The adventure continues, and we haven't even left yet

Visas.

Visas, visas, visas.

Tickets we can do. Malarone, bandages, warm wooly hats, spare shoelaces, jabs in the posterior, growing a beard to keep warm, booking dingy hostels, all this we can do. But visas...

Before we leave, we need to get permission to enter and exit Belarus, Russia, Mongolia, China and Vietnam. Most of them are a matter of money, time and patience, as well as giving some paper-pushing yoke your life story. Russia though is a different kettle of vodka.

First you need to be invited to Russia. This was news to us when we rang the embassy, and when asked "how do we get invited, how do we get into Russia", the Russian Embassy told us they couldn't tell us that. Fantastic.

It seems the post-communist system is red-taped and red-squared up to the gills and beauracracy is convoluted and unavoidable. The Government allows certain agencies, hotels and companies to issue an invite to the country which will allow you to acquire a Visa. This can be done by booking the most expensive hotels, or going with a dodgy agency to book your tour, or pay some online company £15-20 to send you an email invite which supposedly will get you in. Dodgy as...

I liked a comment I read about the "new" Russia after the fall of communism. "It hasn't yet gotten to the point that the authorities, police and populace have realised that capitalism isn't all about ripping off everyone who crosses your path". Should make for an interesting leg of the journey.

Recipe for travel

Take two wayward architects, add a dash of mid-life, mid-career (after 2 years on the job) crises, a hell of a lot of saving, a notion to leave it all behind, and a load of tickets, visas and jabs, mix thoroughly for a few months and you end up with a pair of stressed, unemployed, homeless, excited travellers heading east, onward and upward and all the rest.

We decided to head off at the end of Summer 2007. We got the bug in Summer 2004 when we did a 4 month trip of the US, Fiji, NZ, Australia and a lot of SouthEast Asia. This time we decided to go the other direction, with a vague plan to make the journey to Australia without resorting to planes. It's important to us to see the world go by as we travel, to get a real sense of the places and people we meet, to see the difference in every thousand miles travelled, the landscape, the environment. No London-Bangkok flights for us, oh no.


The plan evolved with the notion of getting a ferry to France, picking up a car then heading east across Europe. The car will be dropped in Paris where we'll jump on a train to Cologne, and then another train that will take us through Germany, Poland, Belarus and on to Moscow where we will hopefully meet Donagh and possibly kip on his couch. After a few days in Moscow we'll be getting on a sleeper train to begin the Trans-Siberian route to Mongolia, stopping off at Irkutsk on Lake Baikal on the way. After treks, tours and vodka in some remote village, we'll head on to Ulan Batar, capital of Mongolia, for some more frozen fun (-18degrees!). The last leg will take us past the Great Wall and into Beijing. From here we'll be grabbing an overnight train to Xi'an to meet up with Rong and the family and then we are off to Shanghai and down the coast to Hong Kong and Guangzhou. The last bit we have planned properly is the train to Hanoi, into Vietnam where we plan to spend a lot of time touring, relaxing, swimming and lazing around sipping the local nectar.

After Vietnam it's on to Cambodia, back to Siem Reap and the stunning ruins of Angkor Wat, then on to Laos, Thailand (Pattaya where we will meet up with uncle Cathal, Bangkok and ChiangMai), Malaysia, Singapore, ferry to Indonesia, somehow get to Bali then on to Darwin on a ferry.

From Darwin we'll be training to Alice Springs then on to see Uluru (Ayers Rock), then on again to Adelaide, picking up a CamperVan then on to Melbourne and Sydney. All going well, after 15,100 miles, we'll be sipping beer with our mates in Melbourne by the end of the (Irish) summer.