Namasté.

“I should like to spend the whole of my life in traveling abroad, if I could anywhere borrow another life to spend afterwards at home.” – William Hazlitt

Good little quote eh? Almost 200 years old but completely timeless. I’m not sure how it happened, but at some point traveling became a major past time for me (If you can call it that) constantly reading, researching, planning and looking ahead to the next ‘adventure’. I couldn’t tell you why I find traveling so appealing because I don’t know the answer myself. Abroad I get immense pleasure from the things I would find almost excruciatingly painful and boring at home, bus journeys, cheap food, idle conversation, walking everywhere – everywhere.

But I love it, and for quite awhile now I had been ignoring my itchy feet. The past couple of years I have been lucky enough to see my fair share of Europe, and even became quite fond of those Germans in the process. It’s good fun, excellent in fact. But it’s very safe isn’t it? Not once in weeks was I forced to at least try use another language, or wave my arms about rather wildly above my head, attracting a rather small and curious crowd, to indicate my intent on buying a bottle of water. No, I need to get my feet wet – the deep end, sink or swim (OK enough of the water based analogies)

So with my rather swanky ‘Times Atlas of the World’ on my lap I began to run my eyes over our wonderful little planet we call home. No part I would deem off limits, not a single country in fact – everywhere has there merits so I was looking with an open mind. I couldn’t help noticing this big gap east from to Sudan all the way to Singapore in south east Asia where I had never been. Surely something interesting would be in there for me?

Turning to page 88 of my atlas entitled Asia/Middle east I quickly realised exactly why I hadn’t been to this part of the world. It was a smorgasbord of places that your mother certainly, if not sternly, warned you about. Israel, Myanmar, Iraq, Iran and that’s before you get onto the ominous ‘-stans’, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan – the list goes on. It turns out I’m quite fond of my head being firmly affixed to my shoulders so I ruled those out. There was however one Country still glaring at me and quite obvious.

India.

As much as I love travel, and I love travel. India was a whole new can of worms, A can that I admit I was not 100% sure I wanted to open just yet. But I couldn’t fault it, at some point we’ve all been exposed to the culture of India and it did look colourful, loud and appealing, an unknown quantity.

Il share some quick facts about India with you now, Largely because of my love of facts;

• The number system we use today was invented in India
• India is the largest Democracy on Earth & sixth Largest country
• The game of Snakes & Ladders is of Indian origin as was previously known as Mokshapat dating back to the 13th  Century
• India has the most Post Offices in the world
• The Indian Railway is the largest employer in the world, over 1 million employees and growing.

Flight booked, India here I come.

So whats this you have stumbled on? Well its a log of my trip, but rather than starting it on day one – I’m starting before I leave. Not everyone gets the opportunity to travel, so hopefully they will be able to see what goes into a trip like this. Hopefully It’ll be fun, and no doubt hard – but overall a rewarding experience. I urge you to please leave a comment below, whether your a friend, family member or stranger – I defiantly want to involve you all in this as much as possible, plus well, I want to know at least 1 person is reading the bloody thing.

Image courtesy of Trey Ratcliff

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