Dharamasala: freezing my nuts off!

Hello from up in the mountains!

It is bloody freezing here. India has cold winters just like the UK! I'm in Dharamasala (close to the Tibetan border), having braved an overnight bus journey from Delhi in what must surely be the draughtiest bus on the planet. I'm lucky I made it here. Me and another guy got stranded on a roadside in the middle of bloody nowhere during a midnight toilet stop. Thankfully a bright spark on the bus (Tanuj) alerted the driver to come back for us!

But boy, the difficult journey was worth it. This is an isolated mountain paradise. The air is so clean compared to Delhi! The scenery is stunning; wooded ravines, winding mountian roads, and rolling mist. Snow-capped mountain peaks roll up and away into the unfathomable distance, giving the impression Everest is in our own back yard. (That's actually very far away, in Nepal.)

We're staying in the town of McLeod-Ganj, a short vertical drive up the hill from Dharamsala. My volunteer group and I have accomodation at a chilly but welcoming guest house, run by a very jolly man who is friends with our project leader Daya. I visited the Dalai Lama's temple and the Tibetan Museum today. These were both amazing experiences; the latter was incredibly moving and haunting.

I'm wearing all my clothing (including two pairs of trousers) to combat the chill - the temperature has not risen above 5C all day. With impeccably bad timing, my camera chose to stop working just as we were about to embark on these once-in-a-lifetime sightseeing opportunities. Bastard!!! I took dozens of fuzzy pics on my phone camera in a vain attempt to capture the memories.

We spent the remainder of the day warming ourselves by a brazier, gulping down piping hot chai. I was wowed speechless by the awesome surroundings as much as the intense cold. Heat insulation is a rare luxury in the Indian hills. The cold gets in everywhere, through the windows and doors, so you lie in bed with the blankets wrapped round you, still shivering. (I imagine winters would have once felt like this in the UK before the advent of central heating. No wonder people in Victorian pictures look so tired and bloody miserable!)

In many senses Tibet has been all but wiped out, but it's heartening to see the exiled people continuing to survive in isolated pockets in neighbouring countries. Here in Dharamasala there is a large Tibetan community. Everywhere there are pictures of the Dalai Lama decorated with blue ribbons - the hero of the people. Buddhist monks in maroon and orange robes flock round the town. Also there are monkeys scampering between the roof-tops. Monkeys seem to thrive everywhere in India! It's surreal in a way.

I'm about to walk back to the guest house, down a steep hill, in the pitch black night. One step in the wrong direction and I'll be sent plunging down a steep drop. Thank God my Auntie Margaret bought me that travel torch for crimbo! Tonight I want to party with my group and enjoy some beers. It's been a while since I had a proper drink and boy am I ready for one!

Tata for now!

Delhi - one week in...

Hello there,

Well I've been on my travels for seven days now and I'm pleased to say I've not been shot, stabbed, mugged or bum-raped yet - so far so good.

I've spent a whole week in Delhi and it is an incredible place. I've never seen somewhere so chaotic and noisy and so utterly congested with people, cars and animals. Cows roam the streets, while pedestrians run the gauntlet of rickshaws and a million-and-one buses packed to the rafters with people.

Believe what you read - the city is over-run with dust and pollution, and everywhere you look it is crowded to an insane degree. But it is a very beautiful place at the same time, and often I find myself just standing and staring in awe at everything around me.

Soon I'll try to post some pictures (this computer has no visible USB orifice for me to insert my camera, so no pics today I'm afraid) - and to tell the full story of what I've been getting up to! So far I haven't had a moment to spare.

To quickly sum up my week, after I arrived I spent three days in a hotel (reasonably clean but a bit of a rip-off) and visited the Taj Mahal (amazing). Now I'm working for two weeks on an international volunteer project teaching street children, with some people from Holland, America, Korea and India.

The kids are lovable little scamps and I've been playing guitar for them. They loved Catherine Wheel! We've helped them to write the alphabet and taught them to brush their teeth. Also we've been teaching them some simple children's songs in English. It's going well, and we've been seeing plenty of the sights Delhi has to offer too (such as the Red Fort and Connaught Place).

This weekend my group and I are visiting Dharamsala in northern India, home of the Dalai Lama, and the exiled Tibetan government!

The weather is nice - sunshine and warm temperatures (mid-20s) nearly every day, but the city is constantly blanketed in smog and mist. The nights are quite cold, though nothing like the British winter. I'm having fun but I miss home, and it's crazy to think I won't see any of my friends or family for another 11 months or so. But I've been having great fun so far.

I hope everyone in the UK is well and good - until next week, auf wiedersehn!

Heathrow Airport: so here goes...

Hello from the UK for the final time! I am now in an internet cafe at Heathrow Airport - I'm all checked in at terminal 3, my flight leaves in less than two hours' time and I am just about to do all the tearful goodbyes with my family and go through security. My round the world trip is about to begin!

After an eight-hour flight I arrive in Delhi tomorrow morning, at about 11AM local time. I have a hotel room booked for the first three nights while I acclimatise to the five and a half hour time difference, and a day-long tour of the city to look forward to on Saturday. Then on Monday I start work at a volunteer camp working with street children.

So bloody hell, this is it, I'm about to go! Despite the attendant last-minute struggles I really am rather bloody excited now. Not sure what I'll make of Delhi - all the guidebooks describe it as indescribable, which helps. It sounds f**king mental and an unforgettable experience (for good and bad reasons). So we'll see.

I have to go now. See you on the other side campers!

Hooray - I worked out how to post photos on this thing!

So I'll start with a quick story: electro pioneer Brian Eno was involved in a car accident one time back in the 1970s. One night, confined to a hospital bed with his injuries, he was passing the time listening to a tape of classical music. Outside, rain was drumming loudly on the windows, and so the legend goes, the sound of this mingling with the music gave him the idea to invent ambient music.

'Where is this going?' you ask. Well sometimes in life you can make your setbacks work to your advantage. "Every cloud..." and all that. I'm ill with a bit of flu, and after spending a few minutes playing around with this website, I've worked out how to upload photos!

There are clear parallels between mine and Brian Eno's life, but only I seem to spot them. Yes, I may not have achieved anything impressive like invent ambient music, but I'm not completely boring. I can play the theme to Red Dwarf on guitar. And last year I went to a barbeque!

Now I'm gonna make like Rod Stewart and "get out the polaroids" - and show you some photos I've taken in the last 3 months:

This is where I live in Meltham...

I get less nightmares since I left my old house...

Castle Hill (near Huddersfield) at sunset - I'm quite proud of this one:

This is an arty photo of some stairs I took at Huddersfield uni (Harold Wilson building).

This is my friend Anthony.

This is my mum feeding the neighbour's tortoise.

This is my dad proudly showing off some of his vegetables:

My mum feeding a horse:

A bird that got trapped in the bird-feeder (we cut it free when we found some wire clippers):

And last but not least, a cat in a window:


Well that was completely interesting wasn't it? Quite a lot of animal antics there. I have other photos, but they're either too wierd to show you or not very tasteful. (I omitted all the happy-slappings after consulting with my lawyers.) I should hopefully have a few memorable photos to post of my travels in the weeks and months to come!

God bless Google and all of its infinite featurey-ness. What next? The ability to embed toast in blog entries? That would make breakfast a doddle, and help to feed the starving millions of Africa. Sir Bob of Geldoffs ought to take note.

Season's greetings from an ill bastard.

Yo ho ho, merrrry crimbo-mass everybody!

So here it is - my final Christmas at home before going away. An endless succession of grey wintery days has ushered in their glamourous, decorated, but ultimately empty-headed cousin: December 25th.

What a bloody disappointment! There is no snow. Instead we have the usual festive accompaniment of drizzle. After bravely holding out for most of the autumn, my immune system finally "did a Channel Islands" and surrendered its defences to man-flu a few days ago. I spent all of yesterday cocooned in blankets on the couch being fed cups of tea by the Duchess and listening to 60s music stations on digital radio. What bliss.

Right now I'm drinking coffee with whisky in it and trying to finish off a song I've been writing. My parched vocal chords have reduced my singing voice to a heron-like honking sound, which will no doubt make for interesting listening!

But every cloud has a silver lining, even the ones carrying festive drizzle. My mum's cooking a splendiferous dinner later. I'll hide upstairs ignoring all the crap TV, then I've got the Mighty Boosh Live and Borat DVDs to look forward to tonight. As well as some rather excellent CDs (Brian Wilson's Smile and a Woody Guthrie album), a music voucher from my cousin Al, a Match of the Day quiz game and the rest of the Jack Daniels bottle that thus far has been subsidising my coffee enjoyment! It's not all doom and gloom.

Merry Christmas to you dear reader, wherever you may lay your hat and declare your home. I hope there are loads of little sausages on your Christmas dinner (or chipolata-shaped buboes of quorn if you is a vegetarianist) and that you are promptly set upon by a sexually attractive person of the opposite gender holding mistletoe! Well here's hoping eh.

The boy who cried wolf (and other tales)

Greetings, welcome to another pre-departure edition of my travel blog. Help yourself to refreshments - there are tea, hobnobs, malaria tablets and Hepatitis A vaccination syringes in the corner. Drape yourself in a mosquito net, zip up all the flaps (ooh pardon) and we'll begin.

I've been massively busy the last few weeks sorting out various things. Things. Things to do with travelling. I acknowledge right now that if you know me at all you may well be jealous as absolute f**k about what I'm doing next year. I'm sorry, I'd love to take you with me but there's not enough room in my rucksack to fit you in on top of my camping towel and various boomerangs and snares (if anyone from HM Customs sees this that's a joke). You're there with your Barratt home, your curlers and your Robson & Jerome DVDs, and here I am, king of all Leeds, dancing a merry jig in the STA Travel office.

Yes I am very lucky to get the chance to do this, and I also realise I am either foolish or brave to attempt to do so much in one trip - I'm visiting about 14 or 15 countries at the last count, I forget how many exactly. Be assured it ain't easy; it takes about as much planning and organisation as your average invasion of the Nazi-occupied European continent (D-Day would be a good example). Which is about 10,000 times more planning than the average invasion of Iraq. (Oooh, controversial!)

I have never been very good either planning or organisation. Why did destiny pick me? Have I the makings of a successful globe-trotter? Or will I run aground against the rocks of my own naivety then get gunned down by the massed ranks of Hitler's armies? As Roy Keane memorably said to Mick McCarthy just before he told him to stick the World Cup up his bollix, 'fail to prepare; prepare to fail'.

Well it's Saturday night and here in Meltham it's dark and f**king chilly outside. There is a sense of subzero festive promise in the air. Not sure what it promises exactly; other than in about ten days it will be Christmas. From the lounge comes the gentle clack of balls as my parents watch snooker on telly. Outside two or three horses graze sullenly in the frozen field, wondering if this 'being a horse' lark really is all it's cracked up to be.

Over in Blackpool the Christmas Tree Ball is playing out in all its splendour. Certain very good friends of mine will be attending in their Sunday best. Local rock colossii the Sound of Superstring and Lotus Circle will soundtrack the evening, entertaining the massed dinner-jacketed throngs and pretty girls in sequinned dresses. I'm missing out on that dizzying eye-candy fix, so I came on here to spill my brains.

Now I've caught up with all my emails and paused momentarily to catch my breath it's about time to inflict on you another blog entry choc-full of verbal diarrhoea. And the next thing I will say is this: bloody Christmas! As if December wasn't busy enough for me already!

I really wish you'd have waited until the new year before popping into existence Jeebus. I've got a major scheduling clash going on right now in my calendar thanks to all these bank holidays and shit. I don't need the hassle and expense of present-buying right now while I'm frantically planning my trip!

True to the Bible, the merchants are all making a fair old wedge selling their trinkets and baubles in the temples, so come on Jeebus - bloody well come back and overturn their tables or whatever the f**k it was you did that sounded proper cool when I heard about it in infant school. At least make Amazon dispatch their orders on time (miracles can happen). You were the prototype of Jimmy Dean, and no-one can ever take that away from you dude. You're the man of the people, the rebel without a cause and all that. I know you're still pissed cos they nailed you to a cross, but look lively man, most of the world has been worshipping your ass for nearly 2,000 years, in some rather misguided and violent ways - so give the fans something back!

But enough finger-pointing at major religious figures. My point is - neither Jeebus nor Santa Claus will bring you gifts of joy; you've got to flash da plastic to get da goodz. And ain't dat da awful trut'. In readiness of my travels, I have now bought:

• Fujifilm A820 camera (on special offer at Jessop's - a more advanced camera than the Canon Powershot I loved and lost this summer thanks to a thieving bastard Ukrainian)
• 2GB memory card for said digital soul-catcher, capable of storing over 1,000 photomographs in glorious technicolor
• Brand new 80 gigabyte iSchmod; thanks to stupendous technological advances, my sprawling music collection no longer needs a team of 10 hand-picked Burmese militiamen to cart it through the jungle in tarpaulin bundles behind me as I hack my way through the undergrowth with a machete.
• Belkin Tunetalk: small digital recording unit about the size of a fag lighter, available for the new low price of £30. Plug it in to an iSchmod, and it records CD-quality audio on to it through its stereo micromophones. (A stupendously simple answer to the question 'how can I lay down a demo of my killer new song while I'm traversing the Thai-Laotian border by riverboat'? Damien Allbrans from Gorillaz eat your heart out!)
• A year's worth of comprehensive backpacker insurance, costing just over £210. This will provide the bearer with generous financial recompense should they wander over a land mine, get their limbs knawed away by sharks or stumble into a Pet Shop Boys concert by accident and suffer brain haemorraging after their auditory cortex implodes.
• Indian visa: now... not to get up on my soap box or anything, but if I was a promising up-and-coming economic superpower like friend India, I'd make my visa-issuing department a LITTLE BIT more customer friendly! As it stands, if you want to visit India with a UK passport, your options are: send your form to the Indian High Commission in London, enclosing payment for £30, and start praying, cos they only accept payment by postal order (on condition that you: enclose a lovely crayon drawing of some flowers, promise to send them a birthday card every year asking after their mother, and your name contains a 'J'). Or pay significantly more and get your visa through a third-party agency, who generally seem like quite rational and friendly human beings. After hearing a lot of horror stories about option A (which I have not exaggerated all that much), I chose the hassle-free route, and after parting with the princely sum of £80 I have an Indian visa to show off in my passport!

I've needed to buy a hell of a lot of stuff for this trip. I now have more gadgets than James Bond! I have also seen fit to open an account with a bank that will let me withdraw my dosh abroad without laying loads of heavy breadhead monetary shit on me. That would be Nationwide then - every single one of the other f**kers demand a pound of flesh every time you dare to be so bold as to access your savings from remote corners of the world such as Katmandhu, Prague or Barnsley. And get this - by law they can make WHATEVER charge they like! (I read that on the internet so it must be true.)

Unfortunately I'm not gonna get to see Japan dammit! Dropped from my itinerary cos it just isn't feasible. To recap, after I go to India, the plan is to fly to Singapore, then on to Bangkok. From here the straightforward option would be to travel on through Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and South China up to Hong Kong (where I have a flight ready and waiting to take me to Oz). If you study a map of the far east you'll notice that Japan hardly fits into this route as it sits out on its own in the ocean. A bit like Britain and Ireland; isolated amongst the waves.

I'm repeating myself here slightly but some golden rules of long-distance travelling seem to be to keep your itinerary as uncluttered as possible and your route as simple as possible. Just get from A to B, without going through C, Z, Y, X and Q. You can't visit absolutely everywhere. Getting myself over to Japan then back down to Hong Kong by air could potentially add a lot of logistical problems and cost a f**k-load, plus I'd be crossing God knows how many time zones in a limited number of days. And I don't like crossing time zones. We'll have to save our blossoming romance for another year, Japan.

My bloodstream is now swimming with so many antibodies and vaccinations I swear I must exude a smell of disinfectant from my pores. I'm more toxic than an Azerbijani chemical factory. (Watch out Britney Spears!) In the last year I've had: Hepatitis A, Rabies, Typhoid, Diptheria, Tetanus (the vaccinations, not the illnesses) and I'm also planning to get Hep B and yellow fever jabs. Who needs Deet? Any mosquitos brave enough to bite my pasty white English flesh will most probably puke their guts up and die on the spot.

This mammoth operation takes ca$h to do. Hence I have now shamelessly dedicated myself to the pursuit of MONEY. Junk from my closet has been diligently parcelled up then flogged on Fleabay. I work Monday to Friday at an office for the local council, helping those lovely folk bring free childcare training to the great unwashed. I work evening shifts at a local pub too, helping drunken idiots get even drunker. Pub life is proper ace though, I love it. Recently I worked behind the bar till 6am for the Hatton-Mayweather fight. Bloody hell what an epic night. I'm no boxing fan but it was clearly a special occasion. We bonded that night, the pub and I. I feel its sleeping life-force and its quiet inertia.

In amongst all these developments I have doggedly pursued that silly indulgence of mine, my "music career". Again, if you know anything about me you will know this is my NUMBER ONE passion/delusion in life. I'm taking a year out of music and I need to keep things ticking over. By the time I head for Heathrow on 10th January, I need to have my website (http://www.bondymusic.co.uk/) fully updated, my highly sexual musical content uploaded on to every free music site between here and Timbuctoo (to get what exposure I can), and a framework in place so my CDs and promotional material can be posted out and my stuff can remain on sale while I am living the life of a bushtucker man, incommunicado with the world at large.

The website is now updated with some of my recent various witty remarks. I am now signed up to about 15 music sites, with another 20 or so on my list to do (including NickRhodes'sBiscuitHour.com and Al Jazeera Unsigned). Thanks to a good buddy the CD orders will be delivered. There is loads more work to do, which will keep me occupied during the terminal French & Saunders re-runs over Christmas eh? Oh and amidst all that I'm releasing a special limited-edition Christmas EP. Madness!

Once that's all over and done with I'm hosting a final farewell piss-up in Blackpool - at the West Coast Club Above, on Friday 4th January. Bands. Booze. Partying like it is one year shy of 2000, i.e. 1999! Certain good mates of mine are getting sick of all these leaving parties I keep having. I'm starting to feel like the boy who cried wolf. But rest assured guys - you're not gonna see me for a VERY long time after this one. This one is for real. Wolf! Wolf! WOOOOOOOLF!!!!!!!!

The first twentyish years of my life were quite boring and uneventful, and I would like to commemorate the fact there is now such an insane amount going on in my life. Regular concerns like wooing the ladies and shooting turkeys for Christmas dinner with my trusty 12-guage have been pushed temporarily to the back of my mind. Would you really want to be in my shoes, with all the accompanying hassle of getting visas, buying travel insurance, booking vaccinations and bugging friends and acquaintances for every last travel tip when you've got the presents to wrap and a great big bird sat in your kitchen waiting to be stuffed? (Talking about the turkey obviously.)

I am labouring under the delusion this crap I write is in some way funny and/or entertaining and I hope it makes a good read. I came out of my mother's womb as a fully-fledged after-dinner speaker and I am more than happy to share the experiences I have as I go on. Hell, if you even bothered scanning this far down the page then I'm delighted! Rest assured life ain't never easy, and a pimp's gotta do what a pimp's gotta do just to survive in this modern world. But it will one day make a thrilling novel that someone will glance at then put down in an airport book shop.

Merry Christmas, y'all.

Packed it, booked it, f**ked off!

On Saturday I walked into a travel agent’s in Leeds and spunked £1,600 of my hard-earned savings on a rather long holiday. Then to my annoyance I had to follow it up with another £150 on Monday to seal the deal.

My trip next year is no longer the hollow pipe-dream that it has been for so long. It’s no longer a vague platitude spooled out to friends, family and bemused onlookers ad infinitum: ‘I’m going travelling’. I went out and sorted it all on my lonesome. It’s happening for real! It’s going ahead!

The plane tickets are booked; the dates set in stone. I am excited and elated. I've handed over a large chunk of my savings to make this happen, and I would go as far as to declare that one is veritably buzzing one’s tits off with excitement. Like JFK handling the Cuban missile crisis, I told those bloody Russians where to get off and no mistake, and now the world is my oyster.

Now my itinerary is set (to a degree), this is a very good time to outline where I am going, what I plan to do and what my expectations of my trip are. Even though I am both a spunky young whipper-snapper and a well-read ‘man of the world’, I would be the first to admit I know next to bugger all about most of the cities, places and countries I am set to visit.

I don’t want to come across like some pompous eco-warrior shouting “we in the West are ignorant, man!” but I have a burning desire to learn about other places in the world. Recently I was greatly inspired when I went on a volunteer training weekend in Cardiff with UNAexchange. They were very nice but I think they might have brain-washed me a bit. Now I plan to work on three of their international volunteer camps in India and south-east Asia. This will give more structure to my travels, give them some sort of purpose other than globe-trotting for the sake of it, and help me to meet people and delve into local cultures.

I want to record my travels on here to better understand them, and I want to share as much with my friends and family of what promises to be a varied and utterly amazing experience. And anyone else who’s bothered is welcome to join us for the ride! Perhaps you are dreaming of doing something similar yourself? In which case draw wisdom and inspiration from my cultural learnings!

I'm no Bill Bryson but I dream that one day my travel writings will be published and collected in leather-bound anthologies, and pored over by academics at Oxford University (or Oxford Polytechnic at least) who consider them such culturally significant, top-quality pieces of literature it frankly gives them the horn. But if not, this blog will still be here on the t’interweb as a monument to my journey. Unless it gets deleted for gross obscenity and/or libel.

Well the days and weeks are ticking away. On 10th January next year I fly from Heathrow to Delhi with Virgin Atlantic. (I hope someone remembers to tell the pilot he’s not flying to America!) I will be spending a month in India and I’m hoping to:

1. See some of what old and new Delhi has to offer. I don’t know an awful lot about the city yet, apart from that it is bloody big and in India. Confusingly it is called ‘New Delhi’ on all the maps, but really ‘New Delhi’ is just the modern name for the ‘traditional’ Delhi, and it encompasses a place called ‘Old Delhi’. I think. We’ll see. If I turn up in the wrong place it will make for a hilarious (and profanity-filled) entry!
2. Work on a volunteer project with disadvantaged schoolkids in New Delhi. I have always been pretty awkward around kids, and I have tried my best to avoid them throughout my life, but I sense that one day I will be forced to spawn and raise offspring (possibly to save the future of the human race). So, I figure that on a personal development level, I need some sort of once-in-a-lifetime baptism of fire to traumatise me into liking children. Hopefully it will do the children (and me) some lasting good! I aim to occupy the ‘kindly uncle’ role of Chef on South Park and am considering bringing a chef’s hat, black face paint and a ladle to dish out food.
3. Travel further south to explore the city of Mumbai, where my dad was born.
4. Travel even further south to explore the beaches of Goa and get hallucinogens slipped in my drink by hippies. Spend the night at a beach party raving my tits off to pulsating trance music, convinced I can ‘see’ time as waves of colour. Wake up in a bamboo pit with a bandaged stump where my left leg once was. Time to dust off those travel insurance documents!
5. Realise that waking up in the pit minus a leg was just one in a long chain of freakish hallucinations. Journey back to Delhi by train, convinced my shoes are out to get me.

Hopefully no bad things will actually happen and it will be proper good.

On 14th February I fly out of Delhi with Singapore Airlines, to – funnily enough – Singapore! Which brings us on to the far eastern leg of my journey. The itinerary I have planned is thus:

1. Spend 2-3 days exploring Singapore, going on a tour round the (City? Country? What the hell is it?), followed by the amazing experience of a night-time safari round the state zoo! Expect me to post loads of pitch black photos that supposedly portray various amazing events and creatures. I’m not sure what effect flash photography would have on all the wild beasts and I don’t want to risk sending hordes of animals stampeding through Malaysia by turning my flash on!
2. Fly to Bangkok (via budget local flight, not yet booked). Spend a few days sightseeing and inspecting the temples and shit. I will be mortally afraid of looking any woman in the eye in case they are a ladyboy. (“Well you just can’t tell with some of them can you?”) Best case scenario: I will shatter my negative stereotypes (i.e. ladyboys, Thai prisons) and fall in love with the country. Worst case scenario: I will get locked up in a Thai prison on trumped-up drugs charges and lose a leg. Then discover it was all a hallucination, brought on by a ladyboy spiking my drink, and wake up in bed next to the ladyboy. With a sore rectum.
3. Depending on funds I will briefly journey around Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos. All of these territories promise remarkable unspoilt scenery and much exotic cultural wonderment. But there is so much to see in this region and I have so little time in which to see it. I am working to a tight schedule and have to keep my itinerary as uncluttered as possible. Dammit!
4. Travel to the Chiang Mai area of northern Thailand, to take part in a five-day cooking school which will teach me Everything You Need To Know about cooking Thai cuisine. This sounds absolutely fascinating, and the brochure tells me I can “take time to explore the vibrant night bazaar and many temples or just laze by the pool”. Well bollocks to lazing quite frankly, I can do that at home! I’ll be scooting off on a borrowed push-bike, as it informs the reader “Chiang Mai is small enough to get round by bicycle and this is a great way to see this happening city”! I really hope I’m not laid up with the shits or something. It would do my head in to miss this chance to learn something about authentic eastern food, as “the chef will reveal the secrets of Thai cooking in the relaxed atmosphere of his family home”. I hope it really is relaxed and he’s not an unhinged psychotic Gordon Ramsay sort of chef. No more super noodles for me after this jaunt!
5. Work on my second volunteer project, doing cultural understanding work with the inhabitants of a remote village in the Golden Triangle area near Chiang Mai (it is also near the border with Laos). I will be living in a hut beside a beautiful lake (which sounds fantastic, assuming the volunteer organisation is being more honest than your average estate agent). I imagine this could really broaden my horizons about issues affecting local people. And I can put my newly-acquired cookery skills to use! Expect to hear of a spate of poisoning-related deaths in Thailand in the news.
6. Travel into Laos/Cambodia briefly if I didn’t get time to earlier. I’m still on a tight schedule though as I have seven days to…
7. Fly to Osaka or Tokyo (again via local budget airline), see a bit of rural Japan and then arrive to work on my third and final volunteer project, helping a school in the Fukuoka (pardon my French) area of southern Japan organise an arts and crafts festival.
8. Do some sightseeing in Tokyo, then fly on to Hong Kong to chill out for several days and enjoy the night-time light displays that bathe the entire cityscape in swathes of breathtaking colour.

Of course when you tot it all up, this is all likely to cost oodles and oodles of money. In this respect my savings are like a lump of delicious Edam. We all love Edam don't we? There's not enough Edam in the world for everyone. And I have to take care not to use a blunt knife to carve my Edam up. I know from past experience that when you’re abroad, luxuriating in a country with prices much cheaper than your own, you end up spending just as much in a month as you would back home. Before I know it, I'll have really buggered up slicing that Edam. So a sharp cheese knife is essential at all times.

I have completely lost my thread now. Erm... the basic gist is, I need to seriously economise on my journey. I will have to descend back into my hereditary Yorkshireman mindset and employ a coin purse to keep track of my cash. It will be a challenge after years of wasteful spending. I really have wasted my money on some crap in my time!

Anyway - the next part of my trip affords me a much-needed chance to earn back some travel funds. That’s right folks, armed with a working visa I am going to the kingdom of the dusty outback, the kooky kookaburra and Rolf Harris’s ethnically-inspired hyperventilation and wobble-board combo (not to mention Rolf himself) – good old Australia!

I fly into Sydney on 14th April and I have four and a half months to work, party and travel my way round Australia. I have no specific plans apart from spending a few weeks in Sydney, a few in Adelaide and a few in Melbourne (which I am told has a good music scene).

Hopefully by then I will have hooked up with some other travellers down at the hostel for company. In my imagination we’ll form into a tightly-knit gaggle of tie-died, generation X surfer dudes who enjoy nothing more than a cold tinnie, ‘flipping the bird’ at ‘the Man’, and tripping on peyote cactus if they have that in Australia. While lying wasted under the stars one night, we'll all resolve to travel the outback. We’ll spot a knackered old slaughterhouse truck with broken axles on sale for peanuts, and we’ll set off for some high jinks on the road, our death-trap vehicle careering all over the place in the dust clouds. Later I will come to regard these times as my happiest upon the Earth. How will it all end ... or begin?

Timewise, nothing after my arrival in Oz is set in stone really, apart from one condition of my air ticket being that I have to return within twelve months of my departure date, i.e. January 2009. Britain!? Fuck that, I hate the place.

Once I get to Australia I have to consider my budget for the rest of the trip. At the moment I have my stops in New Zealand and Fiji provisionally booked for September and my stops in LA and New York pencilled in for October. This is because the airline booking system cannot reserve plane seats more than eleven months in advance. The provisional flight dates are 1st September for Oz to New Zealand, 29th September for New Zealand to Fiji, 1st October for Fiji to Los Angeles, and lastly 4th October for New York to London. How I will get from LA to New York is also undecided.

Nearer the time, for a flat £35 fee I can re-arrange these dates to suit my itinerary (bearing in mind I have to keep within the cursed 12-month rule). I will need to make some big choices when I reach Australia. If my money is holding out I would like to spend some time travelling round Peru, Bolivia and Chile after reaching LA. If not I’ll have to postpone my trek round south America for another year (sob) and fly straight to New York, and from there, home (double sob) to enjoy a Christmas being broke (treble sob).

To be honest there’s no telling how tired and grumpy I will be when I get to America, after several months on the road. Will I be able to face more cheap domestic flights, more overnight bus rides and buying yet more visas off border guards using strange notes with lots of zeroes on? I suspect a direct plane journey home, a steaming hot British cup of tea and a good night’s sleep in my bed at home will probably seem more desirable to me than the most beautiful woman on Earth by that point.

Later in life, I will no doubt rue the missed opportunity in hindsight! Such is life.

If I am seriously hard-up I will stay and work in Australia until the end of October. Croupier, tree surgeon, fireman – name it, I will try it. My portmanteau case bulging with Australian dollars (yeah, right), I will spend four weeks in New Zealand, a week in LA, then fly straight to New Yoik to spend a week there just before Crimbo.

If I really am desperate for money on the road, there’s always cash to be made as a medical research subject, or donating various non-essential body organs. The human body is a walking cash-crop - though hopefully I won't have to cash in any of the rather valuable chips my maker has blessed me with! I will have to watch my own back out there in the world at large, and not stray over-budget or behind schedule. That’s a challenge if ever there was one.

If I am mega-flush I will leave Oz on 1st September, spend four weeks in New Zealand (hopefully meeting up with some friends from back home), two in Fiji, one in LA, up to six in south America, and one week in New Yoik. I will return home on a similar date, gasping for the aforementioned cup of tea and comfy bed.

Back to the present, I spent Sunday evening typing out most of this blog in a mood of great optimism. Then STA bloody Travel phoned me on Monday morning to tell me I'd have to stump up another £150 to guarantee the departure date to India I wanted! 10th January is so close to new year that it got flagged up by their billing department, but I could leave on 17th January without paying any extra. Though of course then I'd miss all the volunteer projects. Bastards! Out came the plastic.

And it is now time for even more spending: the framework of my journey in place, I have 3 volunteer projects (£360+) and the Thailand chef’s course (£200) to pay for – taking my spending well over the two grand mark! As I had only £4,400 savings to start with (and I now have a monstrous itinerary snaking its way through 2008’s calendar pages), it is imperative I find work as soon as I hit Oz!

Well I’ve been prattling on for long enough. Rest assured the next instalment won’t be too long in coming!

Congratulations! Now you’ve finished reading the full article, here’s the condensed ‘light read’ version for your convenience:

Have booked my ticket. Going to lots of places, leaving 10th Jan. Cost shitloads. I don’t care. Bye!