Upcoming Plans

I am wrapping up my time in Europe over the next couple days and preparing for the next portion of my journey.  My original plan was to spend the next portion of my trip in India, but this plan has not come together - I should have secured an Indian visa prior to leaving the United States, as it becomes more challenging when abroad. (To make a long story short: the Indian government has outsourced American visas to a private company called Travisa. This complicates matters significantly if you're trying to get a visa while abroad. Yes, it's possible but given time/budgetary constraints, I think that the amount of time I'd have to stay in one place waiting for a visa isn't feasible. Also, I think the Indian government is snickering about making the lives of Americans more complicated through outsourcing services. The student has become the master.) Sadly, I have come to the realization that I will have to abandon my India plans for the time being. This was an upsetting realization, but I guess I'll just have to add India to the list of places to see in the future.

What this means is that I will have to take a huge jump from Turkey - if you look at a map (or if you have a good knowledge of world geography), you can see that going east/south from Turkey means first Iran, and then a series of unfriendly "-istans", then India... so I've got to skip over all of that. I've got a flight booked to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on Saturday, the 22nd, arriving on the 23rd. I had originally thought to fly to Bangkok but found a direct flight on Malaysian Airlines which was significantly cheaper, so Kuala Lumpur it is!

I plan to then spend the next couple months traveling in South East Asia. I'm planning to slow my travel down even more, and I'll probably wind up staying a week or more at most places - or perhaps just finding a beach hut and never leaving. :) So, that's the plan!!