| Has it really been... |
[Jan. 22nd, 2006|09:04 pm] |
Has it really been only 24 hours since I last posted?
Anyway, After running around with Spacecat, I will have a bit of freedom. I might go down to the south of Thailand and do some diving. I took a diving course last time I was in Thailand, and dived in Vietnam later in the trip. It has been two years since and I would like to maybe take a 1 day refresher course and go back under the water. Diving is nice and cheap in SE Asia. I liked being down with the fishies, but I didn't like all the tech and saftey stuff you have to be constantly monitoring. Sometimes I think snorkeling is just a good as scuba. You may not see as much, but you can just forget everything and drift around for hours. I am not one for extreme sports. But I am gonna maybe give diving another try and see if it can totally wow me. So maybe I will spend some lazy weeks on an island or two down south with a few diving trips thrown in. I have also tossed around the idea of popping over the border into Myanmar. Or maybe I will want to get right to India!
I am super excited about India! I am spending allmost all my free time searching the internet for travel blogs and peoples pictures of India. I have formed an idea of where I want to go. I think it would be good to fly in and out of Delhi. It is kind of central to where I want to go. I think I might go east a bit to Varanasi, on the Ganges River. This will probably be my only contact with the Ganges. Varanasi is an extremely holy city and one can see many Hindu rituals taking place on the banks of the Ganges. Then I would head back west, perhaps on a different route to Delhi and then to Agra, where the Taj Mahal is. Then further west to the Rajasthan area, which is all desert. This area is usually considered to be the most culturally rich. I will pop around, from town to town, visiting temples and forts. Hotels will be costing about 3-6 dollars a night, food will be cheap too. They say the beer is expensive, tho, because of Gov't taxes. The weather should be hot, upward of 100 degrees. If I can not stand the heat ( I think I will be able to, tho) I might head down thru Mumbai (Bombay) and go to Goa, which is a place to chill on the beach. It's supposed to be packed with westerners on holiday, so it is not the most appealing place to me, but I do like to chill on beaches. I may also explore the idea of going north into the Himalayas. I wont get to far, as it will be April/May and the roads would still be snowed in. I could fly into an area that is full of Buddhists and looks a lot like Tibet and Nepal, with prayer flags and prayer wheels, etc., but I won't have any warm clothes with me and will have to see what getting fitted out in jackets, shoes, long pants and mittens would cost, as well as the flight. I think I could probably get bit of the buddhist culture witout having to go to where it is too cold still. I will talk to fellow travellers and suss it out when I am there.
Anyway, my plan is to leave India around May 15 and stop back in amazing Thailand for a couple of weeks. Thailand should feel all modern and comfortable after a few months in India. Then fly home May 30th or so. My return ticket is open at this time. Depending on my whims, I could stretch India into a three month trip, but something is telling me that 2 months might be just the right amount. We will see. India is huge and I will be just visiting a few regions, so I suspect I will return there a few times in my life. My friend Hernan is returning there for his third visit, I believe.
I have always thought that I wouldn't go to India by myself, only with a friend. I have read many journals and forum entries by solo travelers lately and it seems like it will be fine traveling alone. I have really enjoyed my solo travels, and am glad to be able to go to India alone. Of course, I would jump at the chance to meet any friend in India, just like I am jumping at the chance to travel with Spacecat in Thailand. It will be interesting to see how I like being with someone, compared to solo, now that I am a season traveler and set in my ways. Dora and I have traveled a lot together and we travel very well as a team. I do wish he was accompanying me on this trip. Oh well.
I go down to LA on Tuesday to give the Thai embassy my passport so they can put a visa in it. I will also have to go down again to give my passport to the US passport agency so they can pout more pages in it, since the Thai visa will be filling up the last page. There are always so many pre-departure chores and expenses for a trip like this.
Love Maxwell |
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