About Us

Tom Mountford & Jen Swanson

Tom first began traveling in 2010, when he was posted to Mumbai, India, on a diplomatic assignment for the U.K. Civil Service. That’s where he met Jen, a freelance journalist working in Mumbai, where they quickly fell in love. For the next 3 years, the couple traveled all around India by train—always in the second-class cabin—until Tom was reposted to Shanghai, China, in 2013. In China, the travels continued, only this time on bullet trains traveling at 200 miles per hour.

In 2016, Tom and Jen decided moved back to the States, although they naturally took the long way home in order to travel. They started by taking a train from Shanghai to Tibet, rode the 5-day trans-Mongolian train all the way from Russia to Beijing, bus-hopped down Australia’s east coast, and then backpacked north through Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador before eloping in Belize. After honeymooning in Cuba, the newlyweds finally landed in Seattle, where Jen is originally from—although the city sure felt small after living in India and China, where even “small” towns still include at least 10 million people.

Six years later, Tom and Jen still live in the States, where they weathered the pandemic in a tiny apartment in Seattle. But as soon as it was safe to travel again, Tom and Jen quit their jobs and joined the revenge travel trend. Read about their latest travel adventures in Africa!

Contact: secondclasscabin@gmail.com