|
I am in London where my backpack trip starts, if staying with friends before our outbound flight is called backpacking. I am not sure. My flight leaves from London HR to Mumbai, India on Thursday and although I am leaving on Thursday, I am in London to do my bits and pieces like visit work and visit friends E.x. I need to collect the new visa credit card. Security in HSBC is this good, that for the cardholder it is the hardest to get to his money. Also I want to see a friend that I will meet with in Bangalore in May, and last but not least, I need to buy me a raincoat.
Many people ask me whether I have a time credit at Red Hat but unfortunately that does not exist in the UK. (time credit is a Belgian thing, it gives you the right to take time off under T&Cs, and your employer pays you 500 euro every month, and they are by law enforced to grant you this time credit; SMELL that !! surprised me as well have to admit). What does exist in the UK, is unpaid leave. With the remark that only when a position is open, they take you back on board. In small letters you can think that a job has to be vacant. (In small letters you can also think that if they did not like your way of working or attitude, they can refuse to take you back as well). I will hope hard a position will be vacant when I come back, otherwise I need to go somewhere else. (Or you can say that hope they really liked my work attitude!)
In London I am staying with my ex-flatmates where we get along with great. (Thank you Pria & Grant). They are an Australian Indian couple so at is a great starter to get insights on our trip. Those are 2 countries that we take a lot of time out to visit. And do they like to talk a lot about their me countries, culture and everything. As much as I like to talk about Belgian beer, Bruges, friends, frites and which topping goes best with them.Curry ketchup if you have doubts J We will meet with family of theirs in New Delhi and we will see each other in Sydney for new year.
Mybackpackroute. Bea and me have agreed the main route more or less. Big pieces of the route are stolen from books and internet. The people from the adventure store wouldnt be impressed when I told them I was copying the not to be missed sections and was handdrawing maps from them.
Mumbai, 9th of April, kick off. Mumbai, Indias biggest city, is our best destination to go south to Goa, Kerala and Cape Comorin. From there we go 4,000 km by train back north to Delhi and Nepal. Time estimate is 2 months. Over de friendship highway, the route goes from Kathmandu to Tibet. Form of transport we are still unsure about, bus I guess. In Tibet we take the train through China to Beijing. (http://www.chinatibettrain.com/beijinglhasa.htm) Time estimate 2 months further we are, and up north in China. That will be the most northern we will go in China because otherwise it will take us to far off the South East Asia bit. South East Asia we will do in 2 months as well.
Being a big gate to cross continents, Singapore is our way to go to Australia and New Sealand. I say OZ and NZ because it depends on our budget whether we go to New Zealand.
That is pretty much what is planned so far and South America is an option after Australia, as much as Japan and Indonesia are places we would like to go. It is all open!
-----------------------------
Wish me safe travels. Like my father says the world is crazy and I say I will have seen it.
If you want to see us in London before we go, we will be 2,5 hours before our flight in LHR terminal 3. 2,5 hours that means 7h30 tomorrow morning, go for it!
Thats about it for my first blog. We think we are ready and the bag is packed. Buena suerte!
Klaas
*source: bbc.co.uk
|
