Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Next Year Travel Plans

Taking a page out of the travel book of the average European I am starting to plan out my next big trip. (From what I understand from my friends in Germany is that most jobs require you to submit vacation requests at least a year in advance! Mind you the average German gets a whole lot more vacation time than the average American. I guess that's a fair trade-off).

Of course a lot of my travel planning is fantasy and dreaming, and planning is half of the fun for me anyways, so my plans could change very easily, but I am seriously considering more of an exotic trip for my next vacation. I've been to Europe 4 times now, and while I absolutely love Europe, I am ready to explore somewhere else. I will go back to Europe someday there is no doubt, but if I hope to achieve my goal of visiting 50 countries in my lifetime I've got to head out to some other areas of the world.

Now to the current manifestation of my travel plans. While watching Rudy Maxa's World on a PBS support drive this past weekend, I watched some amazing video of a part of northern India called Rajasthan. I've wanted to travel to India for a number of years, and this program got me really excited about the idea. So I went in to trip planning mode and came up with this itinerary including India and some Southeast Asian countries.

Fly from Fresno to Mumbai (Bombay) India
Spend about 5 or 6 days exploring Indian from Mumbai to Calcutta while taking the train.
After finishing in Calcutta fly to Bangkok, Thailand and explore that city for 3 to 4 days.
From Bangkok fly to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and explore that city for another 3 to 4 days.
When finished in Kuala Lumpur fly back to Fresno.

Check out this map for locations of places.

The whole trip would be about 2 weeks long, and while it may seem like a whirlwind trip that's just my style. I think that you should see as much as possible on a trip to new places, and if you see something you like, make plans to go back again someday. As well, depending on who came along, I could easily change my plans to stay in other areas or alter the length of stays at some destinations.

I found flights for all of these flights for as little as $2300, which is fairly good considering all the flying. I am guessing that the total cost for the two weeks would be around $3000. However, this could fluctuate depending on choices of hotels/trains etc.

If you are interested let me know, I love traveling with other people, and would be happy to take others with me.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

Yeah, I like to travel too.

I have lived in Fresno about 2 years and half to graduate from Fresno State undergrad program. It was a really nice to see the new people (some were not) However, It was a kind of my first journey at the U.S. Even though I have experience to travel to China when I was a little kid, I do not remember what happened then. When you have plan to come to Japan, let me know. I wish I could back to Fresno.