Shouldering my new Wolfskin rucksack and clambering into a rickety lift for the last time we made our way to the Tung Chung Line.

Enigmatically humping my way through the turnstiles and being lightly nudged in the back as I boarded one of the various escalators, we arrived just as our tram pulled in and whisked us off to the airport.

The thirty minute journey took us past the Hong Kong Disneyland where copious amounts of bouncing children and dishevelled looking parents departed in their droves.

After that the only remaining people on the train were an elderly couple and a man asleep in a giant Mickey Mouse costume - in pretty sure someone should have given him a friendly nudge at the last stop.

At the airport we immediately indulged in an over-priced McDonalds and groaned with pleasure as we devoured our fries before joining a ridiculously long queue for our Aeroflot flight.

With a seductive nod to the air hostess, I put my rucksack in the overhead compartment and settled into my musty, second hand novel.

After what seemed like an age and with a very numb bum, I wandered into Moscow's airport, Sheremetyevo, and was greeted by the most unsmiling, unfriendly staff in existence. It was actually almost comical how stereotypically miserable our Russian hosts were.

After chipping together our remaining shrapnel, myself and Chels invested in a teeny bottle of water and hoped to fall asleep quickly on the last leg of our journey towards our historical Britain! I must admit, I'm looking forward to seeing some queuing, an ice slice and decorative crockery again.

Disembarking on a disappointingly drizzly Heathrow runway we waited for our bags feeling quite elated - you don't realise how much you've missed something until you get it back sometimes.

As Chelsea cantered towards my parents ahead of me, I tried to retain my well-travelled and unfazed-by-anything walk but lost all of my hard earned street credit when I hugged them both with a little too tightly.

The car journey home was quite surreal; it was as though we were returning from an afternoon's outing to the cinema rather than a few months abroad.

Bouncing experiences around with Chelsea as we tried to encapsulate the highs and lows of our journey was harder then I would have expected: the chaos and beauty of India; the snow capped wonders of New Zealand; the scorching heat and splashing shores of Australia; the friendly hugs and pristine, fish-filled waters of Fiji; the boats and rain of the Philippines; the cramped buses and rich culture of Vietnam; to the crowded bustle and industry of Hong Kong were all quite hard to string into an articulate sentence.

On reflection, the journey was a test in many ways; testing our resourcefulness, friendship and determination; but most of all it was a pleasure. I will look back fondly on the lovely people I have met, laugh at the tragedies that befell us and be humbled by the generosity and complexities of other people's lives.

Until our next adventure...