Preparations for the big trip
Trip Start
May 25, 2008
1
19
Trip End
Jul 27, 2008
Sydney,
New South Wales,
Australia
Saturday, May 24, 2008
The last time we were in Turkey was 1977, when we were travelling overland by public transport, before Lonely Planet books for the area existed. Instead, we had the "Bit Book", some roneoed sheets picked up in London. I suspect we will notice some changes!
We booked two tours with Dragoman (Istanbul to Ashgabat and Ashgabat to Tashkent) over 15 weeks before departure, and made final payment 13 weeks before. Since then, we have been trying to get information about our trip, including visa information. They say they give you an "advance information dossier" with confirmation of booking, and trip update and joining instructions 8 weeks before departure.
After repeated queries from me and my travel agent, Dragoman eventually forwarded forms to be returned to them in connection with LOI's (Letters of Introduction) etc, 9 weeks before the trip departed, despite them saying on the form that it needed to be sent back to them 11 weeks before departure. As we are in Australia, all information had to be sent to London, and our passports had to be sent there to get our visas once the LOI came through, so you would expect them to forward the information to us earlier rather than later.
With only 6 weeks to go, and no information except what they have on their webpage, we were really starting to worry.
With 5 and a half weeks to go, Dragoman finally sent us most of the information ( including the very important details about which visas we HAD to have before we started, and which ones we could get along the way). Unfortunately they still didn't send us the information necessary to fill in the visa forms (such as entry/exit points, name and address of accommodation, sponsors etc). After more emails, this finally arrived the next week, and our passports were sent to London.
Well, with five days before we were leaving (3 working days) our passports finally arrived back in Australia with their visas! Doesn't exactly make for a relaxing pre-departure! We sent all forms back the day we received them, so definitely wasn't our fault. We are normally budget travellers, but can afford to spend more if we need to, so could handle the A$970 bill for Uzbek and Turkmenistan visas for two (still to pay for the LOI), but others booking from Australia could find this a bit of a shock! None of the documentation prepared us for this sort of bill.
Two weeks before we left one of our close friends died of cancer, and in the month before we left Dianne had laser eye surgery, and had a bit of a reaction to the eye drops, which slowed her recovery; she wacked her elbow and developed bursitis, and possibly as a result of all these hassles, developed high blood pressure.
We had to rescue Murray's lathe from the Central Coast in the last week (the house where it has resided for the last ten years is being sold), and he has also been heavily involved in organising all the technical detail involved in cutting a friend's vintage wooden yacht into two pieces to send it to Thailand in a container, where it is going to be rebuilt.
We're definitely looking forward to a stiff drink when we get on the plane!
