Five years of travel with his son changed everything

After five years of traveling with his son, a father reflects on what surprised him most—from the destinations that felt “too young” to the realities of counting countries, balancing kid-friendly plans with local life, and why solo parenting makes every trip h

This August will mark five years since he became a father. Over that stretch, his life has changed in ways he didn’t fully anticipate—especially the way travel now fits into family days rather than solo freedom.

He still travels, though not the way he used to. Long-term trips by himself are gone. What remains is something he’s built deliberately: making travel part of his son James’ life too.

At five years old, James has already been taken to 25 countries.

The point, he insists, isn’t the count. He doesn’t even share his own travel tally. This is a personal report on raising a child who is genuinely curious about the world—and the lessons that came with turning wanderlust into something a kid can live inside.

From long weekend getaways around Europe to several-month overlanding trips across the Americas, he says traveling with a child has become one of the best things in the world. And after five years, he has seven lessons he can’t unlearn.

2026 also marks five years since the creation of ATC Expeditions.

The first lesson arrives disguised as a question he heard again and again: when James is old enough to “remember,” then they’ll go.

He calls that the wrong approach.

When someone says he should wait—because James is too young—his answer is steady: they’ll still go, and when he grows older, they’ll just travel somewhere else. The world is huge, and no one visits every country and region properly. There’s always more to do, more to see, and more to chase.

He challenges the idea that children won’t remember. Maybe they won’t keep every detail, he says. But they will learn travel can be natural—through photos. stories. and the way their parents carry those experiences in their everyday life. And then there’s the simple practical truth he points to: if time and money still exist next year. there’s no shortage of destinations left to explore with children.

He adds a hard reality check, too. Not every country is suited to traveling with kids—he mentions the Central African Republic and Afghanistan as examples. But he argues there’s no perfect age to travel, only different ways of experiencing it.

He offers a specific example from Central America: even if James won’t remember seeing iguanas, he did learn what an iguana was, and he’s known what they are ever since.

The second lesson is less about logistics and more about belief.

He says kids understand more than adults assume. On the road, he challenges readers to ask James to name and point out the smallest country in the world—Nauru. Or ask which is the only Dutch-speaking country in South America—Suriname. Or ask him to locate Yemen on a map.

He doesn’t claim James is smarter than other children. The difference, he says, is that travel has grown curiosity in him. Their routine includes hours of looking at maps and reading children’s books about traveling the world. One favorite is a book about a penguin leaving Antarctica on the back of an albatross and visiting Peru. South Africa and New Zealand along the way.

Now, he says, James already suggests countries to visit and regions to explore. Whenever they travel, he makes sure James is fully aware of where they’re going and what to expect.

He ties it back to a simple idea: children are like sponges. The earlier you start, the better, he argues—because the longer you wait, the less interested they become in their parents’ world. The message is blunt: take your chance while you’re still their hero.

The third lesson is about numbers—because kids will notice them.

One unavoidable consequence, he writes, is that once children become aware of the places they’ve been, country numbers inevitably come up. James sometimes mentions the number too often, and occasionally even brags about it in front of others.

That’s why he believes it matters to teach children what travel is really about: meaningful experiences, local encounters, and curiosity rather than “nonsensical statistics.”

He expects that one day James may want to become a country counter—and if that happens, he says that’s his choice. But the education should also include a hard distinction: the countries visited as a child won’t count the same way.

Not because the trips didn’t shape James—quite the opposite. Those early journeys, he says, helped shape who he is and sparked his curiosity. The difference. he argues. is that adult travel involves making your own decisions. planning your own itineraries. and experiencing places in your own way. which he frames as completely different.

So he’s already rehearsed the conversation he’ll eventually have: he’ll sit down with James and tell him, “Dude, you need to start the fuck over.”

Even here he stays grounded in lived detail: James spent a week in a part of Central America, but he can only remember it from the pictures. He’ll have to go back when he’s older if he wants to genuinely experience it on his own.

The fourth lesson is about balance—keeping a trip fun for a child while making it local enough that the child actually understands they’re somewhere different.

In practical terms, he says that often means fewer playgrounds and fewer “Disney World-like” trips.

He uses Serbia as an example.

He traveled to Serbia with James because, besides San Marino, it was the only country he hadn’t visited in mainland Europe. It was just the two of them for a week. At first, he wondered whether Serbia would be interesting for a four-year-old.

His conclusion: it was.

They spent two nights in Belgrade, simply walking around, eating ice cream, and trying local restaurants. He emphasizes the shape of the days—no boring museums, no exhausting over-walking.

Then they spent three nights in two different farms in rural Serbia, where James could feed animals. He stresses that while you can do that almost anywhere in the world, the owners only spoke Serbian, which made everything feel genuinely rural. The food was local too.

Finally, they spent two nights in the mountains, staying in a traditional wooden hut from which they took the Šargan Eight train.

Everything, he says, was very Serbian. Yet it was still fun for a four-year-old. Looking back now, James has a “simple but genuine understanding” of what Serbia is like. He remembers the food, the mountains, the farms, and the people.

He ends the thought with a broad claim: if you can build a kid-friendly trip in Serbia, you can do it almost anywhere.

The fifth lesson goes against a common complaint he hears from other travelers.

Traveling with kids doesn’t mean missing out, he argues. The idea of “missing out” depends entirely on expectations.

If he travels to Tanzania with James. he says it isn’t the kind of trip where he climbs Kilimanjaro or overlands by matatu all the way to Burundi. He insists that doesn’t equal missing out because those aren’t the trip’s goals. If he wants that kind of challenge, he can come back another time on his own.

He makes the same point with Ecuador. When they went with James, climbing Chimborazo wasn’t part of the plan. Instead. they spent three days on a local farm in a tiny village nearby. where incredibly welcoming locals made them feel part of the community—he links that closeness to the fact that they were a family.

He contrasts that with what he says he would have done alone: he would have attempted Chimborazo, but he likely wouldn’t have stayed on that farm or spent hours hanging out with local families.

His argument is that travel styles are different. With a child. you might see fewer things—but you slow down. spend more time in places. and often have more genuine interactions with locals than you would as a solo traveler. Traveling as a family. he writes. is simply another experience. like traveling solo. with a girlfriend. or with a group of friends. Each has its own advantages, limitations, and moments.

The sixth lesson is where the emotion turns sharpest—because he draws a line between being able to travel as a family and being alone with a child.

Traveling with children is easy, he says. Single parenting is a completely different game.

He’s careful to distinguish the challenge from the reality: yes, traveling with kids has its own difficulties. But traveling as a family is much easier than people make it sound.

He adds that the difficult version is traveling alone with a child.

James’ mother and he separated some time ago. Even so, he says he’s fortunate enough to still go on several-week trips with James because her mother has always supported the idea of James growing up traveling.

But when he travels alone, he remembers how much easier things are with two adults.

He gives a simple example that lands like a small, familiar nightmare: it’s late at night. He’s in the hotel room. Outside, it’s snowing and freezing cold. James suddenly says he’s thirsty. He realizes he forgot to buy bottled water. With two people, one parent can run downstairs while the other stays with the child. When he’s alone, he has to handle everything himself.

He says the same pressure multiplies across meals, bathroom breaks, train rides, every time his child gets sick, and the “countless tantrums” in the middle of the street while he carries all the backpacks by himself.

In those moments, he admits he wonders: “What the hell am I doing here?”

He doesn’t pretend it’s always smooth. But he insists that some situations can be rough, and that good moments always make up for the bad ones.

His seventh lesson circles back to the idea of who adapts.

He writes that children adapt to almost everything, especially when they’re younger. He points to his experience running ATC Expeditions for quite some time, bringing hundreds of travelers from all kinds of nationalities, ages, and backgrounds to unusual places.

After taking James on multi-country road trips, long bus journeys, campervan adventures, and even jungle regions in the Pacific, he says he’s seen that some adults can be more difficult, dramatic, and demanding than most children.

Children, he argues, don’t complain about “shit accommodation.” They don’t care about limited food options as long as they’re with you.

And, he says, wherever you travel, there will always be children. There will always be diapers and there will always be food for children.

In the end, he brings the story back to choice rather than prescription.

Everything he shares, he says, is based on his own experience and his opinion after five years of traveling with James. Having a son who loves traveling doesn’t make them special—or better than anyone else.

He compares it to any passion or hobby: children often embrace what their parents genuinely love. In their case, it’s travel.

He isn’t trying to tell parents how to raise their children, or to suggest everyone should travel the way they do. But if parents are postponing trips because they think having children means the end of their adventures, he hopes his reflections encourage them to overcome that fear and go.

His conclusion is the simplest sentence he’s been repeating for five years: children don’t stop us from traveling.

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