It’s very difficult to come up with a plan for India. All I know is I have 2 months to get from Mumbai, to wherever I want to see and then back to Mumbai. This is quite difficult because the East Coast doesn’t seem to have much going on and Mumbai is smack bang in the middle of a north-east to south, via west coast tour.

Basically, I’ve come up with the following;

- Mumbai
- Goa and the west coast
- Kerala and the southern tip
- Kolkata (maybe fly from the south)
- Darjeeling
- Delhi
- Rajasthan
- Mumbai

These are just the big name locations to aim for rather than specific stops along the way.

I’m sure everything will change once I get out there!

Darjeeling, North-East India

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A lot has happened since my last post;

- Itinerary sorted
- Flights booked
- Jabs injected
- Visas researched
- Lonely Planet guides (for South East Asia & India) downloaded

The plan is:

1. Fly from Heathrow on 4 January to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and spend almost 3 months roaming SE Asia, to finish in Bangkok at the end of March
2. Fly from Bangkok to Mumbai around 28 March & explore India for 2 months
3. Get back to Mumbai for a flight to Brisbane for around 2 months in Oz
4. Fly to Auckland and book onto a bus tour round NZ for 1 month, finishing back in Auckland
5. From Auckland, fly to Nadi, Fiji for 1 month of beaches and relaxation
6. Finally, head to South America for 3 months, starting in Chile
7. Fly home from Rio in time for Christmas

I booked with STA Travel after taking another visit to them, this time to the Russell Square branch. He gave me loads more advice and gave me a quote there and then. I did a bit of tweaking after chatting with a few people who have been recently (Amy & Ryan) and got them booked up.

The good thing with STA Travel is you can add £100 on to the price of your ticket and you can change all your flights as many times as you want. So, if I can bear to leave India (or anywhere else), I can stay!

The next jobs are;

- Start buying kit, i.e. a digital camera, backpack, etc etc (I’ve written myself a list)
- Sort myself out with some Visas
- Buy travel insurance – it’s expensive!
- Keep reading my guidebooks to make sure I don’t miss out on anything because I don’t know about it!

I’m really excited about Malaysia. If it weren’t for Amy, I’d never have even thought about going there to be honest. But reading about it in the Lonely Planet, I think I could spend all 3 months just there! It sounds amazing and is apparently the cheapest place in the world to do the PADI Open Water course, but unfortunately, it’ll be monsoon season in the north-east when I’m there, which is a shame!

Perhentian Islands, Malaysia

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