Separation

The hug with Joe at the bus station at 2am lingered longer than usual. Perhaps it was to deliver enough love to last for the time we are separated. Some last minute adjustments to our plans diminished our time apart so it will now only be Christmas when we will meet him in Myanmar.

We snatched sleep where we could and Mumbai airport was amazing with comfortable long sofas to lie on, and excellent dosa to snack on, to help pass the 11 hour stopover.

In the bus from Kathmandu airport the sight of overloaded Hero bikes, washing in ditch water and the chaos of the streets was less of a surprise and rather more like seeing an old friend.

Nepal is set to hold the world record for the largest human national flag, on the day we arrived 35,000 Nepali collected in a park to produce what would have been quite a spectacle from the air. The Katmandu Post also reported the terrible landslides in the north, the significance of which became clear when we discovered that the Friendship Highway is now blocked and our return by road from Lhasa to Kathmandu now not possible.

We met a multi national group who we were joining in Tibet, mostly Australian with German, Swiss, Brazillian, Austrian, Portugese and New Zealand. We all parted with passports, forms, lots of US dollars and began the process of getting to know a lot of nice people.

We spent the day in the Garden of Dreams, a beautifully manicured walled garden and a welcome escape from the tourist driven area of Thamel in Kathmandu.

Tomorrow we hopefully get to Tibet for the first time!

Not the normal gap year scenario

I am sure parents are not supposed to leave on a gap year before their children!
People ask if we are excited, but the long list of things to arrange has prevented reflection about what we are about to do. Joe's Chinese visa is still elusive but having delayed his flight once he is more hardened to uncertainty. We have persuaded ourselves that is is better for your children to start their gap year at home so we we are helpfully leaving the country before him!

Two weeks to go

All our adventures seem to start with Sue, a mug of tea and the Internet.

This may be called a gap year or a punctuation in our careers but we just think it is time out to reflect now we are 50 plus.

18 months of saving and just 2 weeks to go before we leave and it does not yet seem real.

The long wait for results day and anxiety about Joe's visa for China have suppressed reality.

We have been so used to traveling as three that the first challenge is going to be journeying without Joe!