AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

Re­porter

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

For many, trav­el­ling the world re­mains a dis­tant dream—an ac­tiv­i­ty re­served for those with deep pock­ets. But for Shan­non Sal­ick and Zed Brady, all it took was a back­pack, a tight bud­get, and a lit­tle bold­ness to make it a re­al­i­ty.

Af­ter grad­u­at­ing from uni­ver­si­ties abroad, the en­gaged cou­ple spent a short stint work­ing in the UK, sav­ing every dol­lar with one goal in mind: to back­pack across Asia for six months.

The added chal­lenge? Do­ing it all on just US$20 per day, per per­son, cov­er­ing food, ac­com­mo­da­tion and lo­cal trans­port.

“We want­ed to max­imise what­ev­er mon­ey we did have and make it go as far as pos­si­ble, and see as many coun­tries as we could,” the cou­ple told Guardian Me­dia.

Their jour­ney took them to sev­en coun­tries: Thai­land, Laos, Cam­bo­dia, Viet­nam, Sri Lan­ka, In­dia, and even Chi­na—where they man­aged to tick the Great Wall off their buck­et list dur­ing a 24-hour lay­over.

To take on this am­bi­tious mis­sion, Zed and Shan­non knew they had to com­plete­ly re­think how they ap­proached trav­el, swap­ping com­fort for cre­ativ­i­ty and con­ve­nience for de­ter­mi­na­tion.

That meant trad­ing ho­tels for couch­surf­ing and hos­tels, flights for long-haul bus rides and even hitch­hik­ing, restau­rants for street food and, per­haps most chal­leng­ing of all, pack­ing light—very light.

“Back­pack­ing is not glam­orous. You don’t have lots of out­fits to change every day,” Zed said.

“I would say you prob­a­bly can go five days with­out wash­ing clothes. We washed them in sinks, in bath­rooms,” Shan­non added.

De­spite the stripped-down lifestyle, the cou­ple say the ex­pe­ri­ence was rich in oth­er ways, es­pe­cial­ly the peo­ple they met along the jour­ney.

From coun­try to coun­try, they were wel­comed with warmth, kind­ness and more than a few help­ing hands.

But not every mo­ment was pic­ture-per­fect.

One of their more mem­o­rable (and night­mar­ish) ex­pe­ri­ences came in Thai­land—food poi­son­ing.

“I think that was prob­a­bly from eat­ing some­thing a bit too ad­ven­tur­ous. We think it was prob­a­bly from try­ing pig brains. We were very ex­cit­ed… and it didn’t go down too well. But af­ter that, we had no is­sues.”

At just 23 years old, the cou­ple have since built a grow­ing fol­low­ing on In­sta­gram and Tik­Tok—@twotrini­trav­ellers—with fans both lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly hooked on their jour­ney and in­spired to try it for them­selves.

And for as­pir­ing trav­ellers, their ad­vice is sim­ple: start small, save smart, and just try.

“Even with­in your own coun­try, just try some­thing new. It doesn’t have to be some­thing big, like six months in Asia. You could do some­thing small— even To­ba­go on a bud­get.”

Now back home in Trinidad, they are al­ready eye­ing their next trip, be­cause for Zed and Shan­non, one ad­ven­ture is nev­er enough.