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Published: June 25th 2010
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Wow, how quickly time flies! It’s been nearly 2 years since our last blog entry. So much has happened since returning from Africa. While it’s been a great couple of years back in the real world, we’re super excited about being able to resume our Travelblog with a new journey that’s about to begin.
Almost from the day we got home from our amazing African adventure we’ve been talking about what our next trip will be (when, where, how long etc.).
Once we hit the ‘3 month mark’ it was especially difficult being home. This is when we began to really miss the traveling lifestyle. The novelty of ‘home’ had worn off and conveniences like: hot showers, fast internet, and regular pay cheques had become the norm and expected.
We occupied our time with preparing a savings plan and hoped that one day we would be able to have the guts to leave again on another extended trip of a life time. This meant resisting the temptations of home ownership and other tie downs (this was not always an easy thing to do).
Not all was bad, we enjoyed our summer at home in the Canadian Rockies
very much and took full advantage of as many weekends as possible going on various back country camping trips along with a fantastic week long kayaking trip on the West Coast of BC.
During the summer is when Jordan surprised Kathie by proposing during a weekend away. She said yes, of course.
Next chapter
One day in January 2010, with job uncertaintly looming, Kathie was innocently looking at the Dragoman brochure and suddenly said, “hey Jordan, can you check to see if there is any space on the IKX trip leaving Aug 5?” And that’s where it all started… We looked harder at our budget, revisited our bank balances, and sure enough it was within reach. We decided to go for it! That afternoon we headed to the Travel Agent and put the deposit down. Done! ...Yeah! Aug 5-Oct 27 we’re going overland from Istanbul to Xi’an.
Yikes, it didn’t leave us much time as it was already the end of January and we needed to plan a wedding (condition of next trip - Kathie wanted to be married) and make arrangements for our new exciting extended honeymoon.
After much debating about what type of wedding
Laryx Lake
In Sunshine Meadows we wanted (quiet mountain setting vs. morning ceremony with brunch/picnic vs. evening ceremony with a BBQ) the date was set for June 18th and the details sort of fell into place.
Tentatively our honeymoon itinerary is as follows:
1. Fly to Vienna, spend a few days there, take the train to Istanbul, and spend a few days there - this little European bit will be like our ‘real’ honeymoon.
2. Overland Istanbul - Xi’an (with Dragoman) finishing Oct 27, 2010.
3. Explore China (including Beijing) for roughly 90 days on our own
4. Fly to New Zealand; spend approximately 6 weeks hiking around New Zealand.
5. Then head over to Australia, rent/buy a campervan and tour around Australia for about 3 months
6. Then if we still have money left over, fly back to SE Asia, hang out there for a few months during monsoon season.
7. Fly into Chengdu and take the train to Tibet, spend a few days there, take a bus tour into Nepal, and then make our way around India. Including with any luck the Pushkar camel festival in November.
8. Fly home when the money is gone
So our blog nickname AfricaBound,
while fitting for our last trip, was obviously short sighted based on our new destinations. We’ve decided not to change it as it’s recognizable by all our family/friends/fans.
Stay tuned...
Kathie and Jordan
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AnnaAdventuring
Anna Louise
Good to see you're off again! I'll look forward to the new blogs! All the best with your plans. :)