My Thoughts on Trip Planning

Research: I didn't start really researching this trip until the end of June (2.5 months before I was planning on leaving). Realistically, I should have started earlier. I initially started off using a Rough Guide India and a Lonely Planet Nepal that I bought. However, I found that the new interactive online communities have transformed trip planning. The best resources by far were the Boots N' All and the Lonely Planet Thorntree online forums. The wealth of knowledge provided by travelers is a great help in determining where the best places to visit are and what you really need to bring with you. Additionally, it also gives you real time information on good lodging options that a hard copy guidebook just can't do.

Vaccinations: This is the main reason why I wish I would have started the trip planning process earlier. When I called the Navy travel clinic in San Diego, it took me 3 weeks to get an appointment. Luckily, I had already had my first Hepatitis A shot a few years ago (otherwise I would not have had sufficient time to get the full series). I ended up getting a whole batch of shots: 2nd Hep A, Bacterial Meningitis, Polio, Japanese Encephalitis, Rabies, and Typhoid. I just barely had enough time to complete the Japanese Encephalitis and Rabies shot series.

Visas: These were surprisingly easy. You basically have three options, you can either go to an embassy/consulate yourself, mail them to consulates individually, or pay a service a small fee to do it all for you. I didn't want to spend 2 days in LA bouncing between consulates and it sounded like it could potentially take a long time to send my passport to consulates. So I went with option three. For ~$50, Visa Express got me visas to both India and China within 1 week. I was pretty impressed with their service.

Travel Tickets: Initially, I was planning on piecing together an itinerary myself using Mobissimo or Kayak. However, when I started pricing the leg from Shanghai to Nepal, it started looking prohibitively expensive. The cheapest tickets I was seeing were in teh $1200-$1500 one way ball park. That astounded me...as it was more than both the San Diego to Beijing and Delhi to San Diego legs. I ended up going with Airtreks, a travel agency out of San Francisco, that specializes in low budget dirtbag travel. They got me a flexible ticket with all 3 of those flights for $2450 with all taxes. I was really happy with their service and highly recommend them.


That's all for today...will cover Insurance, Gear, and Photo/Blogging websites in my next post.

My Upcoming Trip to Asia

As many of you have already heard, I'm going to be getting out of the Navy at the end of the month. By now, if you've gotten the link to this site, you've also probably heard that I'm going to be leaving San Diego on September 11th for a 3.5 month trip to China, Nepal and India. This blog will serve as my journal to share some of my experiences (everything from the incredible views I hope to get of Everest to the "Delhi Belly" that I hope to avoid) with all of you. As I make my way through Asia, I plan to update this every few days with some of my latest stories and a few of my favorite pictures. So I hope that you come back frequently to check out what's new and where in the world I happen to be.

By now, you're probably asking why I'm already writing when I'm 3 weeks away from leaving. You're right, I'm not going to be writing about the trip. Instead over the next few weeks, I'll be sharing some of my thoughts with regards to planning for a trip like this.

I've had this trip in the back of my mind for the last 2 years. Ever since I went to China in 2005, I knew that I wanted to see more of it as well as India. The part I loved most about that trip was that everything was so new...everything from the food (hmmm....dumplings), the language (had to learn at least a little bit of Chinese to get by), the way people interacted with each other and the history. I love to learn and every day on that trip was a learning experience. Up until a stop in Chengdu (Sichuan province), I never even thought of traveling to India. But while I was there, I met a Brazilian couple who amazed me with their stories of the 6 months they spent traveling around India. As one of the great cultures as well as being an up and coming country today, it sounded like a great place to visit in the future. Originally, my plan was to follow the Old Silk Road through the less touristed western part of China before crossing over the Himalayas to make my way India. Unfortunately, due to a past conflicts between India and China, crossing the border there wasn't an option. That soon changed into my present plan: 2 weeks in China (between Beijing and Shanghai), 3 weeks in Nepal (Everest Region) and 2 months in India.

So now that I figured out where to go, what went into actually planning the trip? Below is a list of the main tasks (organized by lead time) I needed to accomplish to get ready for this trip:
1. Research (everything else starts after this)
2. Vaccinations (lots of diseases out there that you need to be aware of)
3. Visas (surprisingly easy)
4. Travel Tickets
5. Insurance (confusing)
6. Gear (So many toys, yet limited funds to spend on them)
7. Blog/Photo Sharing Websites (much better than the last time I traveled)

Over the next 3 weeks, I'll be talking about my how I took care of each of these areas in planning for my upcoming trip.