Let The Adventure Begin...

Since we're not sure when we'll get online again, we figured we'd write one last post before we leave Australia. We take the Sunday night red-eye flight to Singapore where we have one day to explore the city before flying to Kathmandu, Nepal. Our plan while in Nepal is a 12 day trek to Gokyo Ri in the Mount Everest region followed by a week exploring the Kathmandu area. We were planning on trekking to Everest Base Camp (the staging area for groups attempting to summit the highest mountain in the world), but had heard the Gokyo area is an even better trek. We'll follow the Everest Base Camp trail for a few days before turning north to the Gokyo Valley and Gokyo Ri which is supposed to have great views of four of the highest eight mountains in the world (including Everest). The region is also less visited than Everest Base Camp and should allow us to experience the authentic Sherpa culture.

As far as the long trek and third-world conditions go, we're ready for the challenge...

The first week of our trip in Fiji was quite the adventure. It didn't matter that we had cyclone-like conditions for the entire week, we were just happy to be out of the snow and starting our year-long trip.

New Zealand was incredible...the scenery was amazing, the people were very friendly, and we had plenty of awesome adventures. Everything was so comfortable and easy it almost felt like home.

We had excellent surf on the East Coast of Australia. The West Coast was a perfect mix of adventure and relaxation. Like we said before, the food, clothes, cars, buildings, restaurants, and scenery was all quite similar to the US.

Although there have been slight differences in the cultures of New Zealand and Australia compared to the US, it has been incredibly easy to travel these last 100 days...everyone speaks English, we've had a vehicle to get around with, we've had friends to stay with, stores carry most of the same products, we've been able to drink the tap water, and the food is similar. Even though we were in different countries, everything still felt similar to the US. It worked perfectly starting our trip this way...everything was exciting just because we were happy to be traveling and it allowed us to slowly get into the grove of long-term travel.

Although we'll probably feel different in a month or two, right now we're really looking forward to the challenge of the next three months of our trip. We want to experience a few places completely different than the US.

This next stretch will bring us through one third-world country after another....Nepal, Indonesia, SE Asia (Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, maybe Burma), Kenya, and Tanzania. The cultures couldn't be more different than the US. The food will challenge our systems (bring on the street fare), it will be a constant struggle to communicate, we'll be relying entirely on public transportation, we won't blend in with the locals anymore, the comfort level will go down significantly and the stress level up significantly....although whatever happens, it will definitely be an adventure.


(On a totally separate note...Surfboard Update: Although we do want to challenge ourselves, we didn't want to deal with the challenge of hauling surfboards around Mount Everest. We packed up our surfboards, wetsuits, and fishing gear to send on a slow boat to London. If all goes as planned, it will all be waiting for us in London when we arrive in August. An interesting side note: We paid $130 to check the boards from MSP to LAX and only $22 total to check them from LAX to Fiji to New Zealand to Brisbane, Australia to Perth, Australia. Shipping them from Perth to London only cost about $300. One more reason why the US domestic airlines are awful.)