Travel Preparation

Since there's not much gear, there's not much planning right?

Although we've yet to set foot outside America, the adventure has already begun. Preparations for this adventure have ranged from gear and travel plans, to vaccinations and emergency medical evacuation contingencies.

Here are the planning highlights to help illustrate the upfront effort that has gone into this adventure.

The photo above shows all the gear Ingrid and I will be carrying for the next year. Innovations in materials have allowed us to reduce the weight of or packs to 26lbs. for Ingrid and 33lbs. for Adam - Now don't go thinking Adam packs heavier than Ingrid or has brought gratuitous footwear, He's packing the shared Items such as the tent, towel, and water purification system. We expect this weight to be reduced as we find certain items unneccessary and opt to leave them behind (Do we really need 3 pairs of socks and underwear?) and as Adam finishes and trades away all 1038 pages of Don Quixote!

After gear, visas have been another major concern of this trip. While Adam can travel to 23 of the 30 countries without needing a visa, Ingrid, due to her Estonian nationality, requires 20+ visas for the same journey. We have spent hundreds of dollars and made several trips to New York City and Washington D.C. in our quest for Visa's. In hindsight, we'd have taken the middle east more seriously, those people do not mess around with visa requests.

The last major preparation to mention in this entry is vaccinations. To ensure we'd make it back without a serious disease for a souvenir, Ingrid and Adam took more shots in the arm than Barry Bonds. The Map below demonstrates some of the signifiant diseases we'll encounter on our trip and the vaccinations that were required. At this point I feel confident I can survive falling on a rusty nail in stagnant water while being attacked by a rabid wombat then receiving resuscitation from a toothless local whose fingers are falling off.