I'm off again on my travels today, flying to Kosova in Serbia. I won't be back in Netherlands or UK until next year June /July now. I'm quite looking forward to it - I was beginning to feel a little stuck in Europe.
Had a nice birthday with my family, then took a bus (yes, another long journey) back to UK.
It was a bit of an adventure as we were all held by French customs at the border in Calais for about 4 1/2 hours, in the middle of the night, before we were finally allowed to get on to the ferry. After we'd already had a thorough search and investigation, someone on my bus had dropped 1 kg of cocaine (!!!) on the floor of the customs building and the customs people followed that up by searching us and our luggage all over again, even more thoroughly. A young man with dreadlocked hair was strip-searched, I was rather frightened about my kilo of white powder, the Aunt Jemima's pancake mix for Josh, but fortunately they believed me. They didn't find who had tried to smuggle the cocaine into the country. I myself suspect the Dutch Nigerians on the bus, as the Nigerians are the world's new Mafia: into every criminal and fraudulent affair imaginable, but nothing was found.
Anyway, the first part of my journey is planned and I will update you as I go along.
Monday 2nd Oct - Wed 4th Oct: Kosova, Pristina.
Wednesday 4th October: Train to Thessaloniki
Wed 4th - Fri 6th October: Thessaloniki
Fri 6th October: Train to Athens.
Fri 6th - Sun 8th Oct: Athens
Sun 8th October: Plane to Cairo
Sun 8th October - Tues 10th October: Cairo
From 10th October: Aswan. Aswan to Luxor. Luxor to Hurghada. No tickets or hotels yet. To follow.
Hurghada to Oman.
Oman: Muscat, Missendam Peninsula
2nd November: Pakistan.
2nd Nov - 1st December: Pakistan. Karachi - Lahore. If political situation allows, Peshawar.
To India via Rawalpindi - Lahore - Amritsar. No itinerary yet.
1st December - 15th January: India: Rajastan, Goa, Kerala.
15th Jan 2007 - 15th February 2007: Nepal (Katmandu), Tibet, Kunming.
15th February 2007 - 30th June 2007: Kunming, China