Life is neither predictable nor fair. Much of the time it is a series of bad timings, one inconvenience after another in the form of late buses, of missed dates and lost opportunities. But it’s because of that exactly that even the slightest chance should not be overlooked.
It was over a year ago that we, Noms and Jos, found one. A small window of time that overlapped enough, such that both of us tweaking our schedules just a little opened up a whole five-month gap on our calendars. And so the planning began.
For the next year we worked as we did our research. We decided on our countries and made rough itineraries which continued to evolve, even up until the day before we left. And somewhere amongst all that mess, we decided to document all of our travels for three reasons.
Firstly, it’s for ourselves. As people who are complacent in taking photos and move on quickly, we always regret the sparseness of our camera rolls once we get back home. We are proud of our good memory, but it’s the wrong one; short-term recollections do not help us remember the details that our father caught on his camera, or the views our mother captured on her phone. So we resolved to take photos for memories, and also to appreciate the art and sights as we journey into countries boasting their own unique and colourful cultures.
It’s also to have a goal to aim towards. To have something to show for what would otherwise be just a holiday, to produce work that we’re proud of which can fill a gap in our lives and careers. We want to create a project that could utilise both of our interests, and all of our diverse skills. It’s how we aim to develop our talents, to learn new things and discover things about ourselves.
Finally, it’s for the benefit of the curious traveller. It’s to make use of our experience travelling, which is not expansive (yet) but fairly practised. We aim to provide information where it may be difficult to find and maybe bring to light trends or attractions that the average traveller may not know about.
We’re aware that our style of travelling isn’t plausible for everyone. We’re blessed with fortunate timing and a travel companion from birth (yes, we are real twins), even if we bicker like an old married couple and have plenty of disagreements. But we also have something we want to do. We may not have a large budget. We may not have sponsors or mentors. But we used the resources we had and we built ourselves a solid plan.
In any other case we would have had doubts whether this would have been a good idea but what made this instance different is that the questions we asked ourselves assumed that this trip will surely happen. It was not a question of whether we had the time or the money. It was: How long do we want to go for? How much money are we willing to spend? Which countries? What to do? What to eat? And we both believe that really made the difference.
The decision to form TwinSpeak came not too long later. We are both restless and creative, and were determined to make the most of our skills and our time. Eventually we had the basic necessities to do exactly that, by observing the equipment that established bloggers and vloggers use, pooling together resources, and trimming it down to what was manageable for just the two of us.
It certainly hasn’t been easy. We couldn’t tell you how many arguments we had over details we couldn’t agree on, how many times we added cities or changed the plans altogether. But the spontaneity makes things all the more fun. Unpredictability is part of travel, and it’s something we hope to embrace.
Here’s to life.
