There have been a number of trip preparations going on as we now enter t-minus 30 days until we leave – however most of them have not been particularly photogenic, so our updates have been minimal, but the header basically says it all.
We have mailed our passports off (always frightening) to get our first round of Visas. As an American citizen there are an amazingly huge number of countries that we can visit, visa-free. I looked at our estimated course, and then went to the travel section of the US Department of State website where there is a very complete, very helpful list of every country and their visa requirements. It turns out that out of the 60 countries I looked up where there was even some remote chance of us potentially visiting, only 7 required Visas (that had to be obtained ahead of time). Those were: Russia, China, India, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam and Belarus. The only one there that we’re not planning on visiting is Belarus, although the fact that it’s described as a complete cold-war throwback of a country makes it appealing (for the cultural interest) while simultaneously unappealing. We’re using a processing service called itseasy.com to handle both the Chinese and Russian passports. For Russia, it’s actually required to have an invitation to visit the country. In practice it turns out that practically any hotel you book with with handle the official invitation documents. In our case, we’re going with a Russian Homestay, though in the documents that were sent to us after the reservations were made, the organization said that for ease of processing we should just include the following information, and then gave us the name of a hotel. Intriguing! We’ll see how all that works out at the border.
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Following up on our Big Sur trekking adventure, we decided to try another outing, this time down south to the Golden Trout Wilderness. This time it was just Michael, Anjel and I (Christine was unable to make it). Michael had found a great trail review on someone’s blog that described a 26 mile loop that sounded like it would make a perfect Memorial day weekend trip. 3 days (a planned 10-10-6 mile breakdown) would be challenging, but looked like an amazing trip.
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Our pre-trip research has turned up some amazing multi-day treks in some of the countries we’ll be visiting. One of the most extreme has to be the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal. The trek is 17 to 21 days long, covers roughly 186 miles and takes you up to nearly 18,000 feet.
Anjel and I are enthusiastic and in pretty good shape, but the one things we don’t have is much hiking and camping experience. Enter our good friend and wilderness enthusiast, Michael Yap. We’d been talking about going camping with him and his wife for sometime and finally set a date. Catching the last few days of REI’s big sale, Anjel and I spent an epic 5 hours in the Berkeley strore, trying on packs and boots. The pack department guy was unbelievably helpful and we walked out with two Osprey packs, two sleeping bags and a brand new pair of boots for me.
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Tacoma, Washington is by no means the most exotic of destinations but it’s all part of the preparations for our trip, plus it gives us a chance to work out the kinks in this whole blogging / photo posting business.
We’re headed to Tacoma in the first place because that’s where Anjel grew up, and where her mother and sister still live. Her mother has a nice house with a huge basement and she’s been kind enough to let us store the majority of our belongings there for the next 18 months. As I mentioned in previous posts, it turned out to be cheaper to rent a truck and drive it up there (factoring in gas, return trip, etc…) than to rent a storage place for 18 months. It also gave us a chance to make a mini-trip out of the excursion, stopping to see some friends and family along the way.
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Well, there’s no going back at this point. As of today, March 31st we have officially shut the doors on our Oakland residence. For the next 4 months we’ll be living in the guest house of some good friends of ours in Walnut Creek.
The decision to move out of our studio several months early was largely a financial one. Though we will continue to work until we leave, we will be significantly scaling back the number and the size of projects that we take on. At this point we’re mostly wrapping up existing work and only taking on short 1 to 2-month projects. Since we’ll be bringing in a fraction of our standard income, it didn’t make sense to continue paying our standard monthly rents.
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One of the books we checked out from the library was Lonely Planet’s “The Travel Book: A Journey Through Every Country in the World” and it is exactly that. Each country is summarized in one single spread. There’s a short introductory paragraph followed by the suggested best time to visit, a list of essential experiences, etc. But one of the best parts is the “Getting Under the Skin” section which lists suggestions of what to Read, Listen to and Watch in advance of a trip for those interested in getting a taste of the country. Some suggestions are better than others, but we thought it would be a great starting place, so we signed up for a Netflix account and started ordering their movie recommendations.
So far we’ve watched:
Kirikou and the Sorceress
Recommended for: Morocco
Synopsis: African folktales that have been handed down through the generations are the crux of this animated story about a remarkably gifted child, Kirikou, imbued with physical strength, superior intelligence and the ability to talk from an amazingly early age. When an evil sorceress places a curse on the local village, Kirikou finds his talents co-opted by the townsfolk in their desperate attempt to lift the spell. The musical score is by Youssou N’Dour.
We Say: I was definitely uncertain for the first few minutes of the film – the animation is good but simple (it had a number of qualities that reminded me of the old He-Man cartoons) and folk stories can always seem a bit strange when one isn’t familiar, but the story was very engaging and I ended up enjoying it quite a bit.
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