The way I see it, I owe you the following posts: a reflection on the past year (i.e. this post), an overview of what has changed in my backpack, a look forward to Phase III, a post about arriving in Georgia (covering the first month or so), and a post about people visiting me in Georgia (covering this past month). Expect them in the coming weeks.
Start: September 14, 2018, by flying to Los Angeles.
End: July 20, 2019, when I flew (overnight) from Denpasar (Bali), Indonesia to Tbilisi, Georgia.
As a reminder, Phase II was meant to be more freeform than Phase I, which rigidly followed train and boat schedules. In this spirit, I’m beginning Phase II in Los Angeles and ending it in Bali - both places I didn’t expect to visit.
My budget as set in my earlier post was $15,000 for the whole thing. I’ve been avoiding doing the exact math (and may continue to avoid it), but I’m somewhere around $3,000 over budget for the whole thing. Part of this is due to making plans in June / July instead of starting the new phase when my money ran out, but a bigger part is not being as thrifty as I could be.
