THE ORIGINAL ITINERARY......

....as planned rather haphazardly between Dan and myself on several London nights whilst sipping a glass of red.

* Fly into Delhi, spend a few nights there and then head off to tour the Northern regions of India, including Rajasthan, the bits North of Delhi, but not as far as Kashmir as its apparently not that safe there, Varanasi and Agra.

* Then maybe head to Gujarat to hopefully visit Hitesh and Jothi and stay in his 26 room mansion and ride his tractor :) oh and head to Mount Abu as suggested by Dr Patel, amongst other things.

* Head down the west coast through Mumbai and into Goa for some beach chill out time. Across to Hampi, 'cause I missed this last time and it sounded rather beautiful, then down to Kerala to spend a couple of weeks on a houseboat along the backwaters.

* Next we'll head over to Sri Lanka for some more beach chill out time and spend some quality time with Dans' mum and Burn.

* Now from here the plan gets a little twisted as it all depends on weather Dad and Alex will be able to join me in China, so the plan if they do come, is to fly up to Nepal and spend a few weeks there together, until Dan heads off to do his teachers training course in Vietnam at the start of April. I, on the otherhand, will hang around Nepal a bit longer whilst waiting for my Tibetan and Chinese visa to come through. (yes, mom, I will be perfectly safe on my own here, maybe I'll join an ashram)

> I have to hang around Nepal as Tibet is closed every March for political reasons so they won't start processing the visa 'till the beginning of April you see.

* I'll then do a 10 day tour from Katmandu in Nepal to Llasa in Tibet and get a sleeper train for two nights to Beijing where I'll meet up with Dad and Alex.

* This part I've left up to Alex to plan as I reckon I could do with a break from organising. It'll be like time out on a short family holiday. But the basic plan is as follows:

> A few days in Beijing with day trips to the Great Wall and some other stuff, I forget where.

> A four day trip through the Gobi desert to Ulanbatar in Mongolia, again i cant remember if Lake Bikal is included or if this too far away and also how we return, It might be a flight or maybe another train journey.

> Then back to Beijing with a short trip to Xian to see the terracotta army, where I'll leave the folks and fly to Vietnam to be reunited with Dan, who would have completed his course by now.

* By now it'll be around the beginning of May, which means my 30th soon, so the plan is to either travel by bike (Dan's idea) or by tuktuk (my idea) around Vietnam heading south along the mountain road that passes through the middle of the country and back up along the east coast, stopping at little bays along the way until we reach Han Noi.

* This should take us up to the beginning of June, which is Dan's 30th birthday month, so the plan is for some of his friends to come out and do Laos and/ or Cambodia with us.

* By July, the schools would have reopened and Dan will hopefully find work quite easily. We'd ideally like to stay in Vietnam for a few months so fingers crossed he gets work there. It is round about this time that I become a lady of leisure. Although on a South East Asian teachers salary, I definitely won't be a lady of luxury.

* From here the plan is completely open, but we hope to travel and work our way down through SE Asia. Well Dan will work and I will perhaps take on some volunteering roles and feed the local cats.

So this peeps, is the original itinerary that Dan and I hope to kind of follow. Hopefully all goes to plan and we're not heading back to Tooting in a few months instead!

> Extras not mentioned above include:
- Ali coming to visit at some point, possibly in Vietnam in May
- Clint and Taryn coming to visit towards the end of next year, probably in Thailand
- Steve coming to visit unless he's on his round the world yacht race
- Tam, Leigh and others coming to visit somewhere
- Jaryd maybe coming with Clint and T?
- anyone else want to come and play?

> SE Asia complete we'll hopefully have enough money to pop into oz and couch surf at few peeps houses, getting spoilt with bottles and bottles of red! Hint hint! Actually, I still have last years Christmas coupon from Sara Gray inviting me plus one to do just this and I have it in writing (well a wall post on FB) from one Miss Manthy to do the same!

Damn I wish I had a bottle of red with me now.