MORE than six years ago, Jarryd Salem and his girlfriend Alesha Bradford were working full-time and longing for different lives.

Then the Aussies decided to make their dream a reality, packing it all in to travel the world.

And they still haven’t stopped. The couple, who run the travel blog Nomadasaurus, are currently backpacking their way from Thailand to South Africa, which they are doing without flying (just to make things more interesting).

Jarryd, 27, tells news.com.au about their extreme adventure and how they manage to make ends meet while on the road for so long.

What were your lives like before you decided to travel permanently?

I grew up bouncing between Sydney and country Victoria. After finishing school I held a number of positions working in warehouses and factories, before moving on to the aviation industry. In 2007 I headed to Canada on a one-way ticket to work the ski seasons. That was the start of my new life.

Alesha, 30, grew up on a large farm in a country town in Western Australia. She left home to travel the east coast of Australia in 2004, before a brief trip to New Zealand. Then she spent six months working and exploring California before going to Canada.

We met in a hostel in Vancouver in 2008, and have been travelling the world together ever since.

What are some of the places you’ve been to in the past six years?

We lived in a van and drove the length of Canada from Vancouver to Newfoundland and back, which was our first massive overland journey. We then spent eight months backpacking around Central America and Cuba, as well as a stint working on a private catamaran in the Caribbean.

We stopped back in Australia briefly after a trip to Cuba in 2012 and I worked as a labourer in the mining industry, while Alesha worked on her parents’ farm and in the hospitality industry as she studied to become a remedial massage therapist. We again quit our jobs the next year and booked a one-way ticket to Thailand for January 2014.

We are now currently one year into our epic overland adventure from Thailand to South Africa, without flying. We started off spending three months in Thailand and one month in Myanmar. When we crossed into Laos, where we bought two cheap motorbikes and rode 15,000km across Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.

To avoid flying over any territory on our way to Cape Town, we plan to hitchhike and take buses, trains, tuktuks, motorbikes, boats, camels, or any other form of transport that doesn’t leave the ground.

We will be researching the security situations in some of these regions as we go and will be as flexible as possible to change our route last-minute to avoid any dangerous zones.

What inspired you to go on this latest journey — without flying?

We came up with the idea while we were sitting on a local bus in Mexico. After backpacking in Central America, travelling through the region had become too “comfortable”. As much as we loved the countries we visited, we felt like we needed a new challenge to keep us interested in our travel lifestyle.

Alesha suggested we go to Africa next, and I insisted on visiting the Middle East. We looked at a map in our guidebook and saw that Central Asia wasn’t too far from those regions, so we enthusiastically added it to the list. Before we knew it, our simple idea had turned into a multi-continent expedition. The no-flying rule came about as a spontaneous thought to make sure we see as much as possible while being on the road.

What are your travel highlights?

Some of the highlights have included riding our motorbikes for 15,000kms across Southeast Asia, trekking for 130km over five days to visit El Mirador in Guatemala, the largest Mayan city in the world, cave diving in the cenotes of Mexico, living in our van across Canada, working on a sailboat, and just about every moment of our one year backpacking in Southeast Asia so far.

What are some of the worst experiences you’ve had, and what have you learnt along the way?

One of the biggest things we’ve learnt is that people are almost always inherently good, and the world isn’t as scary as a lot of people think it is. Even through the bad times, we always come out stronger and with a deeper passion on why we continue to travel.

On our first day in Myanmar, the bus we were a passenger in had a head-on collision with another bus. Everyone survived, but we had to carry people out of the wreckage and give first-aid to our driver.

Once the chaos had subdued we realised we were stranded on the side of the road, with no-one who could speak English. Some of the people who we had helped during the crash saw our dilemma and waved down another bus for us, demanded that the driver take us to Yangon and paid for our fare. Their generosity was inspiring, as many of them have so little money themselves, but still insisted that they pay for us to say “thank you”.

Then there was the time I was walking home one night in Antigua, Guatemala and was pulled over by a police car and searched. I was thrown up against a wall and the police frisked me. Before I could realise what was happening, the police got back in their car and drove away, taking all my cash with them.

Unfortunately corruption is rife in Central America, but this was our only incident in eight months there. When I compare it to the hundreds of acts of kindness we received from local people in Central America, this small robbery was hardly worth worrying about.

And then there was the time our sailboat went through a severe squall at 3am, 150km off the coast of Honduras, and we thought we were sinking. But we made it out ….

How do you make money on the road, and what are your budgeting tricks?

In the past we have made money on the road by working in hostels and picking up bar or hospitality work. I worked in construction while travelling around Canada and Alesha used to clean hotels, serve tables, bartend — anything that brought in some cash for our travels.

Now with this current adventure, we are starting to generate an income from our blog and are securing some freelance writing and photography work. It can be tough making money on the road in this way, especially as our primary goal is to travel the world, not spend the best part of our lives slaving away for a wage. However it’s a fun challenge, and a different experience to anything we have done previously.

Watching our site grow in popularity and size, and picking up more freelance gigs is very rewarding. Besides being a source of income, our site provides inspiration to others who wish to break away from society’s expectations and take up a life of travel. It also helps keep us focused as we move our way around the world.

One of our best budgeting tips is to do as the locals do. Anything that is designed for tourists will usually be more expensive. Taking public transport instead of a taxi or tourist bus will not only be a lot cheaper, but can also lead to some great interactions with people. Eat at the street food vendors and restaurants that are popular with locals and shop at the markets.

Keeping track of your daily spendings really helps to maintain focus on your budget. Watching exactly how much you spend on everyday items will allow you to better plan for a long-term goal. We do this for every dollar we spend on the road.

But our favourite budget tip is to travel slow. By having the time to settle somewhere for more than a day or two allows you to find the great, cheap places to eat and stay. Transport is a big part of any travel costs, and if you stop jumping on buses or trains every other day you can stretch your dollars out further. Not only is slow travel more economical in the long run, but it also helps keep you sane when you are on the road for long periods at a time.

What are your next stops?

For 2015, our tentative plans are to cross the border into China in March, and spend the next few months checking the country out, along with Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan. We will then make our way across China and into Central Asia, travelling through Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan (possibly Afghanistan), Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Iran (possibly Iraqi Kurdistan) and Turkey. We will then decide whether we can afford to spend much time in Europe, or if we will start making our way straight into Africa.

At sometime in 2016 we will enter Africa, zigzagging our way down the continent to our final destination of Cape Town. We think this will take about one year.

After that we are unsure of what will happen. If we are not yet sick of travelling, we will perhaps head across the Atlantic and check out South America, or head back into Asia and backpack through Sri Lanka, India or Nepal. At some point our ultimate dream is to open up a backpacker’s hostel somewhere in the world. A small part of this epic adventure is to see if we can find the perfect place to eventually settle down.