Peering through the gloom at the rain bouncing off of the patio from the warmth and dryness of our kitchen, it feels more like April than mid July. Never-the-less, this continuation of the awful summer of 2008 gave Karen and me the opportunity to spend time thinking about our plans. Huddled around the laptop, we spent a couple of hours Googling random travel related searches. But this wasn’t as unstructured as it sounds. After all, we had the notes that we made at the pub the previous month which described how we wanted to feel about the trip:Life changing experience
Challenging
Culturally diverse
Outside our comfort zone
Live and travel like locals
Have a story to tell
Simple existence
I think we had decided on Asia at a very early stage of our planning. It certainly ticked many of our boxes. Despite our travel history to date, Asia was still pretty unknown to us. Sure we had both travelled to India on business and yes we have been to places like Singapore and Hong Kong on holiday, but we wanted to see the ‘real’ 'Asia. The Asia of the spiritualist, the simplist, the culturist and the gastronomist.
Karen read aloud from the contents of a web page. She had found an article describing how it was possible to travel from Moscow to China on the “Trans Mongolian Express”. The intensity of our Googling increased and within half an hour we had it.
We were to embark on a 12,000 mile overland trip from Steeple Morden to Bangkok travelling through Western Europe, Poland, Belarus, the Russian Federation, Mongolia, China, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand; utilising public transport and staying with local families wherever possible. Game On!
