IMO the date of her disappearance and the date of the BBC article’s publication is probably the oddest coincidence of all. Too odd, for my taste.
In the first place, Dan must have been given some advance notice of when that article would run. For years I did charity work and we always knew the date a piece on our work would be published. This should have been a celebratory day in their lives. Much to talk about! Maybe even worth coming out of the mountains for and heading home....
I have found another article that I hadn’t seen before that had a few quotes that were of interest. It was an interview from this April...they were really getting...or seeking IDK publicity this year.
Here are some snippets:
https://www.wadham.ox.ac.uk/news/2020/april/choosing-adventure
Choosing adventure
1. ‘Did you set out straight after graduation?
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No. Esther wanted to, but I (Dan) thought it was too reckless at the time. I refused to consider it and insisted on doing a PhD, getting a job etc. The idea of travelling was too far out of my comfort zone. It was my good fortune that Esther stayed with me, though I didn’t fully realise it at the time. I thought I was being “the sensible one”.
This is different from the dramatic explanation of the near-death experience being their motivation. Esther wanted to start this life right after graduation.
2. ‘We were in our early thirties when we left. On the one hand, we regret not going straight away. On the other hand, it meant we had more resources behind us and more life experience. We’d packed a lot into the decade after Wadham. Postgraduate degrees, acadeomic jobs, a start-up business, house moves, and all of the other usual things.
*We’d been considering a career break anyway when Dan got sick, his illness just motivated us to expand things a little.*
3. Were friends and family encouraging (or not)?
Yes they were, though we initially told everyone we were going for a year.
We always knew we wanted it to be for longer. *Some people still ask us when we’re coming home, but “home” has become a very loose concept the more time we’ve spent as nomads.*
I’m not saying we’ll do this forever. The truth is, we just don’t know. We used to have a plan and now we don’t. Who knows what we’ll be doing this time next year?
4. How do you fund your adventures?
A combination of savings, rental income from our house in the UK, and jobs we pick up on the road. We’ve also written some books.
Sni-
Life on the road can be very inexpensive. We were very nervous about our futures and career prospects when we first started out, and we tried to keep various options open.
Now we’ve accepted that we just need to live for the moment a little more and let the future take care of itself. *I appreciate that sounds very reckless to some people. I know it would have done to me a few years ago, but it’s something we’re comfortable with now. *
Maybe that will change?
And this:
How are you coping with the current pandemic?
We were in Spain but dashed to France to avoid the lock down there only to find Macron announcing a similar series of restrictions. On the plus side, the French restrictions allow us to go jogging at least and we also have a friend who is letting us stay at his house in the Gers Department
. In return for paying the bills we are at least not restricted to a motorhome for the time being. We love van life but the key ingredient is the fact it moves, which isn't really possible right now.