Here's to Trusty Travel Buddies

There are lots of different ways of traveling, by yourself, on tours, with friends or relatives, budget, not-so-budget, etc, and over the last year I've experimented with most of these.
Being somewhat of a solo pilot in life in general, I started off on my own. You have the ultimate freedom to go wherever you like, whenever you like. And I've gained a certain strength from having to rely solely on myself. But it can be lonely. When you are gazing out on some fantastic scenery, or witness some funny random event there is no one to share it with, or laugh about it.
Then at the other end of the scale is a tour. The major advantage of these is that you don't have to think about transport, accommodation etc, its all sorted for you. All you have to do is sit back and take pictures, and the social life is pretty good too (depending of course on what sort of tour you choose). But the major disadvantage as I see is you always feel like a conspicuous tourist, and I hate feeling like that. I like to try to blend in and see things from a local perspective, as much as possible, and thats hard when you're on a big bus with “So and So's Tours” written on the side.
And then there's traveling with friends, but the success of this depends a lot on the individual, how well you get on, and how closely your traveling agenda's mesh. The idea of being stuck with someone who chews my ear off constantly, wants to go and get pissed every night till 4am and is constantly losing the map is enough to make me want to stay home. Luckily, I've found a great travel buddy. We are pictured above at Oktoberfest (bet you couldn't have guessed that). Funnily enough we grew up in close proximity in Sydney, but met on the other side of the world. Our idea of “budget” varies a little, and she has a slightly obsessive tendency to want to walk everywhere, but other than that we travel very well together. Most importantly we can laugh together when things don't go according to plan, which happens a lot, and is part of the joy of traveling. So I'm making the toast in this picture, “To trusty travel buddies”.