When I’m asked why I decided to give up my job to spend half a year travelling on the other side of the world, I find it very difficult to give a clear answer. There is, of course, no one single reason why I made the choice, but I’m sure that turning 30 had something to do with it. During the inevitable periods of reflection on my life that accompanied that birthday, I felt a growing need to take some time out from the world of a full-time job. I’ve now been working for about 6 years after finishing my studies, a little over three years as a post-doctoral researcher in physics and materials science, followed by two and a half in an IT consultancy firm. Now I feel that I need to do something different, something that will remind me that there’s more to the world than the places I see from the train window on the way to the office every morning.

I wouldn’t describe myself as an experienced traveller. Up to now, my travels have ranged from family holidays across Europe when I was a child, to more recent trips to Japan and Australia (among other places). However, I’ve never been away for more than three or four weeks at a time, and have tended to stick to more developed countries. So when I fly out from London to Kathmandu on October 1st, to start a 7-month trip around Asia, I’m expecting to experience some severe culture shock, and although I’m obviously excited, I’m also apprehensive about how I’ll cope with the newness of it all.

Originally, I had planned to spend my first few weeks in Nepal working on a conservation project in the Terai (the lowland region in the south of the country), but this has recently been cancelled. It was a bit of a disappointment, but at least now I’ll have more time to explore the rest of the country. After about a month in Nepal I fly to Bangkok, and will spend about five months travelling around Southeast Asia. I have a very rough plan of the route I’ll take, but most of the time I expect to be making it up as I go along. Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia are the main countries on my list, but I may also try to travel down through Malaysia if I have enough time. In April next year I’ll be back in Bangkok, from where I fly to Kunming in China’s Yunnan province. From there, I start the final section of my trip, joining an organised tour to Tibet. The tour heads north through Yunnan, flies to Lhasa, then travels overland, eventually crossing the border into Nepal and finishing in Kathmandu. At the beginning of May 2004, I’m due to fly back to London. I don’t yet have any plans about what I’ll do when I get back to England, but I’m not overly concerned about that right now. Instead, I’m just enjoying a newly acquired and rather strange sense of freedom.

I hope to be able to post an update here at least every couple of weeks – maybe more if I have the time, maybe less if it’s hard to get net access or if I’m struck down with a particularly nasty tropical bug. Any kind of feedback (comments, advice, personal abuse, etc) is always welcome! I’m not quite sure what to expect on this trip, but I hope that I can find at least some of the right words to describe it.