Daniel Kondra

Wheres Dan

Daniel Kondra

I have been dreaming of traveling the world for some time now and we are finally taking the plunge and not letting work or other commitments get in the way.
My wife and I have been together for almost 17years meeting when she was only 16 and I 18years old. We were sick of people saying they were going to do this and that but never actually take the steps to for fill there dreams. One thing I have learned from others is to travel before you start a family so that is what we are doing. Deciding to leave children till later on we are now in a rush to carryout our dream before the clock stops ticking; well not for me but my wife.

Follow me and my wife as we travel for two years non stop around the world through some of the most beautiful, polluted, highest, lowest, driest, wettest, religious and weirdest countries in the world.

My blog is called "wheres Dan" you can read about our adventures, what we have done, where we have been or just use it as a guide to you next destination.






Europe » Germany » Bavaria » Rosenheim August 28th 2010

27/8/10: Today was a day of rest. We went out to Walters’s campervan business (Fabian’s Father) so we could look at our new camper van. We pulled into an industrial estate then into the drive of Schrempf and Lahm Campervans. Our van was parked outside, we were both excited to see it. The van turned out to be better than we had hoped; even though it was old it was clean and had been really looked after. We sorted out some of the finer details of the van and before we knew it I was taking it for a test drive around the car park. It was really weird driving on the opposite side to what we drive in Australia, not so much the fact that I was on the wrong side of the road but ... read more
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Schrempf and Lahm inside
Our van

Europe » Germany » Bavaria » Rosenheim August 28th 2010

28/8/10: Today was the day for Oktober fest. We arrived at the tents around 1:30pm, all the tables were pre-booked, it was looking like we were going to have to drink fast before we were kicked off our borrowed table. While we were waiting people were posing for photos in front of the first keg of beer. Fabian asked if we wanted a photo, me not being shy in front of a crowd got up and posed for a photo, I held the tap while Jacinta pretended to knock it into the barrel with the wooden mallet. It made for a fine photo but it was a better photo with the Aussie flag that we had carried with us the whole way. I whipped the flag out of my pocket and we both held it up. ... read more
In the German/Australian paper
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Europe » Germany » Bavaria » Rosenheim August 25th 2010

25/8/10: Well, I only slept for 2hrs on the flight to AbuDhabi; I was not tired and just could not sleep. I stayed up and watched a few movies until 5am in the morning. We landed just at the break of dawn. We stepped out of the plane at 6:00am into 34deg of heat, then onto an airport bus. I was looking out the window while holding the grab rail when a Chinese man hocked up a loogy and spat it on the floor of the bus. I had had enough at this point of people in China or Asia for that fact spitting in full view or at the base of your feet. I was sure I would never see or hear it again after leaving Beijing but this man proved me wrong. I can ... read more
On the plane
coming in for landing
Dinner with the Schrempfs

Asia » China » Beijing » Great Wall of China August 24th 2010

THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA (To keep the rabbits out) 24/8/10: We were up at 7:00am, packed our packs, dumped them into the store room and hurried to the Subway. We had to catch the subway to the main bus station so we could catch the 916 bus to take us an hour out of Beijing. When we travelled through the city I could not believe how bad the pollution was. It was the worst I have seen since Delhi. We didn’t notice the pollution when we first arrived because they had just had two days of rain that cleaned the sky’s, now with fine weather and no wind the pollution was left to build giving us only 300-400meters of visibility. We got off at the first bus stop an hour later. We were approached by ... read more
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Asia » China » Beijing » Forbidden City August 21st 2010

21/8/10: We flew from Urumqi to Beijing. The flight cost us a fortune 2100yuan each. We had to fly because all the train tickets were booked out. We arrived at 1:00am in the morning. As we waited for our baggage I realised that my Aussie hat and sun glasses were missing. I had the airport lost and found ring our plane but there was no sign of the hat. I was upset more about the glasses than the hat as there was a new shipment being sent to our friend in Germany. We had to pay 100yuan to get to the hostel, all the public transport closed at 11:00pm, again we forked our more money. By the time we were in bed it was 2:30am. 22/8/10: I had a great sleep in the air-conditioning but for ... read more
main building
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gates

Asia » China » Xinjiang » Turpan August 14th 2010

TURPAN 150m below sea level 14/8/10: We caught the bus back to Urumqi at 11:00am. It was going to be another 24+hour hot and sweaty bus journey back to Urumqi, the bus companies are too tight too use the A.C. We both listened to audio books. 15/8/10: We arrived at Urumqi around 12:00 midday. We quickly brought another bus ticket to Turpan getting on the bus within minutes. The bus took two hours to reach Turpan. Straight off the bus we were approached by a guy that runs day trips. We took a card anyway uninterested in the day trip that cost 80yuan each for a full day. We tried to get a room in the Turpan hotel, this was supposed to be the cheapest option. We asked how much a room was, knowing that another ... read more
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Asia » China » Xinjiang » Urumqi August 7th 2010

KASHGAR 7/6/10: We got up around 7:00am, we packed up checked out and caught a bus to the bus station. We bought tickets to Kashgar and left at 12:00 midday. The bus was a sleeper bus, I don't know why they call them a sleeper buses, just because they have beds doesn't mean you sleep, in fact, in all the sleeper bus we have been in we have not slept once. What made it worse was they didn't turn the AC on because they were to much of a tight arse. All the bus companies are owned by tight Chinese bosses that don't want to fork out extra fuel for air conditioning. It ended up being 35C in a bus that didn’t have any opening windows because the AC was supposed to be on at ll ... read more
Jacinta in the bus
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Wind farm

Asia » China » Xinjiang » Urumqi August 1st 2010

FOLLOWING THE SILK ROAD 1/8/10: We had to wake up early to sort out tickets to Urumqi. We both had a shitty sleep and still couldn’t believe we had to pay that much for a room, especially since it had no AC. It was 7:30 by the time we made it to the ticketing area. We weren’t even sure it was going to be open. When we walked into the building our jaws dropped to the ground. There must have been 20 ticketing booths with lines more the 40m long. Jacinta had suddenly realized that she should have gotten out of bed earlier. We lined up in the number one isle and waited and waited, we finally got to the ticket booth and they told us we were in the wrong land, f#$& f#$^. We weren’t ... read more
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Asia » China July 28th 2010

28/7/10: We met some other fellow travelers in the common room, an English couple, a Swedish guy and of course Nat and Dan and Jacinta and I. The Swedish guy was hard to understand but he could speak and read Chinese and was the only one with a map of Xian, we all followed him as he seemed to know where and what he was doing. We relied on him to get us to the train station were all the buses were located to take us to the Terracotta Warriors. One hour later we were lost, nowhere near the bus station and in fact we were 4km away. Once we knew where the hell we were we walked back to the train station for fear of getting on the wrong bus again. It was hot, and ... read more
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Asia » China » Chongqing July 25th 2010

25/7/10: The morning was raining cats and dogs. We caught a taxi each to the train station to go to ChongQing. The train was new and we realized why the tickets cost so much after we hit 200km/hour. It was hard to find cheap accommodation but luckily we found a nice room at the Seven Days Inn for 150yuan fitting four of us in one room. We had to sort out our next train journey to Xian but were undecided if we were to stay to see the Three Gorges Dam. It turned out that the only way to see the dam was by boat costing 800yuan each for the bed only, then we would have had to pay for tickets and food on top of this. Regrettably we decided against the seeing the dam choosing ... read more
Ethnic clothing
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