| Brad and Jen's World Adventure Trip Planning |
| Deciding where to go, and for how long: |
| In the begining, we felt like we wanted to take "trip around the world". You can not believe how many people are actually doing this. We wanted to include the many places we have not seen. Brad was less interested in Europe since he had been there in the summer of 1996. Jennifer was open to talking about a lot of different destinations because she had not been out of the United States. We talked about New Zealand and Australia, South Africa, climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, and many other destinations. As we took a look at our budget, we did not feel we would have enough to travel to all of these destinations on a year long trip. We started to weigh the merits of traveling for a long period of time, or traveling to many destinations. We quickly realized that we would rather spend more time in less places in order to really experience the culture, rather than be on the "city a day tour" where every musuem, castle, and ruin start to blend into one another. Another factor. Money. By staying in one region we can minimize our air travel. It becomes cost prohibitive to cross the equator because it lengthens the distance traveled. It is possible to link the regions via land travel, but we do not want to feel like we are constantly on the move. When you use the travel books (Lonely Planet, Let's Go, etc.) you end up being surrounded by other travelrs who are using the same guide. Our hope is to use the travel guides to get us situated and then find the "Road less traveled". Now that we have decided to narrow it down, the Himalayas felt like a must and Rock Climbing in Thailand is something Brad has been talking about for a long time. Thailand has a reputation as being a good place to start. We hope to get to Krabi, get settled and let the world melt away. From there we have a basic itineray, however it is all open to change. This trip is more about being together and experiencing new cultures rather than "how many places did we see?" We hope to live in the moment and move on when the spirit calls. |