life, where we live, what we do, and most of all, about our biggest shared family passion – our travels. This is a record for us, a place for us to share pictures and ramblings on what we’ve done and where we’ve been, but you’ll find occasional blethering about other things too.

We met in Hong Kong, and since then have lived and worked all over Asia before settling in China, where our Saffy arrived and then moving to the UAE where Indy joined us. Since we met we’ve travelled – since we married we’ve been on an adventure – since we had kids it hasn’t stopped… ultimately, all our small travels were preparation for the big one – that one day we hoped to take – a gap year, a sabbatical, a break from the daily grind – and starting 2014 we took off on it..... across the world, and then on a road trip that has taken us to three continents so far.....

Grab a cup of tea and come exploring with us,
Kirsty, Tommy, Saffy and Indy xxxx

Jul 16 2011

Letter from Kota kinabalu

It makes me laugh now – how naive we were… how we, the headstrong Tommy and Kirsty listened to other peoples advice, how we actually doubted ourselves…. when we had Saffy we were constantly told things like “oooh you’ll have to stop your galavanting now”, “you’ll only be able to go to nice resorts with kids clubs”, “make sure you always pick a place with a pool”, “no more third world countries for you two!!” (er, hello people, did you notice where we were living when we had Saffy????) “your backpacking days are over”, “you won’t be able to take baby on a plane until it’s 2 cos the pressure is bad for it’s skull” (to be fair I NEVER, not for ONE SINGLE SECOND believed that one – but it’s an example of the absolute tosh people come out with!!) not to mention the ridiculous advice about the stuff you need to take with you to travel with a baby – the sterilisers, the travel system, the toys, the this, the that, the million and one things that a baby couldn’t possibly live without… plus the fact that you’ll now always have to pay for 2 hotel rooms, pick places with babysitters, check menus to make sure it’s kid friendly… b;ah-di-blah-di-blah……

Soooooo, when Saffy was 3 month old we set off on our first international trip with her (the numerous trips up and down to Hong Kong before that don’t really count!!) – and to be fair, we went to Borneo… which is pretty adventurous with a baby, although Kirsty had been before so we’d picked a place where we knew what we were in for!! And we booked a few days break in a 5 star hotel.

Now I’m not knocking 5 star luxury.. I could easily lap it up every day – but I don’t neeeeeed it… and we quickly realised that even with a baby you sure as hell don’t need it…. and needless to say, much as we enjoyed it, we’ve rarely done it again since!!!

But for now, here we go with some pics of Saffy’s first trip on a plane (OMG her skull didn’t implode into a million pieces!), her first time in a pool, and her first trip to Borneo – I hope we make it back there again some day – and do something a little more adventurous!

Our Holiday to Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, May 2006

Ready to set off from home

the first morning, on our room balcony with Mummy – we could not believe how blue the sky was….

first time in a pool!!

It says “Angel” on the front…. and on the back……..

me chilling out on the plane!

first time on a slide

little dude!

me, Daddy and a scary pair of eyes…

all 3 Larmours

flower power chickette

waiting for the plane….

first morning with Daddy

first trip to a beach!

with Daddy and my friend Honor

We did really have a lovely time – Kota Kinabalu is gorgeous, and the resort was fabulous, and we explored round and about a bit – and at the end of the day, we broke ourselves into travelling with our kids very gently with a nice easy first trip – and we’ve build from that foundation from then on!

Until the next letter, Kirsty x

Tags: baby travel,beach,borneo,family travel,Malaysia,nice hotels,outdoors,ramblings,Saffy,swimming,travel

by Kirsty

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Jul 15 2011

Letter from our honeymoon… the final part

Oh it was bliss – I’ve loved going back through it all and remembering things I’d forgotten – but isn’t that the whole point of photos, and of writing a blog/website/journal – that it helps to keep those memories alive…..



JaisalmerThe city rises out of the desert like a huge sandcastle and is one of Indias only living forts
The sandcastle close up Tommy’s favourite beer – called Thunderbolt must be very inconsistently brewed as it states that it’s between 8 and 15%!!!	We saw lots of wild camels in the desert on our way between Jodphur and Jaisalmer Us at one of the Havellis with Jaisalmer in the background	The sandcastle from the distance Paintings beside the doors to houses
The Camel SafariThis was soooooo much fun – despite my (Kirsty’s) complete fear of any animal bigger than me, I managed to ride the camel quite comfortably and only got off and walked to let Tommy and our guide go for a bit of a canter for a while. After treking through scrubby desert near to the border with Pakistan we reached some deserted sand dunes in time for sun set and as you can see from the pictures these were brilliant fun! We took beer with us which was only slightly (!!) warm by the time we drank it – the desert temperature was 49 degrees C!!!
Tommy photographing himself on his camel		Our camels were both boys and kept eyeing up wild girl camels we passed along the way!
Ranthambhore Tiger SanctuaryWe suffered a real stroke of bad luck with the tiger sanctury as we originally wanted to go at the start of our trip – the hotel then told us the park was closed for the annual tiger census so we changed out itinerary to go at the end of the trip. Unfortunately for us it rained and washed the tiger prints away and the census had to be extended – which meant the park was closed the whole 24 days we were in India! The hotel however made up for it – it was complete bliss!!
Travelling first class on a train for the first time in our lives!!! View of the 25 tents from the observation tower – they all had walls around them and were totally private – it was just fab!	The four poster bed in our tent! The peacock is the national bird of India and we saw lots of painted and live (L and R pics) ones	The huge bathroom – the tent in total was bigger than our tiny HK flat – hard to believe but true! This was as close as we came to seeing tigers….
DelhiWe spent the last couple of days in Delhi but only did a small amount of sightseeing as we wanted some final pampering and relaxing time before heading back to work and all the other hectic things we had planned back in HK





We mostly stayed in Oberoi Hotels which were amazing! We stayed at the Oberoi Armavillas, Rajvillas, Udaivillas, Vanyavillas and the Oberoi Hotel New Delhi. The hotels all have spas run by the Banyan Tree which are just amazing!!In Nawalgarh we stayed at a very interesting little eco resort calledApani Dhani. It has very basic facilities and runs on solar power and biogas and grows all it’s food organically In Pushkar we stayed at the Pushkar Palace Hotel which was lovely and it being off season only 3 guest rooms were occupied so it was incredibly peacful sitting outside our room looking out over the lake Close to Chittorgarh we stayed at Castle Bijaipur – this was where the Prince joined us of drinks!!

Again, apologies for the wonky formatting on here ….. but huge thanks for the trip down memory lane, Kirsty xx

Tags: desert,hotels,india,photography,ramblings,train travel,travel