We're almost ready! After months of "thinking about it" and planning, it's time to actually go! We depart on the red-eye on Weds night Sep 28 for our first segment of our journey. This is "RTW-Eastbound"; the planned itinerary for this section is:
- a week and a half in exotic South Carolina to visit family and attend a wedding
- fly to Cairo, Egypt
- 2 weeks on a Geckos Adventures tour of Egypt & Jordan, visiting the pyramids, valley of the kings, Aswan, climbing Mt. Sinai, visiting Petra, and ending in Amman
- fly to Dakar, Senegal
- 5 weeks on a Dragoman camping adventure through Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, & Ghana, visiting Dakar, Ile de Goree, Timbuktu (gotta love that), a 3-day trek visiting the Dogon cliff-dwellings, the Djenne mosque (the largest mud-brick building in the world), the vibrant music of Ouagadougou, the beaches of Ghana, ending in Accra.
- fly to Dubai, UAE
- 4 days relaxing in the "Las Vegas" of the Middle East. Hmmmm, think about that one...
- fly to Delhi, India
- 2 weeks in northern India, visiting Delhi, the Taj Mahal, the pink city of Jaipur, the holy city of Varanasi on the river Ganges, and staying out of the way of the crazy traffic!
- fly via Hong Kong back to SFO on Dec 26th
After that, the plan is:
Jan 9 - fly to Santiago, Chile
- Then 7 weeks in another Dragoman overland adventure from Chile to the tip of South America, back up the eastern coast, visiting Buenos Aires and ending in Rio just in time for Carnaval! Crazy!
Mar 1 - fly to wild Texas to visit Nathan's family
Mar 6 - fly home to SFO
And after THAT, the plan is more fuzzy, but generally:
late Mar - fly to Bangkok
- Spend about a month in Indochina
- 2-3 weeks in China
- possible volunteer work with tsunami reconstruction in Sri Lanka
- volunteer scientific work with the UN & CDC on climate variability impacts on agriculture, water resources, and malaria prevalence in Kenya, Ghana, or Mauritius
- mission work with Hope Enterprises in Ethiopia. Hope is a NGO which runs schools, feeding programs, and other services for the urban and rural poor in Ethiopia.
- come home sometime in late 2006
Whew! We get tired just looking at the plan, and we haven't even left yet! Estimated duration 1 year, estimated mileage 90,000+. We'll keep you updated via this travelog whenever we can find an internet connection!
Nathan & Anna
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