Singapore,
Singapore
Thursday, September 6, 2007
I named this entry "assess, think, act" because I am all over the place, really excited about the trip and not preparing it as much as I probably should. In my head it was take the bike and go! But as I'm getting ready to roll, I've been hearing stories from a lot of people from all over the world and not one story matches! So I'm starting to get confused...Visa in advance or not? Able to enter the country or not? Safe or not?...So I decided to sit down, relax and go trough the whole check list again. I'm getting more spares, doing more research on the internet on the places I will be going and finally...I will be getting visas! One of the exciting things about the trip was to leave without visas in advance and improvise as I go along. But beeing limited in time and hearing stories about super long lead time before getting visas, I decided that it was compulsory for me to get at least visas for India, Pakistan and Iran. The 3 critical points if I want to have a chance to complete my journey and respect my time frame knowing that I'll get enough time waisting with checkpoints and at the borders...My departure date is approaching and I must rush a bit to get those 3 visas on my passport and increase my chances of reaching France before the Beijing olympique games...Hopefully I'll manage to get the visas on time...Otherwise well...just go and "Insha'Allah"...
Little detail, I haven't told you guys yet but there might be a slight change on the itinary when I reach Turkey...All depends on the finance and how the trip will go but I will see if I do a slight detour to Syria, Jordania and egypt before heading back the same way but adding Lebanon on the way back to Turkey...Hmmm it's maybe a 5000 km detour to see the pyramids...Jokes apart, I heard that Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt are absolutely stunning countries and if I decide to take the detour I will probably have to sacrifice a bit of Europe to be back on time. For those of you that are familiar with the middle-east region you can see that I am going around Israel...Apparently, the Israeli stamp on passports are not very welcomed in Syria, which in my case would not allow me to get back to Turkey...
