Keeping promises: Meet the US couple who visited 33 countries in eight months

Jacqueline (Jackie to friends), 69, calls herself a full-time budget traveller.

Accompanied by her husband Lowell, Jacqueline is meeting a promise she made in 1988 while working on the news desk of the une. That was the year she Chicago Tribune. That was the year she met the first beneficiary of the Alfred Friendly Press Fellowship, which provides journalists from emerging countries work-experience opportunities in American newsrooms.

Over the years at the newspaper, she met visiting fellows from the Philippines, Malaysia, Russia, Poland, South Africa, Kenya, Toronto, Nepal, Brazil and India.“At the end of each fellowship, my husband and I would promise to visit the visiting fellow's country . Now that we are both retired, we are making good our promises.“

In Bengaluru over the weekend, the couple plan to take a seven-day Golden Triangle tour before going home to Chicago for Christmas. Since Lowell retired in February this year (Jackie retired much earlier), the couple have been living out of their backpacks. They sold their home in Chicago before setting off on a journey that has taken them to 21 countries in Europe and a dozen in Asia.