Foot in It

Dammit. I never checked the date my contract at work ends.

In eleven years, I've only had the summer contract end after my birthday (the 22nd July) once. Eleven years!

So I assumed. Booked the first flight for the 20th.

And today realised that the last day I'm contracted to work is ... the 22nd.


bugger

I have three options:

• Take a sickie. I'm leaving, after all. Lord knows I've taken enough sickies, but they've all been genuine - purposely buggering off and landing people in it really isn't my style.


• Change the flights. This will have a knock on effect for every other flight, and for all the visas. Plus: quelle horreur! I'd be in Catford, not Honolulu, for my birthday.


• Ask Beg for those days as unpaid leave. Sob. Unpaid!

I know, I know. I'm a fuckwit of a fool. I do know this.

Countdown

This is neat. Though ultimately uninteresting for anyone but me, right here, right now. Still. An organisational countdown. For the terminally disorganised.

Neat.

• March -
  Decide if you need Hep A or Hep B jabs
  Research flights on the web


• April -
  Decide if you want to get cargo ship tickets anywhere
  Book plane tickets
  Take out travel insurance
  Arrange visas, or check availability / times for visas - particularly work / study visas or complex bureaucratic countries
  Sort out ending lease on current accommodation


• May -
  Medical check up and other vaccinations
  Credit cards sorted out, and meet personal banker (establish line of credit, power of attorney, etc)


• June -
  Buy travel gear (thanks to fmc for volunteering brilliant information on this)
  Break in walking boots
  Arrange any discount cards needed
  Sort out communications cards, etc
  Dental check up
  Get contact lens

I'm as organised as a damn goldfish. I need this much of a list.

Flying Tonight

I booked my ticket. Itinerary 1. An RTW that starts at Hawaii on 20th July, and ends in Bombay in mid January.


This makes it brilliantly, frighteningly real.

I looked so wide eyed and shocked when I bought it that the rep I bought it from dropped the facade a second, and said "did you mean to come in here today and buy this?"

Silent shocked nod.

There's so much more I need to jot down here to remember, but no computer access stymies the organisation.

Here's the path I'll be taking; each new line is a time-jump of about two weeks to a month:

• London - San Francisco - Hawaii


• Hawaii - Auckland (? dunno how that happened)


• Auckland - Raratonga, in the Cook Islands


• Raratonga - Fiji, just in time for September to kick off


• Fiji - Auckland - Singapore


• From Singapore, I'll be travelling overland through Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, ending in Bali - then back again to Singapore. It's a bit of a faff - I can only get a 30 days' visa to enter Singapore, so have to change flight details, visa details and dates once I get there


• Singapore - Hanoi, Vietnam


• Hanoi - Bangkok (I have to confess, I don't know what's in Bangkok, or what I'm doing there)


• Bangkok - Kathmandu, Nepal (in time for Christmas and the Himalayas to be completely snowed in)


• Nepal overland to Bombay


• Bombay - London for mid January

I tried to leave longest gaps in cheapest travel countries, or according to how enraptured the person who recommended the place was. Several weeks of enrapturement equalled amonth long stay ...

No doubt the times and lengths of stay are rather random, so the next itinerary (lakes, rivers, islands of north America) needs to wait till my next break in London, in January. I'm sure I'll have learnt quite a few lessons about planning by then, and I don't want to fuck up the entire year in advance without that hindsight.

It might also be nice to catch up with people in London for a week or two while I arrange visas. Who knows, I might be sick of travelling and have abandoned the whole thing as a bad job by then...

Next on the agenda: Insurance. Think I've found a decent policy that's got higher coverage than normal backpacker rubbish, and covers all activities. I need to get that sorted by the end of April.

I can't resist ... After?

create your own visited countries map

71 countries (31%)

Potential Journeys

This is all very imaginary, still, but, the itinerary seems to be settling itself into six discrete, unconnected journeys:

London - San Francisco - LA - Hawaii - Cook Islands - Fiji - Bali - Gilli Islands - Sumatra - Nicobar Islands - Singapore - Jakarta - Bangkok - Hanoi - Kathmandu - Srinagar - Varanasi - Jaisalmer - Cochin - Kerala - Tamil Nadu

London - Tallinn - St Petersburg - Kyiv - Odesa - L'viv - Vilnius - Riga - Tallinn - Moscow - Trans Siberian Railroad - Beijing - Quinhuangdao - Tientsin - Shanghai - Fukuoka - Tokyo

London - Yaounde - Lagos - Bamako - Timbuctoo - Agadir - Casablanca - Marrakesh - Tangier - Andalucia - San Sebastian - Barcelona - Marseilla - Cannes - Rome - Zagreb - Athens - Iraklia - Crete

London - Montreal - Toronto - Lake Winnipeg - Grand Rapids - Great Falls - River travel along the Missouri - St Louis - river travel along the Mississippi - New Orleans - Charleston - Savannah - Bermuda - Havana - Cancun - Mexico City

London - Belem - Recife - Brasilia - Montevideo (Colonia del Sacramento) - Buenos Aires - Iguacu Falls - San Carlos de Bariloche - Tierra del Fuego - Ushuaia - Punta Arenas - El Calafate - La Paz - Cochabamba - Polosi - Lima - Macchu Picchu - Quito - Cuenca - Vilcabamba - Merida - Angel Falls

London - Cape Town - Lesotho - Durban = Madagascar - Lake Tanganyika - Lamu - Lake Victoria - Kampala - Nairobi

Don't think I'm being a tad ambitious, do you?

Before

create your own visited countries map
or vertaling Duits Nederlands

22 countries (9%)

Laying Plans

P at work lent me the best possible thing, a copy of The Rough Guide 'First Time Around the World'.

I spent all afternoon sitting in the sun engrossed in the thing.

I have to buy this; it's full of ideas and sensible things, and advice and tips. All the things I was failing at. Daily expenses (divide the world into three bands), how to travel (overland, boat, plane, etc), how much to plan (two big things a week, apparently, with time off for good behaviour every three weeks), when to work (work in countries with hard currency, spend it in countries with soft). Most of all, when to open the guidebook and plan the minutiae (on the plane).

I need my own copy - it's going to end up covered in notes, and P wants it back. She bought the book then didn't do the journey. I know that regret. It's behind at least three of my potential itineraries; journeys I once planned and failed to make.

Also: I sold my car. For one pound. I'm hoping I can one day get it back at cost price. :)

Digitalia

This is a test post from , in the hopes it works more consistently than Text America...

to be or not to be

Right, I've discussed this course at Columbia with D and with J, now, and we're all agreed. Spunking 20% of my money on a course I can do in Prague is silly.

The creative writing course is now the journey, not the stop-off.

Joining the Dots

Loads of people at work have stopped by to congratulate me on my 'bravery' in leaving without another job to go to, and have lent me lots of out of date guidebooks that they want back before I leave.

One manager made an open offer of employment at any of four businesses in the area on whose boards she serves, at any point in the future. I'd be stupid to take her up - more time down the mine? Seriously! But somehow I don't think she'd have made an offer like that if I'd stayed on, quietly messing up in the corner.

J came over and helped me match up my list of destinations into five discrete journeys. She pointed out that they don't necessarily have to match up - that I could circle a few times. She also said that when you buy a RTW plane ticket, you have to always fly up or down, apart from one flight. I simply can't make that match where I want to go.

Someone else's perspective simplifies things so swiftly that it's almost stupid, though. In one sudden flash, I could see that if I did the Americas journey 'backwards', both visas and difficult border entries were solved.

there are all these big black swooping lines over my map now.

Ill Prepared

I feel about six years old.

I asked Jen about voluntary organisations, and the emails we exchanged made me think about just how totally unprepared I am for this.

The list of things she just happened to ask about was massive.

I hadn't thought about visas, working, volunteering, times, vaccinations, age, cost of living or anything. Not 'hadn't done anything about'.

Hadn't even thought about.

I'd pretty much just bought a map and written on it.

I have some real bloody homework to start doing.

east versus west

I rang up A and he talked me through Argentina and Patagonia. He says I need to think about what time of year I go to the most variable climates. Equatorial countries don't change, but other hemispheres could really cost me in warm clothing if I keep veering about.

I told him about the around the world flights. You have to pick just one direction: east or west. Then you can only go along, in that direction, not up or down or back on yourself.

It makes starting in Hawaii a bit of a pisser.

I'll have to fly direct to Code H, then start the round trip ticket from there.

Dunno how I'm going to fit in India. The Trans Siberian railroad from Moscow to Beijing will send me too far over to go back.

I have my itinerary. Now I need to join the places with lines.

I shall start in Hawaii and go west.

So: second stop - Fiji.

Summer Study programme

I know what I'm like. I have hermit phases.

If I'm going to stay away a long time, I need to have some months where I'm forced to communicate with people.

So I decided to do a creative writing course at Columbia, in NYC. E had told me about it. The courses they offer look great.

Today I checked out the prices.

I can study a term in the spring, summer or 'fall'. Summer is cheapest.

If I go to the US as a tourist, I can do one class a week, for about £350 fees.
If I go as a student, I have to do four classes a week, but the price rises to £7000 fees.

I'd rather do more than less. And I'm rich, I guess. But still. £7000. And probably another £4000 to live off. For thirteen weeks.

I've been saving money so long that the idea aggravates me. It's 20% of my money. Why can't I just do three classes? Why does it have to be one, or four?

To study at Columbia this Autumn, I have one month left to apply.

Fast decision required.

Point of no return

First day back at work, and I handed in my resignation at four o'clock. Then got told off for smiling too broadly in a meeting.

Bothered.

Meeting Strangers

My week alone in Venice: I haven't been lonely.

The first day, I forced myself not to take any books or postcards or props out with me when I went to a local taverna. I people watched for ages, but nobody really spoke to me.

It made a nice change, though, at first.

After that, every time I wrote my journal, or a card, or read my book, someone came and chatted to me. I didn't eat alone ever. It was hard to concentrate at times.

It wasn't intrusive, though. Most people don't even want to know your name. They want two or three decent anecdotes and the feeling that they've travelled, that they've met someone.

Only once did I feel depressed or lonely. And that just wasn't true, frankly. I decided to deal with it by walking from one end of Venice to the other. At the end, I felt depressed, lonely, and footsore.
But then someone else invited me to share dinner, and to be honest I forgot about it.

I guess you get black moods everywhere.

Bruce Chatwin

Bruce Chatwin is rubbish.

Really.

He's making it up, right? Every other page has himself as a character, being far more impressive to women and ethnic minorities than his own dialogue lets on.

I look at the pull quotes on the back. Unbelievable.

Read his biog. The quotes are all from people he knew when he was a journalist. One's even from a journalist he co-authored his previous book with.

The biog says he died young. "Good," I think, before I know it.

I've decided I would hate to write a travelogue.

3 guesses

D is on the other sofa reading when I say it.

"Guess where I'm flying to tomorrow?"

"Paris."

"No."

"Hamburg."

"No."

"Rome."

"No."

"I did three guesses. Tell me."

"Venice."

"Why?"

"No reason. On impulse."

"Oh. Okay."


The next day, on the way to the airport, I text him:
"I'm not going on overly, but nobody else knows where I'm going today, and I have to say to someone:

I'm SO FUCKING EXCITED!"

Daunted

I found the best travel bookshop in the world: Daunt Books.

Way better than Stanford's. Guidebooks and maps, fiction and travel writing, all filed together by country in an Edwardian library layout.

I bought a map of the world, and spent the afternoon writing down all the places people have told me they would want to go back to. They span everywhere, no rhyme or reason to them.

K was with me, and bought me a Bruce Chatwin book as a gift. Inside, she wrote "keep moving".

Impulse Buy

I booked a secret impulse flight to Venice on Easyjet.

I wanted to see if I would go to pieces if I travelled alone.

I haven't told anyone.