It started with a goal. We sat on a sunny morning and over coffee in the cozy living room of our Bungalow – 3 words on our letter board – Travel, Be Remote, Save. I don’t think we’ll ever forget looking at these daily on the wall of our kitchen.
That was in mid-2019. Fast-forward to March 2020 and we start thinking we certainly didn’t mean this when we said to go Remote’! And with that, one goal was accidentally marked off.
That forced break gave everyone including ourselves a chance to really change the way we viewed life. It forced us to slow down, to stay home and to be present. I think it was the only way I could have been prepared to become a parent. I can’t imagine the switch from a fast-paced 9-5 lifestyle where we were out most evenings and weekends to a slower, slightly more challenging life where we are home more often than out with a new family dynamic.
We had been wanting to travel for a long time. Not just go on trips but have the opportunity to go on an open-ended trip. Something filled with one-way tickets, changing food, exciting culture and time. The biggest factor of all – time.
And we got it – kind of. Sometime during the pandemic one of us switched to a fully remote job – not tied to time zones and we found out we were having a baby. We knew from the start that this would be a factor in us being able to travel for a longer period. Somewhere in those 18 months of Mat leave, we could find the time to travel. It would look different but we had everything just lining up.
One big reflection of Duas being granted and goals being accomplished. We would have to move out of the beautiful condo we had come to love. Something I had gone through with difficulty in the past. We moved in late 2019 and were in there for 3 very interesting years – the pandemic and the start of our new lives as parents. We were ready to move out this time not only because of the travel but because we had outgrown it. If this wasn’t a sign for us to take advantage of the lineup of all these things, I don’t know what would be.
We had no idea what to expect when we said we would travel with a baby but we’re ready to give it a shot. Worst case? We come back!
In the summer of 2022, we had the opportunity to visit beautiful Türkiye for three amazing weeks. Our little guy was just shy of three months. A portion of our trip was covered as it was through W’s work trip and this helped knowing that there would be a lot of people we knew with us or around us.
I don’t think at the time I even comprehended how little our baby was. When I look back and look at 3-month-olds and new moms now, I can’t believe actually went!
It was a great test trip as I had already been to this city before and was not in any rush to sightsee. It helped that it was a very walkable place and a place where the subway lines and trams were easily accessible.
More on the trip itself in a later post though!
We ballparked that we would head out mid-fall to skip the winter and head back sometime in the summer. We had a wedding to get back for.
We left at the end of November with no tied-down plan of where exactly we were going. We would start in Pakistan to see some family and do some wedding shopping for the upcoming summer. It was my second time there and W’s first.
Next, we would head to Malaysia for the next 3 months. We really wanted to be in Muslim environments and had lots of friends in Kuala Lumpur that we had met earlier that year in Istanbul. Lastly, we wanted to end in Türkiye /Istanbul again. Possibly cross over our Ramadan between both countries.
When we found out that some rules around Visas were changing for Türkiye, we decided to rejig our trip to add a few more places but still end is Istanbul with my parents joining us at the end.
We extended our stay in Malaysia and added Thailand, an Ummrah trip (Saudi Arabia), and Egypt with a final stop once again in Türkiye.
While in Malaysia we also got a chance to visit Singapore, Bali and some regions in Malaysia.
It’s been over a year since we left and 6 months since we’ve been back. We are so grateful to have had the opportunity to take on this Journey, make memories and learn so much about one another and the world. Our faith deepened as did our relationship with one another. I truly feel my growth as a parent could not have happened the same way if I did not get this opportunity.
We got better and better at preparing for each trip in terms of packing and planning ahead for our little guy. I hope to share these soon along with details of each location and trip.
Alhamdulillah for an unforgettable time. InshaAllah we get this opportunity again. We miss it every day.
If this is something you would love to do, all I can say is start with Dua. Something so powerful we tend to forget how much impact it makes on everything we do.
If you could take a similar trip – where would go?
Tasneem Dasoo 