Planning for next year

All is dark and quiet here.

Suddenly a key turns in a rusted lock. Bats flutter from their resting places. The imposter swings the door open, sending mini-cyclones of dust billowing through the air. The rats nibbling the crusts of mouldy bread on the table scarper into the shadows. Light pours in from the hallway, clouded with dislodged cobweb fragments.

I am back after a hundred years, to once again post on my travel blog!

Wow, it certainly has been a while since I posted a blog on here. Looking at the fractured messages below that I spat out on to cyberspace as I journeyed through the Balkans (oo er), our travels seem like such a long time ago. I could have been wearing different pants, it was that long ago.

I hadn't completely forgotten about posting on here, in fact I've been searching all this time for a suitable way to sum up and round off what has been a rather crazy and eventful summer in a rather crazy and eventful year! No ideas came. In the weeks and months after I finished off my travels and returned to England I let this journal die a slow, quiet death. Until now.

But rather than closing off the tale I must now begin the telling of a whole new "story arc" (like George Lucas innit). Welcome to Episode II: Bondy travels the world!

You see, I like the world. I think it's interesting. I think it's dead good. I always told myself, 'Bondy son, one day you'll travel the world, and see some fine sights.' Through years of university study and work, I never gave up my dream. I told myself that no matter what happened to me afterwards, I wanted at all costs the chance to go and see the world.

Even if I returned home penniless and destitute, and was forced to accept work as a manual declogging operative on a sewage farm, scooping handfuls of human shit out of dark and cavernous processing ducts in exchange for a paltry minimum wage, at least I could roar defiantly to the world that I had travelled (in place of the pitiful squeak my lowly incumbency would dictate).

Earlier this year, as most of you know, I got made redundant from the omnipotent and rather sinister multinational IT firm where I worked, and that got me in a right tizzy - until I realised fate had dealt me the hand of champions, and it was time to vamoose, brave Sir Lancelot! The money I'd squirreled away from my earnings was burning a hole in my pocket, and the world waited out there to be discovered, like a million bejewelled delights.

So there I was, in the middle of April 2007, having just made the decision to take off and travel but not knowing where to go first. I needed a bit of a trial run, a "dress rehearsal" for the real thing. A couple of months traipsing round obscure corners of our glorious new friendship-based European super-state would get me in the mood, right? Right. So I booked a place on a WWOOF farm on France, arranged to rendezvous with my friend Katy a few weeks later, and off I went, staggering under the weight of my comically over-stuffed rucksack [1]. (I have certainly learned a few lessons about travelling light! That rucksack weighed 39 kilos at check-in!)

As you probably know I had to return home earlier than planned after I got mugged in the Ukraine and ran out of funds. I went to stay with my mum and dad in Meltham and tried desperately to wine and dine the travel insurance folks via Royal Mail so they would give me a big fat juicy payout. Having already arranged the rest of my travels I had no alternative but to book another flight out to Budapest a couple of weeks later. Things hadn't turned out quite as I expected but, to be fair, forking out for a fresh air ticket was greatly preferable to spending my summer moping around in the lush yet decidedly un-foreign West Yorkshire countryside. It was cool to see my homeboys Anthony, Chris and Gary travel all the way to Hungary from Blackpool by road! RIP to the Pepy machine.

Croatia and Bosnia are wonderful places to visit. I was incredibly moved by the warmth and hospitality of the locals, considering they hardly had the best decade ever back in the 90s. At least they were spared the massive disappointment of Oasis' third album.

Straight after I returned, I went to Tommyfest, which was cool for all sorts of reasons. "An outstanding weekend of music, sun, warm beer and good solid happy times" is the tagline commemorating that particular bank holiday weekend in my mind. I was slightly sick of camping out in a tent after braving the 'seven day mud and piss marathon' formerly known as Sziget, but it was well worth making an extra stop for. I got to play a gig on the Saturday lunchtime, and I fancy the organisers raised a packet for cancer charidees. Not exclusively from my gig you understand - I'm no Kate Moss!

I had decided while out in the Ukraine a few weeks prior to this that I would relocate to Meltham and move back in with my parents for the time being. A slightly unusual move for a twentysomething perhaps, but I needed and still need to save money for my travels.

Also I needed a break from Blackpool; love it as I honestly and truthfully do it is a fucking dump all the same, and my repetitive routines of work/pub/sleep and work/gig/get pissed/buy fried chicken/sleep had left me in a creative and emotional rut after three or four years of little success. I'm not cutting ties, I just need some time to chill. And if you've ever visited the Huddersfield area, you'll know that compared to Blackpool, Meltham is an excellent place to do just that! (Thank god I have family outside of the Fylde. Otherwise I'd be living under an overpass in Salford or something.)

Two months down the line the move seems to have paid off brilliantly. My batteries are recharged. I feel great. I'm writing so many new songs it beggars belief. Thanks to my parents' patient support I am still financially solvent. I've even discovered enough momentum to catch up with my emails and update my website (which has languished without an update for far longer than this blog), and then do the dishes before the Simpsons came on! It's all go here at Bondy HQ!

I recently had a four-week temping job at Huddersfield uni as a room surveyor, which involved going round all the classrooms in a block, knocking on the door and disrupting the lecture, and then counting how many students were in the classroom (much to the bemusement and then amusement of the class). I also got a nice smart clipboard to write the numbers down on. They paid me to do this! And I got free time every hour so I could read a book. Or just sit and stare. (I alternated between the two depending on my mood.)

One time I made a room full of medical students burst out in laughter as I walked in. I looked up wondering what was happening and realised that at that moment the lecturer was busy pointing to a close-up of a vagina infected with thrush on the projector screen! (Ladies, if you have worries in that area, you can come to me. I'm a qualified GP now. I can't do prescriptions though.)

That job finished last week, which more or less brings me up to the present. Right now I'm looking for more temping work, and trying to use my free time to do productive stuff like plan for next year, and throw wing nuts and apples at the squirrels in the garden for laughs.

I have also turned to the TV shows of Michael Palin for enlightenment. Some of his journeys (f'instance Pole to Pole and Full Circle) provide a lot of ideas and inspiration. Here is a man who shows you How It Should Be Done in terms of travelling - and he entertains the ass off the viewer.

I have certainly noticed a recurring theme in his recent work - wherever he goes, whatever continent or time zone he winds up in, he invariably 'meets up' with a hot female companion from that country, who gladly introduces us to the local culture. Always. A bird in every international dialling code it seems. Phwoaarrr, they is fit innit! Representative of the Earth's population? Maybe not - but respect, Palinmeister, you are the pimp daddy of global travel. (Maybe he gets the chicks cos he was in that Monty Python band innit?)

Today, I went to visit a travel agent in Leeds to get some "ball park" figures for round-the-world plane tickets. I was pleased with what I found; a six-stop ticket going to Delhi, Singapore, Sydney, New Zealand, Fiji and LA costs in the region of £1,250 after taxes (through STA Travel). My original plan was a bit more ambitious and I've had to cancel the stops I wanted to make in Africa and South America as this would add a thousand quid on to the final cost!

I have until 9th November to confirm all the dates, and pay up, and then it's official! I am off round the world! My date of departure is 15th January of next year, and I plan to return in December 2008 (on around the 10th). Thus 2008 will be a giant voyage of discovery; a huge frosted marshmallow cake of adventure.

Though it seems like a good deal I must say I was a bit surprised at the general lack of choice for a budget round-the-world traveller (not pointing fingers at STA in particular). If I use the route above I am following something of a standard backpacker route, as you can only connect from certain airports to certain airports, depending on the availability of flights. (Basically it appears like all the world's airlines are divided into two giant camps, like playground gangs, and the two camps proper hate each other and won't share customers and diss on each other's mamas and stuff.) When I planned it in my mind I'd hoped to get a little more off the beaten track.

South America and Africa were both no-nos for reasons of cost (but I could have done a round trip to both quite cheaply if I'd missed out SE Asia, Oz and New Zealand - hence the 'two camps' theory). If you're travelling east from India, Singapore is the only place you can fly to. When you fly east from Fiji (crossing the beguiling and entrancing International Date Line, I believe), the only place you can go is LA. I'm not super-keen to go to LA (I would have gone on to Santiago in Chile if I had the choice), but as I'm obliged to pass through that part of the world I thought I might as well drop in and see what disgustingly opulent lives our porculent cousins over the pond live in Californ-i-yay. Who knows if I'll get another chance? It's all life experience.

But I would like to fit in a quick final stop in New Yoik afterwards if I can - for similar 'living for today' type reasons. The Newyoikian culture and history particularly amaze me. (How much it will amaze me when I go there will depend entirely on whether I have any money left!) Anyway, here's to romantic notions of the world of Carlito Brigante and Travis Bickle - and let's forget those troublesome money worries for now!

I think today showed me that intercontinental air travel can be a hard-to-fathom, mysterious beast. What you quickly realise in the planning stage of a backpacking trip is that certain flights cost more than others of comparable distance, and those prices can randomly fluctuate throughout the seasons. You have to live with it. It's not straightforward like buying a bus pass - you're seeking to travel thousands of miles round the world at an advantageous price and, at the end of the day, you have to pick and choose your opportunities. (Though on a separate note you should perhaps plant several thousand trees when you return home to make Jesus happy.)

Let's face it, if you're lucky enough to get the chance to go anywhere, a million bejewelled delights will await the visitor in many of the globe's destinations; having restrictions imposed on your plans can paradoxically give you greater freedom to decide what you want to do. I suppose you have to be prepared to enjoy the moment and go with the flow.

As long as there's no stag parties or suicide bombings where I venture to (or explosive train crashes for that matter), I'll be happy. Amen!