It has been a wonderful time traveling with Nora to 10 countries and to over 35 towns and cities during the past one year. We had no idea how it would be to travel with a four month old baby. We had many questions before we started traveling regarding food, health, safety, and many other topics. As parents, we had to make a few decisions very early on regarding what our role would be as parents in Nora's life, especially while being on the road and moving around very often.
One thing that helped us in our journey as parents so far was the fact that both of us experienced life living in different cultures before Nora was born. Sam grew up in India, spent over a decade in the U.S, and lived in Austria for 18 months. Kathi grew up in Austria and spent considerable amount of time in Kenya and also lived in Switzerland and Serbia. This gave us both exposure and insights into other styles of parenting and opening us to the fact that there is no one right way to approach the needs of babies.
We tried to understand our role as parents even before Nora was born. As both of us were first time parents, we wanted to get inputs from people around us regarding what things might be important for us to keep in mind to be able to take care of a baby in early months/years of its life. We received a lot of advice. But we quickly realised that most of the advice was based on the idea of trying to fit into what the majority of the people around them were already doing in that culture and often based out of fear of something going wrong. Even though it was not how we wanted to approach parenting, we appreciated the information we received and also realised that every parent had their own unique way of approaching parenting.
As we are fully responsible for the safety of another life and its well being, at least in the early years of its life, we also wanted to understand our role as parents from a spiritual perspective. As we started following very closely the development of the foetus inside the womb and also the complexity of development each day the baby was going through, it made us realise very quickly of the fact that how little influence we had on the miraculous and unimaginably complex development of a foetus. We felt that we are nature's helpers in its longing to bring a new life into this world. It felt like a beautiful responsibility and we wanted to align ourselves with nature's ways and make ourselves humble to witness the miracle of a new life coming into this world through us.
We decided to approach both the pregnancy and care of our baby during early years from an idea that - both nature and the baby know how a baby's biological life is going to evolve, and all we have to do as parents is to understand and align with nature's ways as much as possible and most importantly not get in the way of its development or impose our ideas and dreams on it. This approach gave us a lot of joy during pregnancy and it continues to give us immense joy now as we witness Nora's growth into a healthy and beautiful life each day.
Once we decided to travel with Nora when she was four months old, we wanted to learn from other parents who also traveled longterm with their babies. As no one around us backpacked with a baby in the past, we researched on the internet and we didn't find much information there either. So we just trusted our guts and went along with what felt right for us. We do not follow or intend to follow any parenting styles or baby development goals/targets that are floating around as books, articles, and advices. We just trusted our guts, the knowledge we already had, and the knowledge we are gaining everyday watching the children and parents around the world. And most importantly listening to the physical and emotional needs of Nora every moment of every day.
We are sharing our backpacking experience with Nora from the past one year with the hope that in case someone plans on backpacking with an infant, some of this information might come handy for you.
Here is how we approached each of the following topics:
Baby gear
Soothers
Travel
Food
Health
Vaccinations
Clothes and footwear
Diapers and potty training
Bathing
Toys and entertainment
Social interactions
Baby gear - Baby Carrier, Stroller, and Car Seat. We combined all three into one baby carrier that we wore around our shoulders and had Nora on our chests facing us. It had a wrap to protect the head from sun and wind and also create some shade to help her with sleeping. We avoid riding cars in countries where car seat is mandatory. We can't imagine having a stroller or a car seat and backpacking with them. We were pleasantly surprised that we got used to Nora's weight on our shoulders as our bodies adapted to the weight changes comfortably. We are still using the carrier everyday and it is very convenient to travel and put Nora to sleep.
Soothers - We have seen parents use a pacifier to soothe their babies when the babies are uncomfortable. We decided against having a soother as we felt that we wanted to address the root of the discomfort rather than create comfort by simulating a nipple in her mouth. It was a bit challenging in the beginning to know how to soothe Nora when she was uncomfortable, but it also forced us to be more open to understanding her needs rather than simply using a pacifier. Being open and patient helped us to sense her needs and it became pretty smooth for us to understand the reasons behind her discomfort better and address them quickly at least most of the time. After a year on the road, we are still happy with our decision.
Travel - We traveled by plane, bus, car, train, boat, scooter, Tuk-Tuks and other funny modes of transportation that came our way during the past one year. Traveling with Nora on all these modes of transportation was pretty straight forward, except by flight where there was a little discomfort, especially when she was very small. Some international flights within Europe expected us to put on an additional seat belt on Nora and have her face away from us during take off and landing. It was not necessarily the seat belt itself but being constrained around the waist that was a bit uncomfortable for her. Luckily this happened only twice and all other times she enjoyed the rides or just slept on us. One worry we had while we were flying was about the possible pain in her ear due to the changes in cabin pressure. Luckily we did not have that issue on our flights so far. Either Nora is not affected by the changes or the pressure changes were too small to cause any pain. As we flew out of Europe, there was no seat belt requirement and it made traveling by flight pretty easy. Later on when it was mandatory again, Nora was big enough to understand what was going on and was not bothered by it. We also traveled by bus but we avoided journeys that are more than a few hours long. As Nora started to walk, it was not comfortable for her to be stuck on a bus seat for too long. If there was an option available, we traveled by train as there was place to walk around and use the toilets for diaper changes and other things. If a train was not available on that route, we broke the journey into to a few parts so we didn't have to travel more than a few hours on each leg. So far, it's working out very well.
The best rides we had so far irrespective of the mode were the ones where fellow passengers interacted and played with Nora. The rides went by fast and Nora had a lot of fun.
Sam and Nora enjoying the views during a bus ride in Vietnam
Nora playing with a fellow passenger on a train in Cambodia
Food - Breast milk was the primary source of food for Nora during her early months. Kathi didn't have issues with breastfeeding in public and we carried a small cloth to cover the breasts in case the place was too crowded. We introduced solid foods when Nora was four months old as she started showing interest and reaching out for our food. We carried a handy food processor with us that made it easy to blend solid foods and make them soft. It was really nice to be able to feed her everything that we were eating from early on. As we traveled to different countries, Nora was able to eat everything that we ate and she was able to eat more solids as the months passed by. Luckily, she has no food preferences and she has no likes or dislikes, at least as of now. As both of us also approach food the same way, we feel joy to see her being open to all food items and cuisines. So far, there is no food item that she hasn't eaten that we offered to her. She might not eat something on a given day, but eats it again at a later time. The only thing that we try and avoid feeding her is foods with processed/refined sugar in them. We decided to hold off on introducing refined sugar for the first few years as there is mounting evidence of health effects that processed sugars might have on a baby's quality of life in the long run. She is meeting all her sugar needs from fruits and other natural sources of sugar. However, the food we eat at street stalls and also at restaurants has some refined sugar in them. During our travels, almost every country we have been to, people offered sugary cookies, chocolates, ice creams, toffees, or other sugary items to Nora frequently. In many countries, we had to use google translate on our phone to politely say no and explain to them about our sugar choice. Both of us have a sweet tooth. Having decided to avoid processed sugar from Nora's diet, forced us to also reduce our own processed sugar intake. It was a bit hard to control our cravings in the beginning, but now we feel pretty fine with not having sugary snacks regularly. Occasionally we sneak in opportunities and try local sweets in the countries where we are staying, especially during Nora's nap time.
We did not buy any baby spoons, drinking glasses, cups, or other baby specific utensils. It was easy to simply use the spoon and water bottles we carried with us to feed Nora as well, and she quickly got used to them and uses them comfortably :)
Nora and Kathi enjoying a soup in Vietnam
Health - Health is a major worry many friends and family members had for Nora when we started traveling. We also consider this as a major need for our and Nora's safety during our travels. Whichever country and city we stay, we keep track of the location of the local hospitals in case of an emergency. We feel that her body needs the exposure to bacteria and germs to be able to develop her own immunity. Luckily, there has been no incident so far where we had to worry about Nora's health. She has not really been sick except a few incidents of fever during her teething that only lasted a day or two. We allowed Nora to play in soil, sand, dirt, touch and lick freely anything and everything that she wanted, except three things. We tried to limit her access to - anything that looked like poop, anything that has been wet for a long time (like sewage), and used cigarette butts. We are happy that she has been a very healthy child so far, and we didn't have to visit a hospital or a doctor due to a sickness. But this is a topic that we constantly keep an eye on and always look for ways to avoid possible health issues.
Vaccinations - This is a topic that is very controversial and people are willing to go to any lengths to argue that their point of view is correct. So we decided to not share our vaccination plans with anyone. This was also one of the big worries of family and friends regarding the diseases that could be prevented by vaccinations across various countries and how we are going to prevent Nora from getting infected from all those diseases. Also, as each part of the world has different viruses and bacteria, there are specific vaccinations for each country we planned to travel to. We tried to do research on this topic, but unfortunately there are primarily two camps of people around the world, one for vaccinations and the other against them. One group suggests that we should have Nora take each and every vaccinations that is ever offered and the other group argues that the child needs none of them. This is one of rarest of rare topics in our society, where one group thinks that other groups' decisions has direct impact on the lives of their children and passionately argue that the other group should listen to them and vice versa. As this topic is so controversial, we decided to keep our vaccination choices private. We are happy with the choices we made for Nora's health and we think every parent should make a decision based on what makes them feel safe for their family.
Clothes and footwear - We did not buy a lot of new clothes or footwear for Nora as she couldn't wear them for more than a few months before growing out of them. We bought second hand clothes or made them ourselves as much as possible. Before we started traveling, we got a few free clothes from a store in Innsbruck (Kostnix Innsbruck) and Kathi made a few pieces herself. As we traveled through Europe and Asia, we found second hand stores in most of the countries where we could buy everything Nora needed at that time for a fraction of what the new ones would cost. We plan on continuing on this path and buying only the things we couldn't find in stores or make them ourselves. We did not have foot wear for Nora until she was more than a year old, as she was happy crawling and walking bare foot everywhere. Also the first set of shoes we got for her were second hand for the price of a small snack. We also try and carry maximum of three sets of clothes for Nora as we try and do for ourselves. We have a few tops, a few short and long pants, a sweater, and a few socks. We realised the choice of clothes and style for kids is more of a wish of parents/care takersbut the kids (at that age) are happy to wear anything or nothing :)
Nora walking along a trail towards a monastery near Da Lat in Vietnam
Diapers and potty training - We use only reusable cotton diapers like our grandmas used to use and we continued this during our travels as well. One reason was to avoid the landfill waste it would produce (with some estimates of using up to 5500 diapers per year which take around 500 years to disintegrate in landfill) and the costs which could add up to about $750 per year. So cotton reusable diapers made a lot of sense given we had the time to wash them by hand everyday which takes no more than 15 minutes. One worry we had was whether we would have the sun and heat for the diapers to dry on-time before our stock runs out. So far we have not used a single disposable diaper and we did not run out of our cotton diapers irrespective of how crazy the weather was in the countries we visited. In cold countries, we had heaters and in warm countries we had fans, warm days, and a lot of sunlight. We carry two long ropes that we tie either in our rooms or outside to get sun and air. We always carry detergent/bar/soap with us and we mostly wash diapers with hand. The diapers we are using are made of cotton gauze material that dry up in just a few minutes on a sunny day.
Sam grew up in India and babies there are potty trained from a very early age. We think the concept of potty training is a bit different in India and in Europe especially because of the way the homes are setup and the weather conditions. In India, especially in the south, where it is hot almost all year around, babies run around naked. The floors of the homes are made of stone (granite, marble, or others) and babies get to interact with their pee and poo very early and get to learn fast that they need to control their bladder and ask for help to go to the toilet or have a dedicated place where they can go to pee and poo. This starts at a very early age when they are few months old. In Europe, most of the babies are not potty trained until they are few years old especially as the furniture, homes, and weather are not suitable for babies to be naked most of the time to get trained early. As we are traveling and using other people's homes through Airbnb, we could not fully use the methods that Sam knew from India. However, we brought a mobile potty and started training Nora since she was four months old. It is light weight and easily fits into our backpacks. To our surprise, she got used to pooping only in the potty almost immediately. We sat her on the potty when we saw her facial expressions changing to something that we distinctly identified as being her urge for potty. We asked her to hold off and sat her on the potty and she proceeded. We are still not sure if we were just lucky early on or all babies learn to hold off their urge to poop very early if they were given the opportunity. This made washing diapers very easy for us as they only needed to be rinsed off of the pee, washed, and dried wherever we were.
Drying diapers on a rope tied between the bathroom door and clothes hanger in Murcia, Spain
Kathi washing diapers during sunset at a farm we stayed in Mexilhoeira Grande in Portugal
Bathing - Bathing was pretty simple. We bathed her in showers, kitchen sinks, streams, and many other places wherever fresh water was available. We use soap only occasionally so bathing Nora is one of the easiest things we had to deal with during our travels so far. The advantage of traveling in warm countries is we could bathe directly with tap water without worrying about water being too cold.
Nora taking bath in a bowl at Gaia Ashram in Thailand
Toys and Entertainment - We did not buy toys for Nora while traveling and the one or two we carried were lost along the way. Toys is another interesting topic where people have strong opinions on how many and what types of toys infants must have. As we started thinking about toys, the first question we wanted to have answered was, "what is considered a toy, and what is not?" We quickly realised that there is no one standard for toys and also the need for toys for babies is more to compensate for the time parents don't have and also for not having ample opportunities and supporting environment (like nature, fields, and forests) for the babies to learn, interact, and develop their skills (cognitive, social, emotional, speech, language, and motoric). Also, the toys that are offered in the market are based on a standardised expectation of what a baby needs at any given age and stage of their life. As at least one of us spent all our waking hours with Nora we were able to interact with her and be a partner in communication and her learning throughout the day. Also, regarding toys, we let her pickup stuff from the streets, from the woods and everywhere else we traveled to. It was interesting to see her pickup things that she was interested in and sometimes create things that were necessary to develop her skills at that stage. She picked up stones, sticks, insects, grains, shells, boxes, and lot of other stuff. She figured out games and ways to mix and match things and practise with them to refine her skills. We also see that she is not attached to things that she collects, and plays with them as long they are around, once they are gone she finds something else to keep herself entertained. Another thing we also tried to do was not to put pressure on ourselves to entertain her all day. Many times when she was bored and we did not provide something to entertain her, she got creative and made up something to do for herself that we would not have thought of. In general, having no toys and traveling has helped us be light weight and also have constant creative play opportunities.
Nora playing and picking up stuff from the grass in Da Lat Vietnam
Social Interactions - It has been a blessing that Nora got to experience various types of interactions in different countries and cultures during this journey. People in different parts of the world interact with children of strangers in very different ways. Some try to interact from far without touching them, some come close and try to touch their hands, pat their heads and interact with them, some try to extend their hands and offer to carry them, some just take them away without asking and entertain them. As we traveled through central and western Europe, India, and south east Asia in the past year, Nora got to experience various types of interactions with kids and adults. We tried to stay away from those interactions and let Nora decide how much she wanted to interact and with whom. We were there always next to her or close by but let her decide on the interactions. In the beginning Nora was unsure how to respond when someone took her away from us or tried to hold her. Over time she learned to say no in her own playful way when she was not ready to go to someone and keep her distance but yet stay close by to have some play time with them. It is interesting to see her develop her own style. In future we would like to continue to support her to develop her own way of interactions as we travel to countries with other cultures.
Nora looking at kids at a park in Hue Vietnam
Nora interacting with a local kid near Chiang Mai Thailand
Nora trying to interact with a local kid in Da Lat Vietnam
Nora playing with neighbours in a village we stayed in Vietnam
Traveling with Nora has been a blessing as we got to see her grow and experience the world through her curious eyes. We are glad that we don't have an end date for our journey and we are looking forward to seeing what amazing adventures and experiences this journey is going to bring for all of us.
If you have questions about this blog post or you are curious about other aspects of our travels with an infant please send us a message using the contact us form on the left bar of this page.
A song about parenting touched us deeply during our journey and continues to inspire us on a path that we are joyful about. It is the song "On Children" by Damien Rice based on the book "The Prophet" by Khalil Gibran. Here is a video with lyrics -
Excellent experiential article Sam; These are offvourse early days snd Nora learnibg the snd experiencing the life skills. Woyld me much interested when thd formal education needs knocks door and belueve ypu would bd pioneering a dufferwnt concept we only dreamt about
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