We are a couple who has been together for over seven years and married for two and a half. We both study medicine in the University of Helsinki, the capital of Finland. Our original plan was to stick to our studies for the entire six years and to become doctors as fast as possible like the rest of our piers. However, when we got the chance to visit some of Sini's relatives in Malaysia in the summer of 2013, we took it with dire consequences. On the tropical island paradise of Tioman off the east coast of the peninsula, laying in hammocks, we started to wonder: wouldn't this be something?

It took a couple more months before we mustered our courage and finally started arranging the trip of a lifetime that we had been hatching in our heads. We booked a meeting at Kilroy's and all of a sudden we were buying our first flights. After that we've been busy planning, packing and gathering information on the various places we're about to visit. Not a singular item in our packs has been too small to deserve thorough thought about its value on the trip (although that doesn't mean that we are ditching everything that is not absolutely necessary, we are still taking a lot of crap… we just love to plan things!).

We've been together for a while and traveled some as a couple also. Most of the trips have been short, one to two weeks, to places like Praque, Paris, Rome, the Canary Islands and the before mentioned trip to Malaysia and Singapore. We've also taken a couple of longer trips to Spain where we've walked the Camino to Santiago de Compostela for two months and 1250 kilometers. We've visited the ends of the world in Norway's Nordkapp and in Spain's Finisterre (where the name of this blog so elegantly derives from ;) ). Only time will tell which other geographical oddities we'll stumble on accidentally in the future (we're really not that hell-bent on them…).

Sadly, or maybe not, we are not quite spontaneous enough to just take the first flights out, so we have planned a certain structure for our trip. We're starting in Nepal, where we've both dreamed to see the Himalayas, then continuing on to India, where we'll take the train from New Delhi to Calcutta. Next to Thailand and possibly Cambodia, taking in the beaches and the temples, then some more beaches in Indonesia's Bali, Lombok and Flores. After that we're off to Brisbane and Sydney to see the kangaroos, then the sheep and hobbits of New Zealand through the windshield of a campervan. From there we take the exhausting flight to Rio de Janeiro, missing the carnaval by a couple of months but eventually seeing the Iguazu falls at the border of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay. Through Paraguay we'll continue on to Peru and finally to the United States, where an RV will take us around the Rocky Mountains on a month long road trip. On the last leg of the journey we'll visit New York City and fly home through Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland.

Why these destinations? We're not quite sure. Are we going to stick to this plan for the entire trip? Mostly yes, because we've already booked the flights. However, staying in Thailand, Indonesia and the USA for about a month each, we'll have some time to awaken the spontaneous travelers within us. To get around as easily as possible we're taking backpacks and trying to keep them as light as possible (so far somewhat failing, but oh well…). What we're taking with us is a topic for another post though. As for now, we need to focus on getting the budget thing right during the couple months we still have at home. We're currently working in a hospital in South Carelia, anxiously counting days to the start of our journey.

- Sini and Tuomas