To consider selling our house and travelling the world with two toddlers?

It sounds great if you can afford it. At this age your children won’t remember any of it and you will be restricted in some area. Even if you’re not worried about routines for the children you might find settling them with constant time zones and climates difficult. If you’re open to that then do it, why not, you can always restart. DH and I moved across the world with a 1 & 3 yo with nothing, no jobs, very little money but we managed to build a decent life after we did.

I found my 2 easy to travel with at the time, but I’m not sure how being constantly on the move would have been.

We’ve talked about doing some big trips, but are now tied up with schools, we’ve already moved countries technically 3 times if you include moving back to the uk twice with our DCs during their early and primary years. So we’d make sure any plans we make now don’t impact high school going forward.

As for ideas, how about camper vans around NZ & Australia. It would be less disruptive than packing up and moving constantly. You could change plans when ever you want, stop and feed the DCs anytime, and have everything to hand. I’ve travelled around NZ in a camper it’s fantastic. I’ve also heard travelling across Australia by train is good. I don’t know any specific details though.

Go for it !! Kids are easy adaptable at these ages !!!
And u may not get another chance to do it when they start school !!!
I think it’s a wonderful idea 💡
sell up and relocate when u come home !
if u have financial means why not !
I think people worry to much and it puts them off having adventures life is for living x

@EliflurtleAndTheInfiniteMadness makes good points

I think it would be madness to spend all your savings on a trip

And, when you return home and DH has no job, how would you get a mortgage to buy a new house?

Perhaps DH could negotiate a few months unpaid leave and you could do a home exchange overseas eg via this company https://homelink.org/en/ This would be a less risky way to have some time abroad

Do it OP

kids deserve to see the world aswell as adults. Even if they don’t remember it, it will leave a print.

think of the memories you’ll have together. Yes there will be tough days but there’ll also be tough days if you stay at home

I only said YABU, because of selling the house. I know you said you'd move when you return but I think I'd keep onto that base 'just in case' what if ye hate it, what if (god forbid) one of ye gets sick and needs to return. I wouldn't like not to have a base. I travelled for 3 years in my early 20s and always had my parents house as a safe back up.

Other than that if I could afford to I would love to, it sounds amazing.

I think in your shoes I would formulate a slightly modified plan

6 months away to give your oldest time to readjust before school - miss out UK winter basically.

Say 2 months Australia, 2 months in Thailand, 2 months in another location - I’d pick Asia not the Gulf. Have a “home base” in each place (a short term rental or long stay air bnb) and do side trips from there, rather than trying to move around a lot and taking everything with you the whole time.

Don’t sell your UK home, rent it out.

This begins to sound more sensible.

Go for it and enjoy.

Do think long and hard about costs of doing this.

Incidental costs of setting up temporary homes in Airbnbs will be high. Much higher than on a normal SC holiday because you won't be bringing anything from home.

Over time your travel costs will likely increase significantly. You will start having to pay flight costs for your youngest. You will inevitably acquire more luggage.

I'm an experienced traveller both for work and pleasure. Incidental costs are always higher than you expect. Things get lost/damaged during travel and end up having to be replaced at great expense because you aren't able to shop around.

100% go for it and have that adventure! I'm happy for you!

We are just back from a 3 month backpacking trip with our now 9 month old, so not quite the same situation as you at all.
Obviously he won't remember a bit of it but we will and our photos are fabulous.
I didn't get the 'parenting just in a different location' feeling that some have mentioned at all, perhaps because my partner was with us 24/7 and at home he works. And mainly because every day there was something different to do so we were never stuck in a boring rut.

You can send them to day care places and meet up with 'world schooling' parents etc whilst you're away (we didn't do any of this, he's too small and we weren't gone for long enough but thought it was worth a mention). There's loads of people doing stuff like this on Instagram that you can take inspiration from.

He got plenty of interaction with other adults, people would whisk him away so that we could eat dinner and I'd find him giggling away with the chef 10 mins later.

We went to Sri Lanka, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Hong Kong.
The only downsides we found were some places were far too hot (think leaving the accommodation at 6 and being back by 11 for sightseeing, then spending the afternoon around the pool to cool down), and I was paranoid about insect bites but he didn't get a single one.

My tips would be; pack, and then remove half of your stuff and re-pack, it's a bugger to carry around, you'll only want to wear your lightest, comfiest clothes / shoes, there are cheap laundry places everywhere (except Sri Lanka, it was more expensive there). Look very carefully at your travel insurance, we had to buy another when we read through our original one and it just wouldn't cover what we needed (I think there's one called 'Nomad' that will insure you for long trips). And think about how you will transport your babies, prams are useless due to bumpy pavements / no pavements, so good carriers are essential. We found that nappies, baby food etc we're available everywhere, which surprised us.

Have a brilliant time, we're looking at doing it again for a longer period and taking him out of primary for a year, once we've saved up.

Yes, as the saying goes 'No matter how far you run away from your problems, there you are'

I would love to do this, but would hate to do it with two toddlers. Surely you will just spend all your time trying to settle them to sleep in different places, finding things for them to eat, stopping them having tantrums, trying to get them to bed in hostels without them screaming the place down? We went backpacking in Europe ( didnt sell the house, it was onlly for 6 weeks) with older kids and it was the best thing I have ever done. Toddlers, I cant imagine anything worse!

If you sell house, where would you live when you get back? The rental market is a nightmare and you won't have jobs...

I would have loved to have done this but not brave enough. Go for it so I can live vicariously through you.
Don't sell the house though, rent it and you may even have enough funds to use towards travelling too.
Sell everything else though (obviously not sentimental things)

My DH travelled a lot pre kids, he thinks he likes the whole carefree, sleep on a bench, rock up on a beach, bag the cheap seaview but the mind certainly plays tricks on him.
Modern life means everyone is very pre-booked organised, the restaurants are booked, the good accommodation is taken.
DH really wasn't at his best parenting small kids, he broke me because I carried the mental & physical load. Whilst he project managed inessential diy, trained for a race hobby and kept up with old friends I was there holding a toddlers hand, bored out of my brain.
If he'd been unhappy at work then he would definitely have gone down your route and I would have been broken without a network of friends to support me.

And Dubai? I don't get that at all. Soft play and mall shopping in a hot climate. Once the novelty of seeing a camel has passed, very quickly your kids are hardly going to be out surfing the dunes in over specced cars.

This. Kids are adaptable if they’re allowed to be. You know your children better than anyone else. If you think they’d thrive on an adventure like this they probably will. If you had the kind of kids some posters seem to have you wouldn’t be contemplating it.

We can all have opinions OP but you need to hear from people who’ve actually done it. Have you checked out YouTube? There are loads of people who make a living documenting their travels, bound to be some with kids.

I would worry about the kids not having a home, familiar environment, any familiar people apart from the 4 of you. They won’t see you having any normal social interactions unless you speak the language. It seems like a strange experiment to perform on young growing minds.

I haven't done an extended travel with mine but we did take them many places including China and Hong Kong before they were 5.

They don't remember any of it.

It was do able and they enjoyed some of it and hated others.

I enjoyed the travel as while childcare might be same shit different location some locations are very interesting,

Some SE Asian countries do not have any thing approximating western healthcare - for example I was on a business trip to Laos recently and the arrangements for if I got ill were helicopter to Thailand who actually have hospitals.

So get decent healthcare.

It had no long term impact on the kids at all. So don't do it for them.

Taking the opportunity to travel sounds amazing. Does it have to be this extreme? I would look at a shorter duration 6-12 months planning to get back and settled before your eldest starts school. Assuming this would cost less it gives your H time to sort out work once back, which he'll need for a new mortgage.

Oh and why Dubai or Abi Dhabi? you couldn't pay me to go there.....

She’s clearly not.
OP we have travelled with our 3 month old to SE Asia last year, it was the best experience for us.
I recommend Koh Samui ( or anywhere within reach of good hospital in case of emergencies)
You’ll be able to find reputable childcare there should you want to use it
As someone already said this is absolutely doable, with 2 toddlers though don’t rush - staying in 1 place for a bit longer will be better than changing location each week
Enjoy :)

I would do it with the kids, but it depends on the kids! We take month long “backpacking” trips with our little one. Change cheap hotel every 2/3 days and travel quite quickly. It’s all gone really well but he doesn’t care about a routine and goes with the flow.

Oh god, yes, travel. There will be good times and horrible times like at home.
But you won't look back and regret it.
Fabulous for the kids!
However I would also rent out the house.

If your finances can cope I would definitely go for it - you can always come home early if it doesn’t work out how you planned. Better than having regrets of not having tried. We did a 6 week road trip in Europe when ours were the same age and although I look back with fond memories it was really hard at times and we considered more than once coming home early.
Definitely don’t sell the house. It will be a pain renting it out (insurance, tax returns etc) but not half as much as having to sort something else for when you return. As others have pointed out if you are out of the UK for more than a certain amount of time and have no income getting a mortgage will be harder and will take longer. On your, return things like the cost of car insurance might be higher because you’ve been out of the UK so you might need to factor that in.
Our trip got delayed as one of the kids got really ill with a middle ear infection. We’ve also had more than one occasion where we’ve needed a doctor while we’ve been away. I would definitely go to places where medical care is easy to access. I would go to Australia, plan the first month and see how it goes.
Good luck!