my Future Plans

PLANS, FLIGHTS AND THAT ODD VISA

Past experiences always generate new prospects. Sometimes it is enough to hear a word someone says to get going, while at other times one year’s planning goes by before things start moving. It has often happened to me that, while researching for a certain trip or reading others’ experience in a particular place, I felt I was already there, sipping that chai or letting myself be taken away by the human flow in the bazaar. Here are some of my current plans.

Thank you

My trips have always required a good share of reading, talking to other travelers, as well as the odd intent letter and emergency repatriation inclusive insurance needed to support a visa application. The sources of information I shall always be grateful to include, among others, Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree Forum, Abebooks’ bookshop search engine, the guidebooks published by Routard, Lonely Planet, Bradt, the comprehensive, special destinations covered by Odyssey. Among airlines, Air Arabia for its plethora of convenient flights to the Middle East and Central Asia, Turkish Airlines and Aeroflot(according to region) for their sometimes good deals on medium and long haul flights. Not least, LAN for reminding one that service can still be human as opposite to conveniently cardboard-polite, Lufthansa for excellent connections, respectively due Ordnung while still allowing for a Munich Philharmonic Orchestra concert between flights and Avianca for its simple, but smooth and efficient operations. Of a typically hedonist nature, I do not rely much on fate the old Balkan way, so, while believing in God but in no particular religion, I shall not thank fate for anything. But I do enjoy the unexpected and what it brings around, and taking chances (or, to put it in a more personal manner, taking odds at life) is one of the things I enjoy doing when a certain destination or situation require. That might be why I prefer riding trains across the Subcontinent to sunbathing in a cute beach resort or traveling through a war zone to mall going. I just think that way because at the end of the game one at least knows what’s in (if anything), life is not a never ending charade and it should not turn into one. Quite to the contrary.