travel plans for the next couple of months
In exactly one month and two hours, I will be on a plane bound for Bangkok, and from there Kathmandu in Nepal. Ok, that’s not exactly correct. In exactly one month and two hours I will be on a plane bound for an irritating, one hour stopover in Brisbane, during which I will be required to get off the plane and sit in The Most Boring Place on Earth, the Brisbane International Airport Departures Terminal. How do I know it’s the most boring place on earth? I took the same route to Bangkok in September. Same flight number and everything.
But I digress. I never expected this to be my official year of travel, mainly because I never expected to be sent to the USA for work. I had always planned on going to Cambodia this year - that was decided mid-last year when I was still pinning away for South East Asia after my trip to Vietnam in January.
Nepal and India are a slightly unexpected turn of events. I had always planned to visit both countries, but certainly not this year. I had actually intended to go to Europe for Christmas, and spend New Year’s Eve in Amsterdam with my good friend from the UK, Dawn. Then fuel prices skyrocketed, and there was no way I could afford the taxes on a long-haul ticket from Australia. Somehow, another good friend and I had suddenly decided to go to Nepal, and within a few weeks, we’d booked our tickets.
So, come December 18, I will be departing Sydney bound for Kathmandu. Kathmandu is a bit of a holy grail for me - I can’t think about it without imagining the hippy trail of the 1970s, and wishing it had been me, arriving emaciated and exhausted from the Middle East in an overland truck. From Kathmandu we’ll travel overland through the Terai, and into India. No trekking in Nepal this time round - that’s a trip for the not-too-distant future (though I am hoping to do a scenic flight of the Himalayas from KTM with the exotically-named Buddha Air). Stops in India include Varanasi, Agra and Delhi, amongst others. I am terrified and excited about India all at once.
Surely if I can survive India, I can survive anywhere?
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