Voyage Of The Odd Essay

Time is ticking away far quicker then I’d really given thought to, and today marks the point where I have just 2 months left in the UK before I start my trip around South East Asia arriving in Bangkok on the 1st of December.

I’ve done the final juggling of money to get my finances in order and know where I’m at with my initial budget; Which hasn’t gone quiet as well as I’d hoped and my rather optomistic plans of carrying on to India, or even back home in May and then a brief Eurotrip before back out to India June/July are now very much in peril and more dependent on getting some money while I’m on the road.

But that’s okay, that is still a long way in the future and the whole reason for getting a one way ticket out to South East Asia in the first place was so I could make up plans as I go along, and so while yesterday I was feeling a little glum as I mulled over my plans, I’m now back on track and focused on the matter in hand. Thailand and beyond is going to be Awesome, and the tighter budget will keep my eye on the ball as far as developing my websites and writing that I plan on leveraging to bring in some extra pennies while on the move around the globe.

The next big milestone will be handing in my notice, which will have to wait until my boss is actually in the office, so either Friday, or Monday. It’ll actually be a shame to call it a day on my current project, but we’ve got to the end of the current phase of development, and the website has hit 1.8 Million page views in September, and we are projecting 2.5 Million for October. Nice figures to have on my CV should I go looking for another development job after traveling, and I don’t feel like I’m leaving anything unfinished.

It’s less then three months now before I finally set off on my travels, and life for me is currently insanely busy as I constantly keep trying to take advantage of each and every oportunity for fun that comes up. Hence I haven’t had much time to sit down and do updates about my trip to Sweden, Amsterdam or pretty much anything else. (In short: Sweden was Awesome, Amsterdam was crazy, my planned trip to Finland is off the list due to cost, but other then that life is Ace)

The biggest change of late is my overall plan of Travel, it turns out that on July 22nd 2009 the longest total eclipse of the sun take place, which will be visible from Northen India. It seems insane to travel to India just before this, and then leave so now I’m all but commited to doing 3 months in India, comming home at the start of August. This pushes my plan up to a whole nine months of travel. For some reason, this seems a lot more daunting then six months did, in part because India is still a mystery to me, I have very little knowledge of the country other then a list of two places I want to visit, one in the north, one in the south, and a rough plan of getting the train from north to South, and back again which – for reasons I can’t place – seems to be the thing to do.

Several people have made comments about the fact they don’t expect me to come back at the end of the nine months, and to be honest I might not, I’ve got a few web projects that if successful will keep me on the road that bit longer, and recent conversations have turned up some interesting possibilities, and of course WWOOFing is an option I’m keeping in mind. My overall aim is to craft out a lifestyle that will let me keep travelling and visit friends and family back home in the UK. The latter been the more tricky part, Europe as a whole is expensive, and far away from the places I want to travel around, so the biggest cost is always going to be getting home, and then back out again to travel some where interesting. I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it however.

In the background everything is ticking towards my launch pretty well, I have spreadsheets set up for juggling visa dates to make sure I’m actually in the right country for certain events, and my master packing list is polishing up nicely. With my birthday coming up I’m hoping to pick up a last few items, and I’ve decided to go with bigger of my choice of backpacks because it has more pockets and organisational options. More on my packing plans later thought.

More posts as time allows, but regular posting won’t start until 1st of December when I’ll have all the time in the world.