I fell for my rescuer in Bhutan
Years ago, I met some very nice Bhutanese people who were working in New York. We became friends, and they always urged me to visit their country.
And so in August 1994, I found myself limping along on a mountain road in Bhutan, trying not to panic. I'd left my very agreeable guide and driver at the hotel and set off on a half-day hiking adventure through Punakha, a heavenly valley filled with poinsettia trees and orange trees and temples in the clouds. There wasn't a soul around, and I'd recklessly slipped off my boots and waded into the sparkling river that ran parallel to the road on which I'd been walking. It was fantastic until I slipped in the icy water and twisted my ankle. I climbed back up to the road and, struggling, put my boots back on.
Eventually a man on a motorcycle came along. I flagged him down, and he gave me a ride back to my hotel. After depositing me there and refusing tea or monetary reward, he took off.
I rested for a day or two, my enthusiasm for the place not the least bit dampened, then carried on with my tour of this country of impossible beauty and charm. Like everyone who visits this kingdom in the clouds, I fell in love with Bhutan. It was a love like I had never experienced before, bordering on obsession. I visited the country two more times for even lengthier stays in as many years, and in 1997, I came to teach English to students and artisans of the National Art School just outside Thimphu, Bhutan's capital. I felt I had found the centre of the universe.
I was over 40 and had never married, eschewing that institution for a life of travel and adventure. So everyone was surprised, myself included, when, in 2000, the auspicious year of the dragon, I married one of my co-workers. He was a handsome, shy painter of Buddhist scrolled art or thangkas. He was the nicest person I'd ever met.
Namgay and I moved to a little house beside yet another gorgeous river that wound its way through the magical mountains outside Thimphu. And one day, two years into the marriage, as we sat in the garden chatting and drinking tea, he asked me if I remembered the time I hurt my ankle in Punakha. Dear reader, this was eight years after the event. "How do you know I hurt my ankle?" "Because I gave you a lift," he said, matter-of-factly. We'd known each other for four years. He'd never mentioned it until then. I was stunned. I whooped and laughed like a crazy person. Why had he never mentioned it? I ask him this all the time. Well, sometimes he says he forgot. Then sometimes he says he thought I knew; that we were in silent collusion.
Now we've been married 12 years, and living in Thimphu, and another dragon year has rolled around. It hasn't always been easy, this intercultural marriage of ours, but it has always been interesting. The truth is Bhutan is a tiny country of fewer than 750,000 people. I was probably one of a handful of visitors in August of 1994. In other words, as a lone American woman walking on a rural road, I would have stuck out. So it's not as incredible as it might seem. For me the truly amazing thing is my husband's quiet equanimity. It's still the reason I adore him. And it's still the thing that makes me swoon.
Linda Leaming
Linda's book, Married to Bhutan (Hay House, £8.99, tinyurl.com/leamingbhutan), is out now
We are hard-core travellers and met on the road
Our eyes met across a crowded room in a hostel … the story of how I met Dorothee is ridiculously corny but also the result of an amazing twist of fate. After riding a 50cc scooter across Europe and the Sahara, I decided to travel to Alaska with the aim of buying another scooter and riding down to the southern tip of Argentina. At almost exactly the same minute as I checked in for my flight in London, my wife-to-be checked in for her flight in Montreal, setting off on the same journey – Alaska to Argentina.
The man in the scooter shop in Anchorage advised me to move to a different hostel to the one I was staying in. I'm glad I did because that was where I met my wonderful wife. She was also travelling to the tip of Argentina, but on a bicycle! I had truly met my match and greatly respected her because she'd already cycled across Canada, leaving a very good job behind.
Dorothee set off before me and then I blew my engine so I didn't catch her up till the deserts of Baja, Mexico. It is true that I chased her a bit as I think men should do. It took me a week to fall for her and her for me. We then travelled together for a year. Dorothee would set off first, I'd catch up with her along the way, then ride ahead to set up a camping spot and wait for her to arrive in the evening. This was our story and it was the most fantastic period of my life. It was the perfect mix of travel, love and an amazing feeling of freedom. We completed the trip, and after returning home to Cumbria I missed Dorothee terribly and realised I had no choice but to leave everything and move to Montreal to marry the love of my life.
Three years of saving and a two‑year-old (Oceanne) later, in 2009 we decided to go on a good old-fashioned family bike ride – from Edinburgh to China along the Silk Road. We survived a bitter European winter and, after 14 months on the road, made it back to the UK in time for Christmas 2010.
Our journey entailed crossing 14 countries, and accounted for 35 flat tyres. It was the hardest yet most rewarding thing I have ever done. The biking was the easiest part of this trip – it was the one part of the day when I was comparatively alone to reflect. Among the many highlights of the journey was the incredible generosity of people we met on the way who fed us and offered their houses for the night. My all-time favourite country is Turkey, for its food and atmosphere, and we experienced amazing generosity in Iran where the cycling was incredible. My favourite people have to be the Uzbeks, especially in the Fergana valley region, which is supposedly a hotbed for terrorist activity – what rubbish. The most beautiful landscape was without a doubt Huashan mountain in China.
The hardest part of the trip was the hours of packing and unpacking because it gets so boring, and with a child it takes so long – especially when we were camping, which was half the time. When we were knackered at the end of the day and Oceanne just wanted to play, it was pretty tough. However she is such a wonderful girl and was really relatively easy to travel with. She had a lot to contend with – her environment was constantly changing, and a million and one people wanted to take her picture. In China there would sometimes be 50 people at once. She took it all in her little stride and it was probably because of Oceanne that we met so many people.
Travelling as a family was very rewarding. Because of our stubbornness and determination we realised it's possible to follow your dreams of adventure and take your kids along for the ride.
People think we must have limitless cash lying around but it's not so. There's no secret – we just saved. We ended up spending double what we'd saved, but I'd do it again in a second. We are very proud of our journeying and really hope it acts as an inspiration for others to travel with their little ones. There's no mystique to it – I can't understand why so many people just dream when they could be doing.
Rupert Wilson-Young (as told to Julian Howson)
We eloped to Scandinavia
I've never dreamed of a big white wedding. I wouldn't know how to deliberate over floral arrangements or seating plans. And I don't see the point of spending a year's salary on a single day. Luckily for me, when it came to tying the knot, my fiance, Stuart, felt exactly the same way.
Last September we flew off on a budget airline – with our two‑year‑old, Phoebe, in tow – to Copenhagen to get married. We didn't invite any friends or family. We rented a flat that we found on the internet for the weekend – in Vesterbro, an arty area full of independent bars and shops. The owner kindly left us a bottle of fizz in the fridge when she found out what we'd come to do.
When the not-so-big day dawned, the weather was freakishly good. We ditched our coats, picked up some takeaway coffees and sauntered towards town.
Coincidentally, the local community was protesting against the city council's plan to fell a 114-year-old tree to make way for a new metro station. In relaxed Nordic fashion, their demo resembled a makeshift festival. Families sat in the grass around the tree, eating sausage sandwiches from a barbecue and listening to reggae pumping out of a sound system. There was even a vintage clothing sale. We found ourselves being serenaded by a children's steel band. They walked behind us playing the Stevie Wonder song "As" – one of my favourite tunes – for several blocks.
At the mock-gothic town hall, we were ushered into a foyer with two other wedding parties to wait for our turn. One of the other couples took some snaps of us – they were clad in jeans and made us feel overdone in our cocktail dress and suit combo.
The ceremony itself lasted 20 minutes (it cost around £55 and the paperwork had been easy to arrange beforehand by post). It was performed by smiling officials in medieval-style robes. Our toddler, entirely unaware of proceedings, played with keys that one of them thoughtfully handed to her. We both cried.
Afterwards, we had lunch in the brasserie of the rather kitsch Nimb hotel (nimb.dk), which resembles a Disney-style Moorish palace. It was so warm we sat outside on the terrace overlooking Tivoli Gardens. The waiters, who thankfully didn't notice our daughter drawing on their white table, poured us complimentary champagne and took more photos.
The whole day was magical, utterly romantic … and really, really laid-back. I wouldn't have had it any other way.
Melissa McClements
We pursued each other around the world
Sometimes you find The One in the most peculiar places. I met Chris at a turtle conservation project in Costa Rica in 2007. I would lie on my belly in the black sand, exhuming rotten eggs from an old nest, while he tallied results. It was hard and dirty work, though one day we found a baby turtle alive in the sand, like a piece of buried treasure. Together we released it on the beach and watched it splash to freedom.
We volunteered for two weeks, but were just friends. We saw each other briefly in Brighton months later, but it wasn't until 2009, when I was returning to Europe from Australia, that we clicked.
With a free week before my tour of Europe started, I sent him a quick email: "I know this is a silly question … but is there any chance you want to take a week off work, fly to Italy and meet me?" His response was immediate. "That is a silly question. Of course I'll meet you – and if it's in Italy, even better!"
We met at our hotel in Rome, and after an awkward start checking in ("Would you like the room made up as a double or two singles?"), we fell for the city and each other. As we wandered through the labyrinth of backstreets in Capri days later, he whispered that he loved me.
I started my tour and he flew home to his native Holland, but he wasn't done wooing me around the world. Two weeks later in Istanbul, I spied him trying to look inconspicuous near the Blue Mosque. He'd flown to Turkey to surprise me. Instead I surprised him. Abandoning my bus, I doubled back behind him and tapped him on the shoulder to applause from the bus.
After two days in the Netherlands, three weeks together in Sydney and a relationship that bloomed across four continents, I moved to Holland to be with him, just five months after we'd met up in Rome. We haven't looked back.
Shaney Hudson
