Well, six days out and I think we've got all the boxes ticked.
This week we got our passports (with approved Indian visas inside) and took them in to the lovely gentleman named Mike who works at the Consulate of Nepal here in Brisbane, who kindly approved us for Nepalese visas.
- A tip for young players: Whilst you can get visas on arrival in Nepal at Kathmandu airport, you can sometimes be faced with lengthy delays due to the large number of Indian workers who have travelled to Nepal to work. Lengthy can be defined as anywhere between 6 and 8 hours! If you head into the Consulate in Queen Street, Brisbane on Wednesdays and Thursdays between 9-12 for a fee they will be issued on the spot.
Mike was also fantastic enough to give us some travel tips we would never find in any guide books.
Because I'm anal about travel (Andrew will say that this is putting it mildly), I've taken advantage of the ability to check in to our flights from OOL to KUL and the flight from KUL to CMB the following day. Hey, I figure why not!
This weekend will be some last minute stuff, before I work on Monday and Tuesday and am off Wednesday before we depart on Thursday. Poor old Andrew is working right up until Thursday.. hehe.
Questions running through my head now are; How much dhal can one person take? I hope the weather will be kind (it's looking warm in Malaysia and Sri Lanka and coolish in India and Nepal) and is India and Nepal as cheap as everyone makes out?
Not much longer left to wait...
So here we are.. 3 weeks tomorrow until we leave. For those that don't know we've had this trip planned for some time. As a rule, Andrew & I have never done things 'easily' and to complicate the matter we settled on our first home only a few weeks before the trip is set to begin. I'm quietly grateful we decided on Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Nepal and India as our destination/s instead of the USA, as we originally intended! The cost of living in the countries we are headed to, is slightly more budget-conscious compared to the USA.
The only major thing we are currently waiting for, is to have our applications for Indian Visa's approved and our passports returned to us from the Visa processing office in Canberra. Fingers crossed! I was both sad and happy to have parted with my old passport, filled with stamps from amazing trips, but now I'm in possession of a rather cool chip-passport which makes entering Australia a smoother process (provided I have nothing to declare.. which I always do). Andrew is still on the 'old school' style, so he'll slow me down now ;-)
The cat is a little underprepared for the seemingly massive stint she will be doing at a local cattery, but she should be happy I have booked her into a 'Deluxe' suite which allows her both an indoor and outdoor area all to herself. The last experience we had with a cattery resulted in the passing of our other cat, so as one can imagine, I am a little nervous ahead of boarding again.
I'm going to attach the link to the Geckos Tour we are doing, making up part of our time away. I cannot recommend Geckos enough, they have been fantastic and always helpful answering the many questions I had about the finer points of the tour. Here is the link if you'd like to check out the overland tour from Kathmandu, Nepal to Delhi, India.
We depart from Coolangatta - Gold Coast and fly direct (thanks to Air Asia) to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. We stop overnight before heading to Colombo, Sri Lanka for nearly a week (which incorporates the ICC Cricket World Cup) before we head up to Nepal. After a few days independent touring, we join the Geckos Tour before ending up in Delhi and flying home via KL once again. It should be amazing, confronting and spiritual, all in one!
That's all from me for now - the next post will be on our impending departure!
