It's 7:22am on a Monday morning in late September in Hartington. With Monday being my day off and it being cold, dark and miserable outside the temptation to pull the covers over my head will most likely get to me eventually. There is no particularly interesting reason I am awake at this time, I don't have a day at Alton Towers to look forward to and the new Fifa game doesn't come out until Friday. The truth is I simply felt ill yesterday and came home from work early and spent most of the day sleeping which is probably why I have been awake since 5am.
My mind has gone into overdrive lately, there are a lot of changes happening at work and I can't say I am overly happy right now, sticking it out until September twenty twelve may be much more of a difficult task. In theory I could leave as early as September next year, though it would mean a much smaller budget and less travel time of course.
I have been reading and watching accounts of trips others have done quite a lot over the past few months. I have watched Charley Boorman and Ewan Mcgregor's 'Long way round' and 'Long way down' as well as Boorman's 'By any means' which is pretty similar in a lot of ways to the route I am planning to take. A lot of the countries he went through which I am not planning to go to are ones I have seriously considered and have not yet ruled out, it does depend on circumstances though.
France: Money
China: Bureaucracy
Iran: Visa situation
Australia: Time
The other issue I have with Australia is it is the standard 'gap year' destination all the rich kids from the UK go to when they finish school and if I were to go there now I would like to do something different to that and researching that to fit in with a trip of this magnitude would take too much planning and might well be too much hassle at the end of the day. I'd love to go China but getting a visa for that as well as India might be complex due to the time I'd spend in Europe, I have also heard prices are set to sky rocket along with the economy over the next few years and I cannot afford another expensive destination being added to the trip. France and Iran are more feasible, if I can save a little extra France can be done and if an Iranian visa can be obtained in Istanbul and I have the time then why not. Apparantly Boorman and Mcgregor are planning to do 'Long way up' in 2011 which I believe will see them cycle from Patagonia to Alaska, will be interesting to see if they try and cross the Darien gap.
I am feeling the tiredness now so I will leave you either for my bed or a cup of strong coffee, maybe both
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