Silk Road Exploratory Expedition

Down the Track

I didn't explain much about our upcoming silk road adventure, did I? Just listed a bunch of countries we'll be visiting. Not very informative. Especially since it's going to be a very different experience from what we've been doing so far.

Up until now we've been cruising around Southeast Asia on our lonesome, changing our minds and direction on a whim. We've ended up meeting a lot fewer fellow travelers than we thought we would for various reasons. We are traveling as a couple so we're anathema to a lot of young singles. Also, the number one, better than all the others put together, super duper tip we've employed for saving money while traveling is not to drink alcohol. Our budget goes a LOT further, but we have missed out on one of the best opportunities to meet other people, having visited bars rarely. We've also spent a lot of time in places where other travelers are few and far between. We've become a bit like those twins I read about in a Reader's Digest once who locked themselves in a cupboard for 18 years and created their own language. We're probably incomprehensible to outsiders now. We have had a kind of ultimate privacy and freedom.

So the next 6 months are probably going to be a BIG shock.

The silk road journey is a tour. A ground-breaking, one of a kind, exploratory tour of over 5 months and 12 countries, but a tour nonetheless. Not your 5 star kind of tour, cruising from one hotel to another. Oh no – the camping in the wilderness digging your own toilet with a shovel and sharing a converted truck with a bunch of strangers kind of tour. Like (forgive me for even saying it) Big Brother on a bus. 11 people are apparently starting the tour in Tunis, with 17 finishing in Beijing. No serfs come along for the ride – all the cooking, cleaning and chores are done by the group.

We'll get to see a lifetime's worth of amazing things. Not only big names like the pyramids of Giza, Petra's rose red walls and Xian's terracotta warriors. There'll also be countless ruins - Punic, Roman, Greek and Egyptian. Citadels and souqs in Damascus and Aleppo, Cappadocia, monasteries, cathedrals and mosques of the Black Sea and Caucasus. Sulphur baths and mud volcanoes, wine regions and black deserts. Legacies of Khans, Shahs, Czars and conquerers. Horse markets, the mountains of heaven, madrassahs, mausoleums, wolves and lakes in the sky. Caves, grottoes and springs, camels and yurts.

Just thinking about this trip makes my heart beat faster.

If you have a look at a map and see just how far it is from Tunis in North Africa to Beijing, you'll realise it's an awfully long way to share a truck with a brand new extended family. It's a long way to sleep rough and go without hot showers. It's a long way to live on 80% camp food. However it goes, as long as we come out alive, we'll write about it on the Dreaming Track.

Although getting the visas has turned out to be a complete nightmare, and it's looking less likely all the time that we'll be leaving with all the ones we need, we are flying out of Hanoi in just 2 weeks. First to Bangkok to pick up some sleeping bags, mats and extra camera gear, and then to Tunis on the 10th to begin this truly amazing tour. I can't wait to tell you all about our new traveling buddies (I can't wait to find out who they are!) and what it's like to have a routine, chores and fast-paced adventure in our lives again.

There's the added spice of having no idea what we'll do when we get to Beijing. The end date for the tour isn't set in stone, because anything can happen between the central Mediterranean and the far East, but we're supposed to arrive just three days before the opening ceremony of the Olympics. Without any dates, we won't have accommodation booked in advance. Depending on the condition of the budget we might have to fly straight home. But “home” is a pretty vague concept at the moment – a general word we're using to describe an entire nation. We can't even narrow it down to a state or city. I also noticed in my general research that a train to Shanghai (childhood home of my grandparents) and a ferry to beautiful Osaka costs less than 3 nights at a 2 star hotel in Beijing in August. Hmmmmm. Food for thought :p

March will be spent in Tunisia and Libya, so we'll be posting about places like Carthage, Leptis Magna, Cyrene, kasbahs, oases, and the troglodyte village of Matmata (a.k.a home of Luke Skywalker and setting for the opening scenes of Star Wars).

Wish us luck (wish me luck, I'm a little scared!)