Well, a provisional one at least...
So N and I finally went down to the travel agents and thrashed out a real, concrete plan for the Big Trip, which at the moment looks something like this:
22nd September - start tour in Rio and work up through Brazil, Bolivia and Peru (including the Inca Trail). We'll probably leave a few days earlier though to have a bit longer in Rio.
5th November - fly from Lima down to Buenos Aires.
13th/23rd November - leave Buenos Aires on tour to Santiago, going through Argentia, Patagonia and Chile. We'll probably also go into Uruguay for a few days whilst in BA.
5th December - Leave Santiago to fly into Christchurch. Work way up to Auckland on hop-on-hop-off buses in time to spend Christmas there with my brother-in-law's family and (hopefully) my sister, brother-in-law and nephew, who are coming over for Christmas.
3rd January - fly across from Auckland to Cairns and get hop-on-hop-off bus down the east coast to Melbourne. Go through the Red Centre via Uluru to Alice Springs and then on to Darwin.
5th March - fly across to Singapore, take tour up to Bangkok and then on through Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.
20th April - arrive in Delhi, then two to three weeks touring India (we haven't decided which one to do yet).
15th May - come back to London
This is all very rough at the moment but it gives an idea of where we're going and how long we'll be away for. It is a slight change to the original plan as we wanted to start in Peru and go down to Rio, and then do another tour to Buenos Aires, but the next one with Inca Trail permits wasn't a guaranteed depature and it costs less to fly down to BA than to do the other tour (most of which is covered on our Rio to Lima tour anyway). In a way I'm glad though as we'll have some opportunities to hike in Brazil and Bolivia before the Inca Trail, so I feel I'll be able to get a bit more acclimatised to it all, and we can always go across into Uruguay from Buenos Aires whilst we wait for the next trip. Although I'm going to get my gait analysed for running shoes next week so hopefully I'll start Couch to 5K by the end of the month and have built up my stamina for the trip before we go.
Money hasn't changed hands yet but I think now we have something resembling a date it all feels a lot more real. I'm still nervous but the excitement is definitely kicking in now. I will miss home and friends and family, and there are a few events I'm quite sad to be missing (a friend's wedding and various family birthdays being the main ones), but I know that the trip will make up for it. And we can always call home or email or Skype.
Also, I have travel books coming soon - Lonely Planet guides to Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia and a generic RTW one from Rough Guide - which in my incredibly sad way I'm immensely looking forward to reading (I read travel books like they're novels). I may have mentioned this before, but N's mum has also been wonderfully generous and has given us £1,000 towards the cost of the trip, which we will probably invest in our equipment. More on that another time.
Sunday 13 May 2012
Tuesday 8 May 2012
Breaking the news: how to tell people you're going travelling
One of the first steps that I've had to take in my journey towards going travelling was telling other people. Obviously it's not something that can just be left undone, otherwise people will start wondering why you haven't been in touch for weeks and then find you're on the other side of the world. The main realisation I had was that there are so many people to tell - siblings, grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles, friends, even my hairdresser (well I had to tell her so she'd cut my hair in a style I can handle on the trip!). It feels like I've been answering the same questions over and over, plucking the answers from a script in my head for what seems like months.
That said, I was most scared of telling my mum and dad. Not because, at the risk of sounding like a petulant teenager, they had the deciding vote in whether or not I was going, but more because... well, they're my parents, and at the end of the day I don't want to disappoint or upset them by making a bad decision. I agonised for days over how to tell them, trying to find that ideal moment, but in the end I just had to bite the bullet and tell them face-to-face. It was something of a two-pronged attack - N told my dad and I told my mum - and thankfully they had a really good reaction, once they understood we were doing it through a proper travel company and we had the money to do it.
In fact, everyone's response has been overwhelmingly positive - very much along the lines of 'do it while you're young and don't have any major responsibilities' and even offers of advice and financial support which we're really, genuinely grateful for. I think the only people now who don't know are my nephews (the 20 month old's too young to understand, and I'm not really sure how to tell a four year old - I'm guessing if we do anything to mark it I'll just tell him we're going on a very long holiday) and work, but that's a blog post for another day.
In other news, we should hopefully be booking the trip sometime in the next few days, and getting the vaccinations not too much longer after that. Then it's the serious stuff - buying equipment and clothing and medicines. Not too long to go now!
That said, I was most scared of telling my mum and dad. Not because, at the risk of sounding like a petulant teenager, they had the deciding vote in whether or not I was going, but more because... well, they're my parents, and at the end of the day I don't want to disappoint or upset them by making a bad decision. I agonised for days over how to tell them, trying to find that ideal moment, but in the end I just had to bite the bullet and tell them face-to-face. It was something of a two-pronged attack - N told my dad and I told my mum - and thankfully they had a really good reaction, once they understood we were doing it through a proper travel company and we had the money to do it.
In fact, everyone's response has been overwhelmingly positive - very much along the lines of 'do it while you're young and don't have any major responsibilities' and even offers of advice and financial support which we're really, genuinely grateful for. I think the only people now who don't know are my nephews (the 20 month old's too young to understand, and I'm not really sure how to tell a four year old - I'm guessing if we do anything to mark it I'll just tell him we're going on a very long holiday) and work, but that's a blog post for another day.
In other news, we should hopefully be booking the trip sometime in the next few days, and getting the vaccinations not too much longer after that. Then it's the serious stuff - buying equipment and clothing and medicines. Not too long to go now!
Sunday 15 April 2012
Well hello there!
Or should I say hola, bonjour, guten Tag, ciao, konnichiwa, nei ho, namaste... welll you get the picture.
This is the first in what I hope will be a fairly extensive series of blogs about my various travels. I'm easing myself in gently as the first things I'll most likely write about will be my trip to Malta in a couple of weeks' time, shortly followed by a family holiday in North Cornwall, before the Big Trip: my boyfriend N and I heading off around the world for six months. Along the way I'll also be posting about the planning that's going into my travelling round the world, including packing, choosing the best gear and deciding on a route. You are of course free to shout at me if I don't update the blog regularly.
I will also shortly be setting up a Twitter account to accompany me on my travels @wherelaurawent so please follow that too if you're so inclined! I'll let you know when it goes live so you can read my shorter travel-based ramblings.
Just as a little introduction to the Big Trip, as that will form the bulk of this blog: it will be for about six to eight months, probably leaving the UK in September, and taking in South America (Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentia and Chile), New Zealand, Australia, South East Asia (Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam) and India. I'm nervous as I've never been away from home for that long but also excited as it's finally all falling into place! We haven't booked anything yet - probably going to go and see the travel agent in a couple of weeks' time, so things will get a bit more concrete then - but I already have a huge wishlist of things I want to do and places I want to see, and I can't wait.
I guess all I've got to say is thanks for stopping by, and please wish me luck!
This is the first in what I hope will be a fairly extensive series of blogs about my various travels. I'm easing myself in gently as the first things I'll most likely write about will be my trip to Malta in a couple of weeks' time, shortly followed by a family holiday in North Cornwall, before the Big Trip: my boyfriend N and I heading off around the world for six months. Along the way I'll also be posting about the planning that's going into my travelling round the world, including packing, choosing the best gear and deciding on a route. You are of course free to shout at me if I don't update the blog regularly.
I will also shortly be setting up a Twitter account to accompany me on my travels @wherelaurawent so please follow that too if you're so inclined! I'll let you know when it goes live so you can read my shorter travel-based ramblings.
Just as a little introduction to the Big Trip, as that will form the bulk of this blog: it will be for about six to eight months, probably leaving the UK in September, and taking in South America (Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentia and Chile), New Zealand, Australia, South East Asia (Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam) and India. I'm nervous as I've never been away from home for that long but also excited as it's finally all falling into place! We haven't booked anything yet - probably going to go and see the travel agent in a couple of weeks' time, so things will get a bit more concrete then - but I already have a huge wishlist of things I want to do and places I want to see, and I can't wait.
I guess all I've got to say is thanks for stopping by, and please wish me luck!
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