My tentative plans are as follows:
I plan to arrive in Bangkok, Thailand on the 15th of July, where I will meet up with my friend Amy Lipman. We'll travel around southeast Asia together for the next month, touring
Thailand,
Laos,
Vietnam and
Cambodia together. Amy has to be back in the states for her job around the middle of August, though, so we'll sadly part ways around that time. One of the main attractions in Cambodia is the ruins of
Angkor Wat, which I'm particularly excited about.
The next part is up in the air. I'll either fly directly to Delhi to begin the Indian part of the trip, or, if my visa is approved, head to Pyongyang,
North Korea by way of
Beijing. I'm hoping to go to North Korea, as everything that I have read indicates it's the most fascinating place on earth to visit. If I do, it will be only for a few days (the cost will be significant, especially compared to my other destinations). I'll probably spend a few days in China seeing a handful of the major sights before moving on to Delhi. China should probably be a trip onto itself, so I'm torn between spending too little time there and too much. Cost will also be the deciding factor, though, as one day in China might be a week in India, and this trip will last exactly as long as my budgeted funds do.
Whenever I get to Delhi, I'll spend at least a month touring the northern states of
India, especially
Punjab and
Kashmir. I'll want to spend some time at the base of the Himalayas. I have good recommendations for several places in this general vicinity for hiking and wildlife spotting, and hopefully around this time of year it won't yet be too cold to be outside most of the day (winter comes early to these highland regions).
Sometime in early October, maybe later, I'll head south. It will still be pretty warm down there but I'm hoping the worst of the oppressive heat will be over.
Kerala,
Bangalore, and possibly
Goa are high on my list. Even though beaches are not normally my thing, everything I read and hear says Goa is too amazing to miss if you're in the neighborhood.
I wanted to go to both Sri Lanka and Iran, but for obvious reasons in the news these days, that seems unwise.
By mid-November I'll be ready to hop a flight to
Istanbul (not
Constantinople), Turkey. Istanbul,
Ankara, and
Cappadocia are the main highlights for me in Turkey. I'd also love to see the eastern provinces, but that will depend on news reports at the time.
After Turkey, I'll head to Switzerland, because by then my friend Nathalie will be there working in
Geneva. After I wear out my welcome there, I'll head north to Germany and hopefully pay Liza a visit, and then go see if I can track down Bene in London before heading back to the states and proving to myself that the world is in fact round. I would love it if some of my family members and friends would like to plan their own european vacations around this time so that we could meet up together (hint hint).
That's the general plan at this point (early May) but of course I hope to be able to change things on the fly as I go.
We flew in that morning, flew out late in the afternoon. Magnificent spring day, clear, sunny, 64 degrees and Manhattan was alive and vibrant from the psycho cabbies to the mellow and friendly cops who gave us directions. The protest was very good, especially if one watches the coverage on cnn.com. At least 300,000 in attendance. Also the editorial shift in coverage from the last protest (last July in DC) is notable: not only is CNN reporting the *organizers'* head count instead of the police, it's now their lead story as opposed to page seven news. It is always spiritually uplifting to be part of a massive throng of the like-minded, peacefully striving for... peace. It reaffirms not only your self but one's faith in humanity to see so many folk eager to see the wrong made right. It makes you wonder, if only for a short while, how the bad guys manage to stay in power, and this buoys the soul like styrofoam in a hurricane: fragile, perhaps, but clearly unsinkable.
