Finally Ready for Take Off

Don't be fooled. Planning a year-long or more trip around the world aint easy. It has been a long and treacherous 6-8 months of research and work. Many trips to the library looking for travel books and long nights staying up searching on the internet for accomodation choices. But dont get us wrong, we have a few more hours before we take off exploring the world. We are both excited, scared and nervous about this trip. There are so much uncertainties that we cannot predict or control.

Well let me just briefly tell you how one would go about planning a trip of this length and intensity: It first begins with deciding what our destinations will be. We asked ourselves where do we want to go that will give us the best opportunity to explore and get a taste of its culture but at the same time not have to feel like we are in danger, ie: in the Phillipines, a friend advised us not to go due to the high rate of kidnappings of Chinese people for ransom. (Even when our friend goes back to the Phillipines, he hardly leaves the house) When we heard that, Phillipines was definitely crossed off our list.

Finally after weeks of careful planning and hours spent playing with Long Haul's (www.longhaultravel.com) online trip planner, we finally settled on a travel itinerary. Our trip around the world will take us to: London, Paris, Barcelona, Madrid, Rome, Florence, Venice, Athens, Cairo, Mumbai (Bombay), Delhi, Melbourne, Sydney, Auckland, Singapore, Bangkok, Tokyo, and our last stop will be Hong Kong. A total of 18 cities within at least a year. Living out of one luggage each and hostel-hopping along the way, we plan to brave each city out solo except for Cairo where we will definitely be joining a tour. (Don't want to be wandering off on our own and ending up in the Middle East by accident) We broke the news to our parents, cashed in our savings and purchased a round the world ticket with Long Haul Travel.

The next step was the intensive research for each of the cities. We went mainly to Agincourt library looking for Fodor's, Lonely Planet and Frommers travel books. We also searched on websites like virtualtourist.com to get a feel for what each destination had to offer. I must "THANK" Lin for helping us in this department as she had made several very professional travel booklets with dividers and title pages for some of our cities. THANKS!!!! It definitely made our research a lot less painful.

From here on, it was handling the boring and most annoying administrative stuff such as extending OHIP, finding alternatives for our cash resources, renewing our passports and getting 5 vaccination shots each. I think the best part of planning this trip would be going to the backpacker stores like Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC) and LeBaron Outdoor store. These stores really have a lot of cool and amazing items.

But what was it that prompted this year-long gallivant across the globe? Existential angst, an unshakeable feeling of restlessness and an inspirational news column that we read from the Toronto Metro Newspaper. It read:

“Why tell your grandkids you worked 9-5, five days a week for 40 years and quietly sat in traffic jams while people went to war, suffered disease and shot their own classmates? Tell them you refused to live in fear. Tell them you crossed the Amazon, saw the Lost Cities of Gold and met your soul mate in Casablanca. Travel to the ends of the earth. Go now and live adventures that will make your grandkids proud.”

This quote is what ignited our desire to travel longer, go further and play harder.
For me (Jamie), as my 27th birthday and subsequent quarter-life crisis approached, I felt a strong struggle to find my place in this crazy world of environmental chaos, weapons of mass destruction and pedophilic Pop Stars. Through travel, I hope to find answers to the age-old philosophical questions that continue to plague my friends and me: What do I want to be when I grow up? Will I ever be satisified with what I am doing in life? and What makes me feel fulfilled and accomplished at the end of the day?
My career and direction towards building a family life, however, will temporarily have to wait. Enlightenment is what I am looking for.

Stay tuned for our weekly ( I will try to keep it weekly) blog posts. Log onto our weblink as often as you like to keep yourself posted on our adventure.