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.