I'm off!

The last picture I took, at New Year's Eve. Yes that is blue sauce. No this picture does no make sense.

Bags are packed, car is fed and watered. I'm off!

Just a reminder: I'm driving through Europe, then dumping the car in Bulgaria or somewhere, then pretty much following the Silk Road and further afield. Eventually I'll get to Oz and NZ before flying to South America. Whoop!

I never did get my Turkmen visa so I'll have to get it en route, but I have one for Iran (yey!), Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and India. That'll save me a bit of time on the road, at least.

So, a quick hop from Dover to Calais, then a stop somewhere in France, perhaps Reims.

Goodbye England!

J

Visas (no cake)

 My imagination (see below)

I dream visas. When I close my eyes, visa forms and civil servants swirl in front of my eyes, taunting me with literal hoops to jump through.

But success is imminent! I think.

Visas and cake

 My dedicated 'travelling eye' biscuit!

I've spent the last few days in London attempting to secure various visas, but succeeding only in returning home minus a passport. On the up side, I've been fed a lot of very interestingly shaped cakes.

The story so far

With roughly a month and a half to go before I head off on my longest trip to date, I don't have much left to sort out. Except for lots of visas. So far I've got my Indian visa (which was almost the cause of my missing a flight to Germany due to the embassy's decision to outsource everything – it wasn't like that in 2003 when a short queue and a smile was all it took), and that's it. I only got that now because it's got six months' validity. Really, I'd like to have ones for Iran and Turkmenistan, but in order to get the latter I need one for Uzbekistan as well. So I'm waiting for letters of invitation (or rather, codes issued by the respective Ministries of Foreign Affairs) to come through via tourist agencies in those countries. Then I can go to London and pick up the visas. I'm sure it'll be fine. In the worst case, I'll pick them up en route. Actually the worst case would be if Iran don't issue me a visa, but let's not think about that yet.

So in the meantime I'm working out how to put snow chains on my car. Somehow, I've got to get it across Europe in January. It's an old car and much of it is likely to fall apart, but I figured that keeping the wheels on the road in a reasonably straight line would be a good idea.

To keep myself busy, I've updated the About section of this blog, and started reminiscing about previous travels. I've created a Google map of my (very roughly) intended route. Also, photos are slowly going up on my Facebook page.