Lest we forget
We never expected it to be easy.
But I’m not sure we realised it would be this tricky!
For the past couple of months *impossible* has been ringing in our ears.
But we don’t do impossible.
Roadblocks call for detours, not an end to a trip.
Brick walls are to be scaled, not stopped in front of.
First it was the visa issues.
We don’t need visas for Thailand IF we have a reutrn ticket. Which we don’t. So we contacted the embassy, who told us to send them a return ticket and they would give us a visa. Umm. We don’t have a return ticket. And we don’t need a visa. We just wanted the return-ticket-requirement to be waived. According to recent travellers in the region, noone checks, so we’ll wing it. But it took a week to find out.
Russia and Mongolia pose a problem too. Their visas need to issued in your country of origin. But they also have to used within three months of being issued. We’ll be on the road six months before we get there. The embassies in New Zealand have been very helpful, suggesting we *try* the Beijing embassy when we get there, and if not, NZ will make every effort to help us.
NOTE TO SELF: arrive in Beijing with plenty of time left on China visas in case we have to courier our passports back to NZ.
It took another week of emailing back and forth to establish that.
Laos visa. We’re not entering by the usual means of transport and the town we’ve chosen to do our border hop is fairly remote. Indications are that we might be able to get a visa at the border. Other internet sites suggest you used to be able to, but that it is no longer possible. According to yet another source, it’s cheaper at the border than picking one up in Bangkok. Conclusion: who knows? Time spent finding out: another week!
Schengen visa. Heard of this? Basically it means that most of the European Union is now all good friends, but that instead of being able to stay for a month or so in every country along the way, non-Europeans only get three months in the whole lot. Not a good look for tourism, if you ask me.
But the visa regulations are starting to look like a piece of cake as we trawl through the driving regs for the UK. Patting ourselves on the back at being so organised (I mean to say, we won’t even *be* in the UK for another 12 months), we thought we’d just check the details for international driver’s licenses so we could tick it off our list of things to do. We should never have looked. Then we would not have discovered we are not entitled to take our whole family in one vehicle anywhere in not-so-Great-now Britain. We’ve got one child too many and Grandpa is excess to requirements as well. Will they follow the rest of us on a tandem? And now that we know we’re not allowed to tow a caravan either, what are we going to sleep in? A trailer (which we can tow) is not too different to a tent, and tenting in England holds little appeal – there’s a reason we’re taking waterproof coats.
Right now the UK Pilgrimage is firmly wedged in the too-hard basket. Not impossible, but not worth thinking about.
However, once we’re there, we don’t want to forget the hurdles we had to jump to get there.
Tags: preparation, transport
rayres
praying for you
I can’t believe you can’t tow a caravan – the brits love their caravans, how do they get anywhere!!
I hope it all works out – it was the UK part of the trip which started all this off wasn’t it!
Leighx
Leigh, the Brits are allowed to get a license that entitles them to tow something bigger than a trailer. We’re not allowed that – not even with a British passport!
And we’re not even allowed to drive the same size van that we can drive in NZ. (We have to use our license but it works according to their *lesser* rules, and there’s no way of getting one of their licenses) Bummer eh. We’ll find a way.
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