Please send the detail about old travels issues
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I’m a 70-year-old retired neuropsychologist. Two years ago, I made a decision to retire, because I’d developed a number of medical problems due to stress from work. I was working myself into sickness. Alison (my wife, who is 63) and I didn’t have enough savings to be able to keep our home and do the kind of world travel we wanted to do. We agonized over what to do for a long time until it became clear that it came down to the question of “Do we want to have a home or do we want to have a life?”
So we made the decision to sell our home.
We’ve now been on the road, with occasional trips back to our hometown to restock our basic supplies and see our friends, for two years, and plan to continue living a nomadic life for the foreseeable future.
What inspired you to become nomadic?
Don: Initially it was the desire to see the places that were at the top of our bucket list, and after that to see as much of the world as we could before we got too old to travel.
Alison: Inspiration came first from Don writing daily “morning pages” (from Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way) in search of some answers to the retirement/income dilemma. One day out of the blue, he suggested to me that we could sell the condo and go traveling.
I didn’t immediately say yes to this, but it was a seed that grew of its own accord until one day, we realized this is what we’d do. I had a nice life at home, but Don was done with work and struggling to keep going. Something had to give.
Where have your travels taken you so far?
Don: After selling our home, we went to Europe. Following that we went to Tiruvannamalai in Tamil Nadu, India, where we stayed for 10 weeks in order to spend time meditating at the ashram of Ramana Maharshi.
From there we went to Bali, then to Australia to spend time with some of Alison’s family and friends. We’ve also been back to India, all over Southeast Asia, and most recently, Mexico.
Did your friends and family think you were crazy for doing this?
Don: Probably, although no one said that to our faces. Everyone was surprised, some of them seemed perhaps a bit shocked, and many of them told us that we had a lot of courage for taking this step and encouraged us to go for it.
Do you feel that your age was in any way a problem or limiting?
Don: When we first began traveling, I was concerned about my health and whether I’d be able to stay healthy — particularly when traveling in developing countries. However, as we’ve traveled, I realized I can get sick overseas, take appropriate medications, and get well again. It’s not as hard as I thought to get the necessary care when you travel.
Alison: It never occurred to me that