Planning for the trip really had to begin with where and when. What places did we want to see? And then secondly – when should we go there? Weather is key. It’s been a dream of mine to visit South East Asia – I’m intrigued by the ruins, the age of everything and Eastern culture. I also really wanted to go back to India. I spent 10 days there in late 2005 and fell in love with the country and the people. I’ve never been somewhere so chaotic and so peaceful at the same time. It humbled me, frustrated me, and awed me. I never felt so happy. We also really wanted to see Egypt – my sister Lara has been there several times and loves it there. The stories she tells about it are some of my favorite. I’ve also been fascinated with visiting Petra – the city built out of stone. I mean how freaking cool is that? People actually chipped away into cliffs to build a city filled with palaces. Damn!

Anyway, we’ve spent several days at bookstores, browsing travel books, looking at maps, pictures. Just basically seeing what looked cool to us. Then came all the research about when to go, when the festivals are, and when the weather is unbearable. For South East Asia it came down to visiting when it’s less scorching hot and that’s in our Winter months which is why we’re headed there first. For India it’s just necesary to get out of there by April and in Egypt I think we’re pretty much guaranteed to roast our asses off – which is why I plan to spend time near water – whether along the Nile or on the Red Sea maybe while doing some scuba diving.

The next part was how to get there. Maybe later I’ll write a sepeate post about RTW (Round the World) Flights vs one-ways. I did a ton of research. Some great info is here: http://wikitravel.org/en/Round_the_world_flights. The downer is that while the RTW flights are a great deal, they’re not as much if you’re flying out of the States. One of the RTW flights we looked at was about $3,000 out of London and $4,500 out of the States. Also, in most cases you need to fly Westward. That meant that if we bought the cheaper RTW flight out of London we’d be backtracking back across the US – which meant many extra miles, more cost, more time, etc. We ended up booking one-way flights directly through a travel agency out of London called Travel Nation: http://travelnation.co.uk/. We haven’t flown yet so I can’t recommend them yet but they were very responsive and the rate was pretty good. We ended up paying about $2,000 for a flight from London to Bangkok, to Bombay, to Cairo, then back to London. We then booked a flight on BA from NYC to LON to start things off for about $600 right after christmas of 2008 – I think an ok price for the time of year.

The thing we’ve probably stressed the most about and had the most fun with at the same time is what to take. I keep hearing take less, take less and I really am taking as little as I can think of. My bag right now consists of: 2 pairs of shorts, 1 pair of board shorts, 2 pair of pants (one jeans, one linen), 5 change of underwear, and 4 shirts. I’ll also have a new DSLR with me plus I just bought a second hand but new iPhone. The iPhone doesn’t have a contract and I figure we can use it for a few reasons: watching movies on it while traveling, checking out maps or looking up hostels from anywhere with Wifi (fancy hotel lobby perhaps), emailing and updating friends and family (again Wifi) – and last but not least is calling family and friends back in the US for FREE. That’s right, FREE. There’s a few VoIP (Voice over IP (Internet)) applications you can install on the iPhone which let you call any landline or mobile in the US from a Wifi hotspot for about 2 cents per minute. That’s pretty damn cheap. Better yet, there’s a few US numbers which you can “back door call” for free. More info here if you’re interested: http://gizmo5.com/pc/backdoor/

So with all these things above I have one pretty solid roller bag ready to go. I’d much rather have just a backpack but we’re just not there yet. Maybe I only need one pair of shorts and one pair of pants….

Then there’s the Visas, making sure our passports are valid, and travel type stuff. Bag locks that are TSA certified so they don’t bust them off if they need to check your bag. Paper thin towels (haven’t used them yet), the perfect pair of flip flops, and sunglasses.