Egypt

As we weren't able to go to Africa as originally planned on the trip, we decided to go on holiday to Egypt instead. And we've just come back from Cairo and Luxor. Ancient Egypt is amazing, but the main impression I have of modern Egypt is of touting, lots of locals trying to sell you something you don't want... 'You want felucca ride?', 'No thanks', 'It's very nice evening for boat ride', 'No thanks', 'Very cheap price', 'No', 'You know how much?', 'GO AWAY!!!'. 'Yes? Yes? Very cheap price', 'Grrrrrrr!'. Only they pester for far longer than that! (a felucca is the kind of boat in the photo).

Anyway, I've put some more pictures on the 'Africa page' - see the link on the right hand side of this page.

Over the next few weeks I'm going to try to make this site usable as a means of communication for when we're away, so please give me any suggestions, ideas, criticisms etc. And I'd be greatful if someone would post a reply - I don't even know if the setup works for that yet!

More trip details

The rough time scale is this - we'll be leaving mid March, will be in India and Nepal until the end of April before spending the next 2 months in China and Japan. We have to make it back to Bangkok by the end of July, and then we'll spend August traveling through Malysia and Singapore to Australia (and maybe learning to scuba dive). We should stay in Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific Islands until the end of November. Then its approximately 1 month each in Chile, Peru and Mexico. What do you think?!

My only regret is that we couldn't fit Africa into the trip. Its a real shame, but we were already pushing the upper limit of mileage allowed on this trip (and had to tinker with out route until we were just under the 39,000 maximum) - and to be honest, I don't think we'd have had the time to do everything. To compensate we've decided to go on holiday to Egypt this December/January so at least we can see the Pyramids!

The tickets are booked!

Well, its done. The tickets were booked, and (hopefully) paid for yesterday! The route is finalised - at least the places we're flying to and from - all dates for flights can be changed as we wish. Which is just as well as we'll probably get stuck somewhere remote at some point... I'm so excited about this! We leave on the 17th of march 2008.

The rough route should be shown on the map (click to enlarge, blue = flight, red = overland route): London --- Delhi (see the Golden triangle, travel to Nepal and then fly back to Delhi). Delhi --- Hong Kong (short stay to sort out Chinese visas). Hong Kong --- Tokyo (catch the shinkansen north to Sapporo and back). Tokyo --- Beijing (travel overland by train: first north to the wall, and then south via Xi'an and the Yellow river gorges to Shanghai). Shanghai --- Hong Kong (hmm, couldn't get to Hanoi on this ticket, so we'll have to make it there some how from here... will probably fly direct or via Bangkok. Then travel overland from Hanoi through Laos to north Thailand - Chang Mai - and then down to Bangkok. Then onwards overland through south Thailand to Malaysia, seeing Kuala Lumpa and Singapore). Singapore --- Perth (I don't know whats in Perth! Must be something to do there though). Perth --- Brisbane (then travel overland to Sidney). Sidney --- Auckland (travel round New Zealand's islands probably by road). Auckland --- Tahiti (laze about on South Pacific beaches). Tahiti --- Easter Island (more paradise in the middle of the ocean). Easter Island --- Santiago (then travel overland - don't ask me how - to Lima in Peru, seeing the Inca trail of course). Lima --- Mexico City (have fun in Mexico for a few weeks - including my 30th birthday party). Mexico City --- London (damn).

As you might have guessed, I can't wait. Hope you can join me for bits of the trip. Look forward to hearing from you - let me know if you have any ideas about the places.

Unemployed... Free!

You know, I never realised when I was a student just how fantastic it is to be able to lie in bed until 9am. I took it for granted that weekends would be free. Then I started work as a Doctor. Enough said really.

But now I've finally decided to leave - no, as you know I decided to take a break to go traveling a long time ago - now I've finally gone and left work its amazing how much more life I seem to have. It was the most liberating (and scary) feeling in the world to turn down those jobs I didn't really want! And now its so nice just to go for a walk into town on a sunny day. I can see friends, go home to Wales, go on holiday when I want to rather than scrabbling to get leave with medical staffing. And best of all, no bleeps!

Now I've got other projects of course:

• Arranging the world trip
• Seeing people I haven't seen in ages
• Playing guitar (trying to finally get a few songs down definitively)
• Submitting papers
• Teaching undergrads
• Looking after Gary (the poor dab's on nights at the moment)
• Trying to decide what the hell I'm going to do when I get back

which are all great - I can choose what I want to do when I want to do it. But to be honest, in some ways I feel as if I'm living on borrowed time while I haven't got a job. Do you think this feeling of freedom will last? Answers on a post-card please!

I'm going to start trying to fit the trip around the world together in a bit more detail over the next few weeks now that I've got the time. I'd really like to know if any of you would like to join me - or do specific things. If you would, comment on this post. I might also start a random pictures gallery for entertainment value...

With any luck this project will start to make a little more sense soon: I now have four other sites which can be reached by the links on the right (but only when I let people see them). They now have geographic maps of the areas (or bits of the areas) we hope to travel through. And soon I'll try to draw on the maps and write about our planned routes below. When we have plans that is - at the moment I want to go everywhere!

In the meantime here's a place I will return to on this trip: Hong Kong. Fantastic place, especially vibrant at night...

Warm-up trips

The plan is to depart on a trip around the world in March 2008: spending 2-4 months in Africa, Asia, Oceania and South America. Each of these areas will have its own mini-site for planning / maps /etc - see the left of this page. Some of these are more developed than others at pressent, but hopefully they'll improve.

In the meantime we've visited othe nice places because March is a long time away. Hawaii for instance...