The Blueprint

With just ten weeks to go before we say goodbye to London and begin our trip around the world, the joys of planning and preparing are beginning to kick in. We already have our USA visas, having had to attend an interview at their embassy in Grosvenor Square, and we're now sending away for our Russian visas (to be shortly followed by the Belarus transit visas).

When you reach an important milestone before you leave, you start to realise how much there still is to do - get the flat ready to let, tell the banks that you're likely to be withdrawing currencies that you can't even pronounce, attend doctors appointments for malaria prophylaxis, the list is endless. And you could do without an email from your hostel agent telling you that the hostel you thought you'd booked in LA has apparently disappeared, presumably under the influence of some natural (or alien-based) disaster that Hollywood tells us is frequently inflicted upon the city of Angels.

Nevertheless, I thought perhaps the first blog should contain an outline of our plan. At this stage, the first six weeks are somewhat regimented, a necessity of both visa entry (and exit) requirements, and the need to connect with onward voyages. Initially we will be leaving London on 3rd September; the plan is to spend a few hours in Paris for a long lunch then catch an overnight train to Berlin. We'll spend a couple of nights in Berlin doing to usual touristy things (Checkpoint Charlie etc) and then catch a train to Russia.

There are several options to get to Russia, all helpfully detailed on a fantastic website called The Man in Seat Sixty-One, but having considered going via Poland and the Ukraine, we selected the direct train (which speeds through Poland and Belarus - hence the transit visa) on a cost basis. Unfortunately a few extra days in Europe (even Eastern Europe) can have a serious effect on the bank balance compared with some of the places we are heading to.

Once in Russia, we'll be staying a few nights in Moscow, then catching a train to Irkutsk (hopefully for a visit to Lake Baikal) and then on to Vladivostok. We're looking at about six nights on the Trans-Siberian train so I must remember to charge the Kindle & IPod fully before we set off. Once we reach Vladivostok we're booked on a once a week ferry to Donghae in South Korea, and we then have seven days to get to Busan via Seoul. Hopefully enough time to reach the border with North Korea and risk a cheeky peek to see what they are up to on the other side.

From Busan we're booked on a container ship called MV Hanjin Miami (Details at Marine Traffic), a Korean owned, German operated 300 metre vessel which has a DWT (Dead Weight Tonnage) of 93,000 tonnes, someway bigger than the Titanic. We'll sail across the Northern Pacific Ocean for 11 days (during Typhoon season), arriving in Long Beach, California in early October. We're going to spend up to a month in the Golden State, probably heading up to San Francisco before crossing the border from San Diego into Mexico around November.

From this point onwards we hope to have more flexibility to be able to respond to local advice and conditions, so we've not made any definite plans. We’re thinking about spending some time at a language school on the coast before we continue down through Central America by bus, and we’re thinking about joining a few local volunteer projects whenever and wherever we may find them (any good recommendations would be most welcome). We're particularly looking forward to the Costa Rican National Parks, and I'm hoping I'll be able to persuade Gemma to climb up some ancient ruins and pyramids.

Once we reach Panama we’ll be looking to bypass the Darien Gap by taking a yacht down to Colombia. And then we’ll be back on terra firma, heading down the Pacific coast of South America as far as Chile, before crossing the Andes and ending up in Rio de Janeiro. The ideal way to finish out trip would be another container ship (of which there are apparently several) taking us to Spain to practice our new found language skills, before heading back to London.

This is quite an ambitious plan, and it remains to be seen how far we shall get before our bank manager starts calling us (in floods of tears), but then there doesn’t seem to be much point in not being ambitious when it comes to a trip of this nature. It is our chance to experience new and varied cultures and learn a bit more about the world around us, so why limit ourselves?

Needless to say both Gemma and I are really excited by the thought of getting started. But until then we need to work, save, plan and prepare. Right at this moment it feels like a hard slog, it will all be worth it come September.