It’s all starting to come together. After a year of spinning a globe, pointing at a place and saying, “lets go here”, we’ve finally settled and booked our epic voyage! Well… almost. The main skeleton is there. George hasn’t decided whether or not to return to these humble British shores yet. Tom and Dom are booking their flights very soon, and both Gabs and myself are left to purchase the connection flight from Hanoi to Bangkok before our flight back to the UK.
The final pieces of the travelling jigsaw are yet to be added, but you can still see the big picture… Now it's mostly booked the excitement's crept in! We're going!!!
Here’s our itinerary:
31st August 2011
London to Colombo, Sri Lanka
Ewan and George hop on their 11 and a half hour flight (with an hour change-over in Doha, Qatar), to Sri Lanka. We spend a week here before moving on to Mumbai, India.
9th September 2011
Mumbai, India
Ewan and George fly into Mumbai airport from Colombo to rendezvous with the fresh-blooded Tom and Dom, who make their voyage from the UK. Party Time! The plan is to explore Mumbai for a few days, and then train hop our way over the next two weeks to the Nepalese border.
29th September 2011
Kathmandu, Nepal
The Himalayas beckon with the promise of local festivals and snow topped mountain ranges. We’re here for a week. Holding camp in the bustling streets of Kathmandu, we’ll voyage out to the numerous surrounding locations of immense interest and beauty.
6th October 2011
Bangkok, Thailand
GABY enter stage left! In the thriving and humid urban jungle that is Bangkok, the four lads finally get some female company in the form of miss Gabriella. Our South East Asian adventure begins.
After attempting to settle in the Thai capital, we set off by overnight train heading for the famed islands of Koh Samui and Koh Phangan; home of the legendary Full Moon Party. Covered in Day Glo Paint, we’ll party till the sun comes back up on one of the world’s most stunning beaches.
A train ride and crippling hangover later, we have the emotional departure of our weatherman and flyboy (Dom and Tom) from Bangkok airport, destination UK. Rubbing the tears aside, George, Ewan and Gaby head for the Cambodian border alone…
15th October 2011
Angkor Wat, Cambodia
Well… not strictly speaking. At this point, a dozen other budding travellers will join us. This section of the journey is on a guided tour (called Roam Cambodia and Vietnam, courtesy of STA travel). With Tom and Dom now a distant tearstained memory, we go arm in arm with our new companions to such sights as Angkor Wat, the largest religious temple in the world.
22nd October 2011
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Katy Melua sung about ‘a Million Bicycles in Beijing’… Well if she visited Vietnam, she’d be singing ‘a Million Motorbikes in Ho Chi Minh’. Formerly Saigon, Vietnam’s most frenetic city welcomes us to the spectacular country of Vietnam! From here, we travel up the coast through Hoi An, Hue, Halong Bay to our final tour destination, Hanoi.
4th November
Hanoi, Vietnam
For Ewan and Gaby, the dream ends. They re-pack their bags a final time and jump onto a flight to Bangkok, and then another back to the UK, via Doha. But what happens to George I hear you ask? Only he knows the answer to that question! Some say he’ll head north into the dark depths of China, some say west to Laos… All we know is, he’s called the GEB!!!
Ewan.
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