Travel with your toddlers before you can’t.

I remembered Little Chow,4 was super proud when she could first jump. Littler Chow, 2 still couldn’t jump at this point. Arles, France.

The first time I realised that life has gotten onto another chapter when I held my little girl in my arms, all one day old and oh-so-fragile. I remembered telling myself.

‘What have we done?

When our second child came a mere 2 years later, I thought life is all set now. Part of the fear of having children was that you might not have the chance to live your own again. I believe in sacrificing and giving the best to our children, but having seen through life and interacted with different cultures, the world is a challenging place. Where do we begin?

Before the crowds came .Wifey and I carried the sleeping Little Chows in their pyjamas and plonked them in the middle of St Marco Square in Venice, Italy early morning.

As we started raising our children, my wife and I realised that we really enjoy spending time with our children and bringing them on trips outside Beijing where we reside. It was okay that they were super young even at 1 year old. What was most important that a baby loves being with their parents, whether it is in the comfort of a home, a random eatery or in a foreign place with strange languages, different looking people and a different roof to stay under each time. What matters for them was that the whole family was together.

First night. They didn’t understand jet lag, but they totally shut down. Hamburg, Germany.

Part of the fear of having children was that you might not have the chance to live your own again.

Travel started being a family thing when my children were as young as a few months old. Today, they are 2 and 4, and I thought they are ready for the biggest adventure a family can do together. Lets go to Europe together. What can possibly go wrong?

The Little Chows contemplate the demise of a fallen single scoop watermelon flavored gelato. Venice, Italy.

I remembered I was 20 when I first stepped into Europe, and it was a most amazing experience I had. I worked part time during my school term, and I flew to Europe on the cheapest ticket possible and backpacked solo across the continent. I slept at train stations, ate a plain baguette split into 2 meals everyday, and I had some of my most memorable travel experiences. I also got robbed and beaten up at my last stop in Madrid, and nearly landed into a hospital. That is another story.

As parents lugging 2 little ones, how do I balance between spontaneity and safety? What are the concerns? Ask any parents with young children and say we are going on a 2 week trip to a different continent. I think the concerns would be enough to do the logical thing and stay at home.

They are too young!

What if they become sick?

Will they be able to sleep properly?

Is the food safe? Are the people dangerous?

It is too complicated to take a train/plane/bus/taxi in those places.

You need lots of diapers, baby supplies and food that they can get used to.

The weather will make them sick. And so on.

They might get food poisoning from eating ice with their hands, or fall off a bridge.

A gelato shop server teases the Little Chows.
With ice cream, you can virtually make children do anything. Venice, Italy.

All concerns are valid. You can never do enough to safe guard every single thing in life. However, I also want to live life, and I believe that one can live life to the fullest with their children.

I am sitting on a ticking clock. In just a flash, both of my children will be in the proper school system, and bringing them on a spontaneous trip will be near impossible without disrupting their studies. Give it a few more years, and they will be closer to their friends, and traveling with their parents isn’t the coolest thing they can think of. Give it a few more years, and it will be the 2 of us. Again.

They are currently around 28kg combined. They would soon be too heavy for me.

Its now or never. The sooner you think of the urge to do something, rationalise it, measure it, and do it.

So we go to Europe. The first thing we chuck away is a stroller. We want to go backpacking, live life as spontaneously as we can, and show our children that the greatest thing we can do together is to play, laugh and spend time together. It is the world’s greatest thing in many ways. Spending quality time with your loved ones.

You can never do enough to safe guard every single thing in life.

In the end , we traveled across Hamburg, Venice, Lyon, Arles and sneaked in half a day in Frankfurt in 12 days. We ate eiscreme in Germany, gelato in Italy and glacé in France. Its all the same and it was all delicious. We walked whenever we could, took only public transport: buses, trains, subways, boats to crisscross within and across countries. We only took a taxi once. We crammed everything within two backpacks, and our children saw this as a mini adventure. What did we learn?

• Cramping travel within 3 countries over a short period of time opened up my childrens’ imagination. They realised that people speak differently, the transport systems come in different colors, even the food was different. I see that in this generation, the ability to adapt is a big skill for tomorrow. The sooner they can build this skill aspect, the better. There was no food on the table that was a constant, and they adapted whether they liked it or not. They approached this with much enthusiasm to our delight.

Taking the train to the south of France. Both love pressing their faces to the glass and see the scenery fly past.

• As we were backpacking across, we didn’t make bookings for our hotels or rooms way in advance. Everything was done on the go, depending on what we felt and experienced. My children did ask us occasionally if we were to stay in the same city or to move on. I honestly said I didn’t know, and they managed the uncertainty as a given. As there were lots of things to see, they also got tired on certain days. As we didn’t have a stroller, we either let them sleep on a flat surface in a park or I would just carry them. It was no real issue but we never went out of the way for them to rest in the comfortable conditions. They could adapt that well themselves.

Little Chow making a streetscape of Lyon with the help of some bread that came with our dinner. This is one of wifey’s techniques ‘making something out of anything.’ Love the sea gulls touch. Little Chow says it’s boring if a city has no birds in the sky. Lyon, France.

• This was nearly two weeks of travel, and it also meant that we were spending a full 24 hours, 12 days at every moment of the time. It was incredible quality time. My work makes me travel a lot, so unlike lots of fathers I know, I don’t spend that much time at home sometimes. Being able to travel and spend time together with my wife and my two little ones was a rare opportunity.

Wifey cycling with Little Chow along the Rhone in Lyon. We have been taking the wonderful blue skies for granted here.

• When we travel in this style, I realised that my children don’t necessarily see themselves as toddlers in a strange land. They also wanted to do things that we do as adults, simply because they see themselves as part of a team. My Littler Chow, my young boy who just turned 2, decided to walk stairs down himself, walked as much as he usually could and generally pushed his limits on everyday he came out with us. My older girl, Little Chow was the encouraging sibling, and she also made lots of observations to her surroundings that added to her own outstanding of the world. We didn’t go out to create a narrative for their own experience, and they could take it however they want it.

Littler Chow insists on walking down stairs himself everywhere around. ‘自己走’ (walk myself)- he insists, brushing off any external efforts of help. Hi grandmother calls him ‘stiff neck’, or stubborn like an Ox.

They both know those cut out holes are meant for heads to pop through.

I have a reputation as a risk taker because I am a mountaineer. I summitted Mount Everest at 25, and everyone including my parents thought I was crazy. I admit and understand that people will have this view, but I also see myself as a risk manager. I trained for many years to be a mountaineer, and a lot of the time was to be trained to survive in the mountains. Today, I don’t fancy bungy jumping or sky dive, and I am the first to buckle my seat belt when I enter a car.

we never went out of the way for them to rest in comfortable conditions

Falling is fine. You just have to get up yourself. Lyon, France.

I treat the same with my travels with my children. We bring medication, I know what are the emergency numbers to call if something happens in a foreign land. I also have the sensibility to manage the risks that my children are exposed to, though I don’t deliberately put them out to harm’s way. The whole idea was to give them a sense of adapting to the uncertainty of backpacking travel, eat lots of ice cream, and to come back as a stronger individual and a more cohesive family unit.

Be prepared. For changes.

Till then.

Stefen

Stefen Chow is a photographer/film maker based in Beijing. When he isn’t doing mini adventures with his children, he photographs for the biggest companies and magazines in the planet. He also summited Mount Everest when he was 25. His work can be seen at www.chowandlin.com and stefenchow.com

We give special thanks to Shin Kong Life. They approached us after they find out we do trips as a family, and they created a brand campaign around our story. They did not give us directions on how to travel, but to piggyback a meaningful message on our spirit. Thank you. Our campaign is currently on their website in Taiwan, and it is in traditional Chinese. https://online.skl.com.tw/Event/2017q4/index.html

All pictures copyright of Stefen Chow. People often ask me the gear I bring for a trip like this with my children. I keep it simple, but I have a Nikon D810, two prime lenses, an Osmo and a smartphone. Usually an iPhone. A lightweight Gitzo tripod is also super helpful.