March 29th, 2013
Any journey into new territory is bound to be wrought with
false starts and missteps. So it is with this blog. I’m not quite sure what I’m
attempting to create is this space. Is it a living journal, an automatic update
for friends, family, and curious onlookers, or is it supposed to be something
more? In all honestly I don’t know, but
I am enjoying my new venture.
By design, the blog is asynchronous with my travels. I
figured that would give me some lead time and perhaps I could get the writing
ahead of itself to make up for down time for when I head to remote regions or go
on a retreat or something. This may change. The dates at the top of each post
are now the dates posted, and not the dates written, as they had previously
been. I’m not sure what future changes I
will or should make, but I suspect there will be some. My entries are absurdly
long for a typical blog, but that seems to be what I enjoy writing, so
hopefully that won’t change, but I think it’d be nice to throw some shorter
posts up there too.
*Spoiler alert* I’m currently in Laos. I made the
affirmative decision to go ahead with the grander trip of riding a motorcycle
from Vietnam to Portugal. This journey I started a few days ago, and I think it
will take me about a year to complete. Driving through Myanmar is not allowed,
and riding through China requires a private guide at $240 a day. No thank you.
Hence, I will need to ship the bike once, and have two proposed routes. I will
either ship the bike either east to Bangladesh, India, or Nepal, or ship it
north to Mongolia. The part of the trip I’m most looking forward to is my ride
through “The Stan’s”. If I ship the bike east, that means going through
northern Pakistan, Tajikistan,
Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and hopefully across the Black Sea into
Azerbaijan, then Georgia, then Turkey, etc. The northern route is infinitely
more simple with regard to bureaucratic necessities, and obviously eliminates
Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan. However, the rest of the proposed
itinerary remains unchanged.
I have plans to write a bunch about my experiences, my
observations, and my thoughts on life. The Internet is pretty amazing, and I
hope to take all readers with me. Enjoy!