Plans for Asia

Unbelievable! In less than 24 hours we'll be on the plane heading for Paris. We, that is, myself, Richard, and Adrian. This constantly evolving journey has us planning to spend 4 days in Paris on a layover to Delhi. The European part of this trip was the last vestage of our original plan to spend 2 months in Europe. Adrian didn't want to give up his dream of seeing the Eiffel Tower and speaking French for his parents, so we kept 4 days in Paris. We'll be flying over and spending those days with Richard's brother, David, who is enroute to his own "vacation". He'll be spending a month walking the "Camino de Compostella de Santiago" pilgrimage between France and Spain.

After this brief resting spot, we'll carry on to India. We have nearly 2 months to travel throughout Asia. We have some bones of the trip set with flights and hotel reservations, but there's lots of room to wander at will. We plan to spend a week in the mountains north of Delhi near Dharamsala, where the Dalai Lama lives. Then we fly to Burma (our second family trip there) for 2 weeks. Surprisingly, we have a lot of contacts here, and anticipate seeing some old friends from our last trip, in particular the 100 year old teacher of my Buddhist teacher's teacher. From here, we fly to Kathmandu and decide which treks to take. We're still debating between treks in Tibet, Nepal and India, so stay tuned for which ones we choose. (If you've been there yourself and you have some advice or suggestions, please comment, and quickly!). Adrian's keen to to see some real mountains, and we're all curious how we'll be as the altitude quickly climbs up, up, up.

We need to be back by June 20, so Adrian can graduate grade 6 with the rest of his class a few days later. So with backpacks small enough that we're hoping to be able to carry on with us onto planes, off we go tomorrow towards our great adventure. We anticipate having internet access along the way, except for within Burma, so stay tuned for updates.