It seemed like a good idea at the time

A hot, lazy Saturday afternoon in Melbourne.

My last big trip in 2007 was inadequately recorded by email, camera, diary and souvenirs.  When I came to put the pieces together a year later, it was a nightmare.  So this time I will try to do a blog.

As an aid to anyone thinking of doing a long trip, I thought it might be helpful to post my experiences.  After all, I've done this before — I must have learned something.  I'll try to place my topics under appropriate subheadings to make it easier to follow.

Planning

I started planning the trip in the last quarter of 2009.  My earliest plans were simply a set of options with rough lists of countries, durations and budgets.  Ultimately my choices boiled down to:

• two or three months in South East Asia, as far north as south China; or
  
• six or seven months in Asia, from Almaty to Indonesia; or
  
• ten months in Africa, from Cairo to Cape Town.

Surprise!  The trip that finally emerged was none of the above.  It's eleven months in Asia, from Turkey to Timor Leste.  When I weighed up cost, convenience and timing, South East Asia was not enough, Africa was too much, and the parachuting into Kazakhstan was outweighed by the convenient timing of Anzac Day.

Once that decision was made I began sketching in more details.

The countries came first.  I mixed and matched.  What follows is not my original notion, it's wat I was left after I did a reality check on that notion.

• Australia – Melbourne to Istanbul one-way
  
• Turkey – Istanbul to Gallipoli, down the Aegean and Mediterranean coasts, then a hook across to the Black Sea coast
• Georgia (west)
• Armenia
• Georgia (east)
• Azerbaijan – cross the Caspian to Kazakhstan
  
• Kazahstan
• Uzbekistan
• Turkmenistan
• Afghanistan
• Tajikistan
• Kyrgyzstan
• China (west)
  
• Monglioa
• China (east), including excursions to Hong Kong and Macau
• Vietnam
• Cambodia
• Laos
• Thailand (north)
  
• Mynamar
• Thailand (south)
• Malaysia
• Singapore
• Indonesia
• Timor Leste – Dili to Darwin
  
• Australia – Darwin to Melbourne

As I filled in the details the trip expanded, from an initial seven or eight months to eleven.  The real limit this time is not time but money and Passport pages.

Execution

To date I have:

• booked my flight to Istanbul (it wasn't going to get any cheaper)
  
• booked a hotel in Istanbul (to save the hassle of finding a room while jetlagged)
  
• booked my Anza Day tour (because doing Gallipoli independently on Anzac day is a nightmare)
  

That's nearly all the advance bookings I will make.  Since Azerbaijan has nasty visa regulations I am considering buying my Azeri visa before I go.  I don't need visas for Turkey or Georgia, and the Armenian visa is available at the border.  Kazakhstan I'll take care of in Georgia or Azerbaijan.

And that's it.