Joe's Travels

On my way

glax21 — Sun, 13 May 2007 13:43:00 GMT

So I've just finished my packing (with lots of help from my mom) and I'm one nights sleep away from leaving. I'll be heading to National Airport in DC at 130 for my 330 flight to Boston. After a couple hour layover I'll be on my way to Dublin on Aer Lingus and if all goes well langing at 530 the following morning.

These last few days have been a blur. Thursday and Friday I was cramming for and taking my last two college exams. Then I had to pack up my apartment in Charlottesville and head home to northern Virginia. Saturday has been devoted to getting the last few things I needed for my trip and a lot of packing. I can't believe I'm less than a day away from flying out.

Since my last post things have changed a bit. I never was able to get the Uzbek visa so I bought a ticket from Istanbul to Bangkok. After 2 months in Europe with Emily she'll fly back to the US and I'll spend another 2 or so months around SE Asia, hopefully with a visit from my dad. Despite all that excitement, right now I'm very much focused on Ireland. I think it is going to be amazing and I can't wait to start exploring.

My next post will be one from the road and hopefully a whole lot more interesting as a result. But before I end this one I want to thank my parents for making this trip possible. They know how much of a dream come true this is for me and the fact that they're allowing me to do this means so much.

Now, I'm off...

Moving Forward

glax21 — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 13:14:00 GMT

This past Monday I made my first move in solidifying the second half of my trip. I went to the Embassy of Uzbekistan in Washington with my visa application. All went amazingly smoothly. I was applying with my Irish passport, which the embassy's website says is not exempt from needing a letter of invitation (basically a $30 piece of paper from a tour company that says they want you to come). The embassy didn't seem to mind and let me apply without the letter. Saving $30 and more importantly a fair bit of time and headaches I should be on my way to securing my first of 5 visas. They told me it would take 2 weeks to process which seemed slow, but after already waiting for 30 minutes before anyone talked to me at the consulate I wasn't about to complain.

The other visas I need to get are for Kyrgyzstan, China, Pakistan, and India. I've prioritized them in the order of Uz, China, India, Pak, Kyrgyz as to which I want to get in the US. I figure the Krygyz and Pakistan visas would be fairly easy to obtain in Tashkent, but whatever I can do before I leave makes life easier. Extra special thanks to my dad for volunteering to run around DC with my passport over this next month.

So, since getting this visa (assuming I don't get rejected) I really feel like I've cemented my path. This is definitely a step I needed to take because I've been waffling way too much lately. Now I can reallly focus on the trip at hand and make it as memorable and valuable as possible. I've been doing all sorts of research on all fronts to maximize my learning and enjoyment.

All I can think about is getting on that plane and heading to Ireland. I've got just over one month to go. Its been hard these last few months. So much anticipation of graduating college, traveling the world, and of course reuniting with Emily. I honestly can't imagine a more perfect way to spend the next chapter of my life.

First-steps

glax21 — Tue, 3 Apr 2007 05:10:00 GMT

I've been planning this trip for a really long time. In a lot of ways the idea came to me about 2 summers ago. I'd just gotten back from my semester abroad in Europe and had been able to do a lot of travelling, particularly in the central part of the continent. After returning to the US hardly a week passed before I was ready to go again. I was fortunate to have a few other trips with my dad, but the urge to really get out there stuck with me.

I've always enjoyed planning out hypothetical trips. I've got one through Central America, another in South-East Asia, and a few through different parts of Africa. However, the mother of all these trips and the one that I focused most upon was through Asia. I had planned a large (very large) circle starting and ending in Istanbul. It would start across Turkey and the Caucasus to the 'Stans, India, up into China and SE Asia, and then up to Bejing for the Trans-Mongolian, before finishing with a jaunt down eastern Europe back to Istanbul. Talk about epic. Obviously, this trip is a pipe-dream that would require a bare minimum of a year to do it any justice.

My girlfriend Emily left in January for a semester abroad in Berlin. Two of the biggest things in my life right now are her and this trip and combining them was a dream of mine. For me, there is nothing in my mind more romantic than discovering the world with someone that you love. As we won't have seen each other in nearly 5 months, I wanted to see her as soon as possible. We both wanted to travel together and she really wanted to go to Ireland. I thought this was an amazing idea and bought a one-way ticket to Dublin as soon as I possibly could. I leave May 13th and that is when this trip really begins.

I forced a compromise out of her (it was very easily done) and we agreed to spend 3 weeks in Ireland and the next 5 in the Balkan peninsula. This is an area that I am extremely interested in ever since getting a small taste of what Croatia and Slovenia had to offer on a previous trip. We bought one way tickets from Dublin to Pula, Croatia for the beginning of June with the goal of reaching Istanbul by July 11th, when Emily flies back home via Berlin.

After Emily leaves I'm not sure what I will do. That has been where most of planning has taken place and over and over again I've changed my mind. The next post will hopefully provide a bit of clarification on just where that'll be.

First off, I will describe what I do know before finalizing this post. As I said I have a plane ticket to Dublin on May 13th. I arrive at 530 in the morning of the 14th and Emily arrives around 10am that same morning. From there we have booked our first two nights at a B&B near the monastic ruins in Glendalough. Since we've been apart for so long we've decided to pamper ourselves in a nice place, but there won't be much more of this as the trip wears on. We'll pick up some provisions and do a bit of sight-seeing that first morning in Dublin before catching a late bus to the town that our room is in.

From there, we know that we'll fly to Croatia on June 5th. Our plan is to spend about 10-12 days in Croatia with about a week of that on one or more of the islands. Then we want to hit the cities of Sarajevo and Belgrade while potentially visiting Transylvania and parts of Bulgaria. However, nothing here is firm.

I recently got an Irish passport, so once I get to Turkey I will switch over to using it instead of my American one. The main reason for this is that it will (hopefully) be cheaper and easier to acquire visas to the countries I'll be going to. As of now, my final route is flying from Istanbul to Tashkent, Uzbekistan and continuing overland from there to Delhi, India while visiting Krygyzstan, western China, Pakistan enroute. All of these countries require visas and the next step in my planning will be to acquire some of them before leaving.