2024: My Travels in Review

It’s 2025, which means it’s time for my annual round-up post! I’m happy to share that this past year was another amazing one, filled with health, happiness, and heaps of travel.

In 2024, I travelled to 18 countries. Eighteen! Of those, 11 were brand new to me.

This year, I took my first steps in Central Asia and promptly decided it was my new favourite region; I can’t wait to explore more of it. I returned to several old favourites, like Singapore, India, and Turkey, and would name all three as highlights of my year. I even returned to an old unfavourite — China — and had a much better experience second time around.

My adventures were particularly varied this year. I marvelled at mud volcanoes in Azerbaijan, canyons in Kazakhstan, and deserts in Bahrain. I rode camels in Mongolia, captained a boat in England, and rode a train for 16 hours across Kazakhstan. I sunbathed on the beaches of Albania and summited the mountains of Kyrgyzstan; walked the length of Norfolk, and tackled Northern India by train. I ventured inside mosques in Pakistan, temples in China, and churches in North Macedonia, and sampled smoked horse, pickled cockles, and fermented camels milk.

In 2024, the new countries I travelled to were: Albania, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, North Macedonia, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. Here’s how my year looked on the map:

If you missed my 2023 yearly update, there’s a few relevant life updates I’m going to share:

• I live in Melbourne, Australia now! I obtained a partner visa and permanent residency through Dave during the pandemic and moved here in late-2022.
• Permanent residency needs to be renewed every five years in Australia, so it makes a lot of sense to apply for a passport; that way, I’ll lock in my ability to live and work in Australia for the rest of my life.
• To qualify for an Australian passport, you can only spend three months of every year outside the country. I can apply for the passport in mid-2026.

I’m reminding you of the above purely as an explanation for why this yearly summary might seem a bit off-balance. These days, I spend a lot of time in Australia through necessity and as a result, my overseas trips can seem inordinately fast-paced.

As you can see, though, the restrictions certainly haven’t held me back from exploring the world! Take a deep breath, then, and prepare yourself to read all about my action-packed 2024.

January: Azerbaijan, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia

After kicking off the year at home with my family, I packed my bags once more and set off for a series of adventures in some brand new countries.

Azerbaijan was up first and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed my time there. Baku was a photogenic gem, home to grand architecture and freezing-cold winds; I loved spending several days being blown around all of its attractions.

Outside the city, I ventured over to Gobustan, which is known for its plentiful mud volcanoes and ancient petroglyphs; the latter dates back to almost 40,000 years ago. I also spent time at the eternal flame of Yanar Dag, which is like a mini-version of the Gates of Hell in Turkmenistan, except this flame has been burning for thousands of years!

Kuwait was my next country and it was… completely fine. Let’s just say there wasn’t a lot for international visitors to do, so I definitely felt like I was scraping the tourism barrel while I was there!

Bahrain was a wonderful little country to spend some time in, and I warmed to it immediately. I spent a full day exploring the delights of Manama — the capital — then took a day trip to see everything else. There was tons to do! I checked out Bahrain Fort, wandered around the National Museum, visited the Bahrain Grand Prix track, made friends with camels, and marvelled at the Dilmun Burial Mounds, which date back to 2200 BCE!

Did you know that Bahrain is just 25 km (16 miles) from Saudi Arabia, and you can simply drive across a bridge from one country to the other? You guys know me by now; that was too tempting an opportunity to pass up!

I therefore spent time exploring the eastern reaches of Saudi Arabia, hitting up Dammam, Dhahran, Al-Khobar, and Al Marjan. I felt extremely safe in the country as a Western woman, walking around in jeans and a jumper with my hair uncovered; nobody even gave me the slightest amount of attention. While I didn’t visit the most exciting parts of the country, it was fascinating to explore a place that was once so closed off to the world.

Finally, I had a travel first waiting in store for me when I ventured to the airport in Manama: I had been upgraded to business class!

Throughout my 13+ years as a travel writer, I’ve only ever flown in economy, and I don’t collect points and miles, so have never received an upgrade. Hold your horses, though, because this was quite possibly the least exciting flight for which to get upgraded.

A four-hour-long, red-eye Air India flight that landed in Delhi at 4 a.m.

Still, it was fun to have a… slightly bigger chair and a glass of orange juice.

February: Australia

I was now firmly back on Australian soil and after having had such a wonderful solo trip over the holiday season, I was determined to keep exploring! That’s another benefit of running a website about Victorian travel — it forces me to get out and see as much of my home base as possible!

One of my favourite things about living in Victoria is how affordable our trains are! Train fares are capped at $10 per day, no matter how far you travel, how many trains you take, or how many hours you spend on board. It makes taking day trips in this state so easy and inexpensive!

Early on in the month, I spent some time in Ballarat, an old mining town that’s located 90 minutes west of Melbourne. Back in the 1850s, gold was actually discovered in Ballarat and it triggered a frenzied gold rush that transformed the town into one of the wealthiest in Australia — Melbourne even used to be the richest city in the world! Ten years after that discovery, Victoria accounted for over a third of the world’s gold production — and you can still find gold there today.

I chose to visit without a metal detector, however, and instead spent my time marvelling at the old Victorian architecture, visiting art galleries, cafe-hopping the historic streets, and walking around the botanic gardens.

Another highlight from the month was hiking in Organ Pipes National Park. The park gets its name from its unusually-shaped rocks; formed by ancient volcanic lava, the basalt rock columns now look like giant organ pipes! It’s an underrated spot in Victoria, perfect for spending a few hours walking around and having a picnic.

March: Australia

I winced as I browsed through the photos I took in March, for this was the month when I found myself uncomfortably standing inside the Edge.

The Melbourne Skydeck is one of the tallest skyscrapers in the city and its observation deck the highest in the southern hemisphere. And I don’t really know what happened, but when I booked tickets for me and Dave to visit, I somehow managed to also buy tickets for the Edge.

I don’t have acrophobia, but I definitely feel disconcerted by the thought of standing at a great height with only a panel of glass beneath me. You can see a photo of the finishing position of the Edge above: you basically stand inside a glass cube and then it slowly journeys from inside the building until you are fully outside, looking 300 metres (1,000 ft) down.

I wish you could have seen the look on my face when the staff member handed me a ticket for the experience; minutes earlier, I had been saying to Dave how relieved I was that we weren’t going to be doing it!

Aside from that, Dave and I spent our month making the most of the summer: we had regular picnics in the park, took road trips around the state, and met up with friends as often as we could. I even celebrated St Patrick’s Day for the first time!

April: Australia

April in Australia was all about the coastline; just as in March, Dave and I concentrated our domestic travels on road trips and eating.

Port Lonsdale was my favourite discovery of the month — and the entire Bellarine peninsula, in fact. Dave and I carved out a chunk of time for uncovering everything there is to do on this stretch of coastline close to Melbourne. We checked out the ciders at Flying Brick Cider Co, bought litres of olive oil from a local olive tree plantation, and signed up for a wine tasting at Jack Rabbit Vineyard. We visited hipster cafes in Geelong, sunbathed on uncrowded beaches in Port Lonsdale, and generally had a wonderful time.

I also earned my Australian stripes this month when a huntsman spider sauntered inside our house for the very first time.

Truly, a nightmare.

I thought I would be safe from the local wildlife because I live in the centre of the city, but alas! I ended up standing in my office for two hours, never breaking eye contact from it, waiting for Dave to get home but also prepared to run at any moment. Did you know they can move at a speed of one metre per second?!

May: Australia

May marks the last month of autumn in Melbourne, but the sunshine was still hanging around, so I set myself a goal of walking all over the state. Everything Victoria is great for getting me out and about: I can spontaneously decide I want to write an article about the best day hikes from Melbourne, then spend the next 20 days trying out every single one of them!

My favourite hike from this month was the Circuit Walk at Werribee Gorge. The scenery was so dramatic and the walk the perfect level of challenging. One particularly tough part involved using cables to pull ourselves along a sheer rockface, climbing directly above the river. When we weren’t scrambling over cliffs, we were crossing creeks, eating a picnic on a riverside beach, and spotting people bathing in natural swimming holes.

Dave and I threw ourselves into nesting as the temperatures dropped, buying hot water bottles, and cooking soups and curries for every meal. I unhingedly started taking my hot water bottle to our nearest pub, too: that’s when you know you’re really a local!

This month, the Northern Lights spread itself out across unexpected regions, and Melbourne was no exception. We saw it here, too! Well, “saw”. While I couldn’t seen anything with my eyes, I did still manage to capture some shades of pink and green through my phone!

I’ve made a few friends in Melbourne who also work online, so this month, I set about scheduling weekly coworking sessions with many of them; trying a new cafe in the city every few days, chatting about business ideas, and then attempting to get tons of work done.

June: Australia

June is my birthday month, and I’ve always loved celebrating it on a bright, sunny day. Now that I’m a southern hemisphere dweller, however, I have to get used to spending my day curled up with a hot water bottle instead!

I always have one boring month each year, and in 2024, I’ve awarded these four weeks that accolade. With three months of non-stop, fast-paced travel coming up, the entirety of June was spent in front of my laptop, deep in travel research.

I spent my days attempting to create flawless itineraries; compiling lists of activities to tackle in every city, booking day trips and tours, and researching the best-value accommodation.

With such a limited amount of international travel available to me each year — at least, relative to my nomadic days! — I needed to ensure I wouldn’t waste a single day. It’s true: my travels need to be optimised to perfection, in which three months of exploration would be enough to provide me with nine months of content to write-up afterwards!

There’s always lots to do to prepare for my absence, too: making sure our house is spotless, arranging housesitters, setting up security cameras, offloading plants on friends, throwing goodbye parties, handing out copies of keys, and deciding what on earth to pack for a trip to so many distinct regions.

July: Singapore, China, and Mongolia

It was finally time for my big trip of the year.

I kissed goodbye to Dave and set my sights on Singapore. I hadn’t visited this country for ages: not since I declared it boring in comparison to other places in Southeast Asia. It turns out, however, that as I’ve grown up, I’ve grown to love Singapore. What a pleasant, easy, and safe country to explore!

This was one of the most action-packed layovers of my life, as I crossed off a whopping 50 attractions from my to-do list. I was out and about from seven in the morning ’til 10 at night, racking up 36,000 steps a day, and attempting to see as much as was humanly possible.

I was buzzing to visit China afterwards. I can’t imagine many of you guys were reading this site back in 2011, but China kind of became this infamous destination here on Never Ending Footsteps. I hated my time there! I had culture shock, got scammed, fell unwell, and somebody spat on me; I couldn’t wait to leave.

Surely my second visit would be better?

Well.

I have to confess that my travel day from Singapore to China was one of the worst and most dramatic of my life. I don’t want to reveal too much here, as I’m absolutely going to write a narrative post about it later this year.

Once I got to Beijing, though, I was thrilled to be there. I loved it, in fact. What a magnificent city, with so much history to dive into. My big standouts were the Summer Palace and the Forbidden City; neither of which I visited on my first trip. I returned to Tiananmen Square and the Temple of Heaven, and the latter was just as grandiose as I remembered. One downside to my trip: it was 40 degrees (104°F) and one of the busiest months for tourism; there were so many people!

I flew next to Mongolia and while my first impressions of the country weren’t amazing — Ulaanbaatar was cold, polluted, and rundown — by the end of my time there, I was wishing I had longer to explore.

I visited tons of museums while I was in town, including the brand new Chinggis Khan Museum in Ulaanbaatar, which was one of the best I’ve been to; a nine-storey complex with 10,000 artefacts! I filled my backpack with Mongolian cashmere, as you can find some of the best in the world here, all for factory prices! Some travel highlights: an adventurous day of hiking in Terelj National Park, spotting a gleaming 40-metre-high steel statue of Genghis Khan in the middle of the countryside, discovering I’m a surprisingly deft archer, and being invited into a ger by a local family to try some Mongolian delicacies (never again will I drink fermented camel milk).

August: Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and the U.K.

There aren’t many of regions of the world I’ve yet to explore, but the stans had managed to elude me up until this point.

I flew into Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, which jump-started an unexpected passion for all things Soviet-themed. I loved the distinct aesthetic of this city, with its mosaics, murals, and Brutalist architecture; it was so different to anywhere I’ve been! Unexpectedly, I’m now learning Russian and planning further adventures in former Soviet states.

Outside of Bishkek, I was blown away by Kyrgyzstan’s dramatic landscapes. Ala-Archa National Park, in particular, was one of the most spectacular places I’ve been, and I spent a day breathlessly hiking its mountains. Similarly, I loved spending a day at Konorchek Canyons, a Grand Canyon-esque, red-rock wonder.

And then it was on to the next stan — excitingly, Dave was flying in from his solo trip to Vietnam to meet me there!

I wrote a post about how much Kazakhstan impressed me, breaking my chronological publishing schedule because I was so excited to share how much I loved it. I focused most of my time on Almaty and Astana; two very different cities. Almaty was hipster, vibey, and fun, with cosy wine bars and world-class cafes, while Astana was blanketed in eccentric, over-the-top buildings.

I flew into the U.K. for my mum’s birthday, bringing a bag of smoked Kazakh horse with me as a, um, gift. I always enjoy spending special occasions with my family, so I was glad I made the effort to get there and see everyone. We spent our time walking beside the Thames, having picnics in Windsor Great Park, and watching the Olympics.

Dave and I spend a few days in our old home of Bristol each year, catching up with friends, revisiting favourite restaurants, and reconfirming we really do love this city. Once we’d crossed that off our list, we gathered our hiking gear and started preparing for our annual multi-day hike.

For 2024’s Long Walk, we had settled on the Norfolk Coast Path, which runs for 134 km (83 mi) along England’s east coast; between Hunstanton and Hopton-on-Sea. This marked my first ever visit to Norfolk and I thought the region was delightful! Vast, untouched beaches, excellent seafood, wide skies, and salt marshes for miles: what more could you ask for? The route was one of the easiest of the U.K.’s National Trails, so if you’re looking to dip your toes into a multi-day adventure, I’d recommend this one.

At the end of the walk, my family hopped in their car and drove over to meet us; we’d rented a cottage near Cromer to properly celebrate my mum’s birthday. Our days were spent strolling the beaches of Norfolk, eating cockles, and spotting hundreds of wild seals. The big highlight, however, was hiring a boat to explore the Norfolk Broads. We sailed along its waterways for hours. Mooring up at a waterfront pub for lunch was a highlight, for sure, but it was flagging down a ice cream boat for an afternoon treat that really stole the show. What a creative business idea!

September: Kosovo, Albania, North Macedonia, Turkey, and the UAE

It’s always sad to say goodbye to the U.K., but I had more adventures lined up and Albania waits for no man.

For those of you who claim your least favourite thing about this site is that I fall in love with everywhere I visit, I’ve got some exciting news to share.

I didn’t love Albania.

And I really didn’t like Kosovo.

My day trip to Prizren, Kosovo from Tirana, Albania was one of the most challenging I’ve been on. I’m laughing as I write this, in fact, because the entire experience was bizarre. I arrived in the city with an enormous amount of attractions to cross off and almost every single one of them was closed. The Church of St. George? Closed. Sveti Spas? Closed. Church of St. Nicholas? Closed. Serbian Cathedral Mother of God of Ljeviš? Closed. Church of Saint Ðorđe Runović? Closed.

But not only were they closed, they were closed, fenced off, and guarded by stern security guards with an overpowering air of disdain. I only managed to see three attractions from the 20 I had on my list!

(Then my bus ticket back to Tirana listed the wrong address, so I missed my ride and had to wait in the rain for two hours for the next one.)

Kosovo? It wasn’t the best experience!

I did love Tirana, though — and particularly the Blloku neighbourhood — and can see why so many digital nomads choose to base themselves there. We celebrated Dave’s birthday with a fancy meal at high-end restaurant SALT, and learned tons about the interesting, problematic history of Albania. There are so many great museums in this city!

Berat and Gjirokastër were both worth visiting, located up high on their respective hillsides and providing beautiful views of their surrounding countrysides. And we couldn’t visit Albania without taking a prolonged beach-hop from Ksamil to Sarandë to Himarë. Of these, laidback, lesser-visited Himarë was our favourite — but I do prefer the beaches in Greece and Croatia.

So what didn’t I like about Albania? It wasn’t any specific destination, to be honest — a lot of them were lovely — but an amalgamation of a few different things.

• It’s not the cheap destination travel bloggers insist it is and prices have skyrocketed in recent years. You can expect to average around $80-100 a day.
• It’s far from undiscovered. We visited in the shoulder season and it was still packed with tourists and tour groups.
• You can’t pay for anything by card — not even accommodation on Airbnb or Booking — so you’ll have to go to an ATM every day to ensure you have enough cash.
• The food wasn’t amazing and was bland more often than not.
• The locals weren’t super welcoming. Guesthouse owners would give us weird looks; taxi drivers would glare at us. I always felt a bit on-edge — and so did Dave — as though everyone we were talking to would need little excuse to spontaneously attack us. It was weird, and not something I’ve felt anywhere else in the Balkans.
• Public transportation was a nightmare. Every travel day featured some kind of disaster, during which bus stations didn’t exist and timetables were inaccurate. Often, buses won’t enter cities, so you have to stand on the side of a motorway instead, with no shelter or any official marking, trusting whichever local told you this particular grass verge is where the bus stops.

Crossing into North Macedonia brought about one of the most jarring cultural changes I’ve had. We stepped off the bus at Lake Ohrid and were greeted with so much warmth and friendliness that Dave and I were practically declaring it our favourite county in Europe.

Lake Ohrid was just as beautiful as I’d hoped it would be and Skopje was such a cool, modern city — both were easily some of my biggest surprises from the entire year. I can’t wait to return to North Macedonia — it was amazing!

Next up, Istanbul, and it was so good to be back in town: eating vast Turkish breakfasts, cruising the Bosphorus, taking a Turkish coffee class, wandering around the Hagia Sophia and Blue Mosque, shopping at the Grand Bazaar and Spice Bazaar, marvelling at the Basilica Cistern, and exploring Topkapi Palace. Istanbul is definitely more expensive than the first time I visited, but the impressive monuments made it all worth it!

I rounded out the month with one very unexpected destination: Sharjah, in the UAE! When my flight to Delhi was cancelled, the cheapest alternative was to fly via Sharjah, with a 12 hour layover in the city. It was definitely the hottest place I’ve ever been, with sweat dripping off the palms of my hands whenever I stepped outside!

October: India and Pakistan

October saw me making my triumphant return to India; my favourite country in the world! During my first visit to the country, I concentrated on the Golden Triangle and Rajasthan. This time around, I committed to exploring several new states.

I kicked things off in chaotic, charismatic Delhi, which is one of my favourite cities on the planet. Mostly, I was there to update my three-day Delhi itinerary; adding some new activities into the mix and checking my write-up was still accurate.

From Delhi, it was onwards and upwards to Rishikesh. This hippie, happy mountain town is most famous for being home to the ashram where the Beatles wrote the White Album; I had so much fun exploring its ruins! These days, Rishikesh is full of meditation retreats, yoga studios, and vegan eateries. It’s a spectacular place, and one of the few Indian destinations I could base myself in without losing my mind!

One of my Indian travel highlights was taking the the Kalka-Shimla Toy Train through the foothills of the Himalayas. First built in the 1890s by British colonists, this UNESCO World Heritage Site is particularly impressive when you set eyes on the dramatic terrain it had to be built through: over 850 bridges, 100 tunnels, and 900 curves! As you might imagine, the mountainous scenery was dizzying in all the best ways.

I couldn’t head to the state of Himachal Pradesh without spending a stint in Dharamshala and McLeod Ganj, where the Dalai Lama lives. What a peaceful, colourful, and calming corner of India! At times, I was convinced I was strolling through Tibet, with monks and momos on every prayer flag-filled street corner.

We certainly worked our way through the religions in India, because we finished in Amritsar, Punjab. This lively city is most famous for being home to the Golden Temple, known as the world’s largest kitchen. It’s here where hundreds of Sikhs feed 100,000 people every single day — regardless of caste, race, or religion — for free.

The numbers are staggering: 12,000 kg of flour, 1,500 kg of rice, 13,000 kg of lentils, and 2,000 kg of vegetables. Two hundred thousands rotis. That’s how much food the Golden Temple kitchen gets through in a single day. In an average day. Every day. Isn’t that unbelievable? The food was delicious, too!

We rounded off our time in India with a fun-filled evening at the Wagah border to watch the infamous India-Pakistan border closing ceremony. It was just as wild as I anticipated, with 25,000 people inside the stadium, cheering for whichever country they were inside. There was marching, stomping, kicking, cheering, singing, dancing, and flag-waving — and it was everything I dreamed of.

The following day, I was walking across that same border to enter Pakistan.

I can’t lie; I was nervous about travelling to Pakistan. There are plenty of safety concerns for travellers in this country. Still, with Lahore located just 50 kilometres (31 miles) from Amritsar, how could I not pop in for a quick look around?

Within minutes of arriving, Dave and I been invited into a local’s home for dinner, been escorted by a friendly guy to the nearest ATM, and been offered a chair to sit down on while we waited for said ATM! A family approached us and spent half an hour offering us travel advice for our time in the country. Pakistani hospitality is on a whole other level, and yes: I did feel safe there!

Lahore has so many world-class landmarks to explore. Badshahi Mosque and Lahore Fort are the two main attractions — and for good reason — but I was equally as impressed by the Wazir Khan Mosque, Lahore Museum, Shalimar Gardens, and Jehangir’s Tomb.

The only downside was how wildly polluted the city is! While we were there, the Air Quality Index was an eye-watering 500. (In comparison, Delhi was 350, Dhaka was 250, and Kathmandu was 110.) Yes, Lahore was the most polluted city in the world at that time, and my tight chest and burning eyes added a degree of difficulty to the trip.

November: Australia

Surprisingly, November was one of my busiest months of 2024! I was running flat-out for the duration of the month!

One of my rules these days is that I don’t write any blog posts while I’m travelling. I’m fortunate to be in the position that I can take three months off from publishing articles, but I do want to stress that travel is absolutely work, too!

I spent almost every day of my three-month trip out and about for 12 hours, regularly racking up 30,000+ steps, taking thousands of photos and pages of notes. These are unequivocally research days, and they’re awfully exhausting when you do them for 100 days straight!

Returning home, however, provides little time to recover, because I’m immediately hitting play on a home life that’s been all but abandoned.

There’s all the work stuff: reimbursing myself for business expenses, doing my yearly tax returns, categorising 20,000 new travel photos, working out which articles to publish from my trip, replying to hundreds of emails and comments, updating outdated articles with my new research, and analysing any traffic drops or gains while I’ve been away.

Life stuff includes catching up with friends and family who I haven’t seen for three months, setting up our vegetable garden for the season, finding a home for all of my souvenirs, buying Christmas presents for everybody in my life, and getting back into a workout routine. I’ve built myself a lovely little friend group in Melbourne and I found that November was almost too sociable: I was heading out to see people three or four times a week!

With a Christmas trip looming on the horizon, I also had to start researching and planning for that adventure, which brings me to December.

December: Singapore and the U.K.

Back to Singapore! And back to England.

I had been surprised by how much I’d adored my short layover in Singapore over the summer, and honestly? I wanted to go back for more! There was still so much of the country I wanted to see.

It turns out Singapore is an absolutely magical place to spend Christmas, filled to the brim with trees and lights and decorations — and so many Christmas songs that I was losing my mind. I wouldn’t be surprised if I found myself swinging through Singapore in 2025, either, as I’ve discovered I always have so much fun while I’m there.

My self-imposed stipulation upon moving to Australia was that I’d fly to England every year for Christmas. I find Australian Christmases so disconcerting, what with all that sunshine and sand and shrimps-on-the-barbie, that it leaves me homesick and sad. I held up both ends of my bargain once more this year, and touched down in London for a couple of weeks of festive fun.

It was the perfect way to round out an excellent year: good food and good company, Christmas lights and Christmas walks, afternoon tea and Wicked, and so many presents that I’ll have to check a bag back to Australia!

And That Was My Year! …Was it What I Expected?

You won’t be surprised to learn that several days after publishing this post, I’ll be setting off to my first new country of 2025: Tunisia! I’d say that I’m especially excited to visit this country, but I feel that way about most new countries I visit.

In my last yearly round-up, I shared a few goals and predictions for 2024:

…Renting a barge to cruise around Wales, walking the width of Crete, admiring the architecture in Uzbekistan, finally seeing the pyramids in Egypt, and hiking my way around Georgia.

There’ll be plenty of opportunity to travel around Australia, too, and I’d like to visit my remaining states and territories in the country: South Australia, the Northern Territory, and the ACT — and finally get to Uluru.

I’m starting my slow return back to social media, too, where I’ll be sharing my adventures, life, and travels in the way that I used to. And here, I’ll be slowly polishing and re-publishing the articles I’ve been writing then burying in the site archives while I was away. Stay tuned for that: I think I have about 200 pieces I have yet to publicly share at this point!

Travel-wise, I tackled similar-but-not-exactly-the-same adventures: hired a boat in England instead of a barge in Wales, walked the Norfolk Coast Path instead of hiking across Crete, and explored Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan instead of Uzbekistan.

I failed at exploring Australia this year. This country is expensive for travellers and it was hard to justify any domestic adventures. When a week-long trip to Adelaide looks like it’s going to come to $1,500, I was always a bit like: well… do I really care that much about seeing Adelaide?

(Clearly the answer was no.)

On the work front, I got a bit too in my head with social media. Despite sharing more than in previous years, it often felt overwhelming.

After such a long absence, and at a time when blogging is seen as kind of outdated, I felt pressure to make every post valuable.

I couldn’t just publish a photo of where I was; I had to write up a funny anecdote, or offer observations about the country, or start a discussion about an aspect of travel, or tie my travel experiences into a valuable life lesson or travel hack. Crafting a single Facebook post could take an hour, and after 12 hours of exploring a new city, it was easier to put it off.

Before I knew it, two weeks had passed, I’d shared nothing, and I was buried beneath thousands of photos, trying to find the perfect one. Every night, I’d resolve to share something the following day, then end up just as exhausted.

I also felt conflicted about sharing new or updated articles from my archives. As I published or updated guides on how to spend four days in Hong Kong or how to visit the Cook Islands on a budget or what to pack for a trip to Singapore, I couldn’t help but feel like they weren’t relevant for 95% of my regular readers, so I just didn’t share them.

I also didn’t write as many new articles as I’d hoped. Despite having some incredible travel experiences in 2024 (and 2023!), most of my time was spent deep in my archives, editing old posts.

If I’m being honest, running this website as one person is no longer feasible.

I have 500 articles on my site right now and almost all of them need to be updated at least once a year. (Things change, right? Hotels and restaurants deteriorate or close down. Prices increase. Attractions change. Safety issues arise.)

Usually, it takes a day or two to fully update a guide.

You can do the maths: if it takes me two days to edit an article, that’s around 180 guides that I can update each year. With three months of travel, however, and me taking weekends off, in reality I can update 85 articles a year.

Which means it would take six years to update every blog post in my archives.

And that’s without me publishing a single new article over that time!

And did I mention that I’m running a second site in addition to this one?

It’s overwhelming, actually. Every day, I sit at my desk and have no idea what to work on: should I be updating an outdated guide, and if so, which one? I’ve got hundreds that urgently need a rewrite! Should be writing something new, and if so, about where? Because I should really prioritise destinations that will make back the money I spend on my travels.

I know the solution is to hire a team, but with the threat of AI potentially rendering this site obsolete in a year or two, it’s hard to justify the expense.

My Goals for 2025

Let’s start with the exciting travel stuff! I have lots of ideas brewing for 2025.

It’s been ten years since Dave first hiked the Camino de Santiago and his one big goal of this year is to mark the event by doing something just as challenging. This time around, I’m going to be joining him! Our three front-runners are the Camino Norte, in Spain; the Lycian Way, in Turkey; and the Bibbulmun Track, in Australia.

I’d like to head to a new South Pacific island, as it’s been years since I’ve visited my favourite region. Samoa, maybe? Kiribati? Vanuatu? There’s so many options to choose from! I’m planning to hit up Timor Leste, too, as that’s my last remaining country in Southeast Asia.

Speaking of remaining countries, I’d like to get to my final three European countries in 2025: Malta, Moldova, and Belarus.

I do still want to see more of Australia! My goal is to try something new in Melbourne weekly, visit a new spot in Victoria monthly, and explore a new state quarterly. It’s definitely ambitious, and it’ll definitely be expensive, but should serve as motivation for me to see more of my new home.

My work goals are much the same as last year’s. I want to focus more on social media, regularly sharing my travels and personal updates with you guys. Building a habit of daily updates while concentrating on progress over perfection will definitely be key.

Speaking of personal updates, do you remember my monthly summaries? For the first 10 years of my travels, I used to publish monthly missives detailing everything I’d been up to, along with my biggest highlights, lowlights, and mishaps. I’ve missed writing them! I’m going to be starting them up again this year, but sharing them via my email newsletter rather than on this site — you can sign up to receive them via Substack; you may already be subscribed if you’ve signed up in the past.

Lastly, I’m planning on prioritising new content over updating old articles this year. I’ve been having so many amazing travel experiences and I want to write about them all; it’s been so boring editing the same old articles over and over and over!

And that’s about it! It’s been a wonderful 2024 and I hope it’s been equally as enjoyable for you. Let’s try to make 2025 even better!

What trips do you have planned for the upcoming year?

The post 2024: My Travels in Review appeared first on Never Ending Footsteps.