Around The World in 800 Days

Travel Day 800 – Arambol to Detmold, GERMANY

It almost seemed a bit like a joke, but I ended my two years of travelling exactly on day 800. Only instead of Jules Verne’s 80 days, I managed to travel Around the World in 800 Days… : )

Airplane at Dabolim Airport in Goa, India

Anyway, my day started really early with 2am taxi pick-up and a 1 ½ drive to the only airport in Goa, located in far away Dabolim. The check-in procedure was more than easy, only the security check line took forever. It seemed that hundreds of Russians were about to fly back home at the same time and things were happening rather slowly on this early morning…

I personally was more than happy that nobody bothered me about my big Bayan in my hand. Since I couldn’t fit it in the backpack, my only choice was to carry it onto the airplane and luckily nobody seemed to be too concerned about it. Only some people made jokes and ask me if I would carry a poisonous snake onto the airplane, or the ashes of a family member…

When we finally boarded the airplane, I realized why nobody minded me having extra carry-on luggage. We were flying on an airplane with 300 seats, but this charter flight had actually only 15 passengers in total. As this was the first flight of the season, it arrived in Goa completely full and returned pretty much empty. For us it turned out to be the best flight ever as every passenger had their own stewardess and they made sure that we had everything we needed…

Actually the stewardesses came around all the time asking if we really didn’t want more of this or more of that, because they had nothing else to do and a lot of food and drinks to give out. So not only my Bayan had its own seat, all of us passengers stretched out in an entire row of seats and had a nap. In the end, this was definitely the best and most relaxing flight I ever had and within no time we arrived already in Good-old Germany…

Unfortunately Germany was grey, cloudy and only chilly 6 degrees cold when we left the airplane. On the way home I realized that it would probably take me quite while to be really comfortable here. On the one hand my concerns were due the weather, but on the other the fact that this would be my last Active Travel Day for a long time seemed concerning as well. But besides those little worries I was excited to be back in my home country with enough time to see some friends and family, yay… : )