Itinerary Part I: China

The first three weeks or so of my trip will be spent doing a whirlwind tour of China.

Things start off with a painfully long direct flight from Chicago to Beijing [13hrs and 15 minutes!]. In Beijing I will try to recover from jet lag while visiting typical touristy stuff; Great Wall, Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, etc. After a few days in Beijing I am catching an overnight train to..

Shanghai: where I will see the sites before catching another overnight train, this time to.. 

Xi'an: home of the world famous Terracotta warriors. After exploring the former Capital of China for a few days I take yet another train to...

Yichang: a riverside city that is the starting point for boat tours of the...

Three Gorges: a region along the Yangtze river famous for its towering bluffs. Will spend two days floating down the Yangtze and then its back to trains for the trip to...

Yangshuo: a small country town offering a chance to see some of the more scenic sides of China. To warp things up, we jump another train for the overnight trip to...

Hong Kong: which will be my final destination in China. I'll spend three or four days exploring Hong Kong before moving on to my next destination, Thailand. 

The birth of an idea...

Some time ago I was feeling a bit restless. At the time, I was working four days a week in Baltimore and flying home to Chicago on the weekends. I liked my job and enjoyed the travel but in some ways was living two half lives instead of one whole life. I decided that I needed some sort of change; something to reshuffle my life and break me out of the rut that I was in.

About this time I saw the below picture on a travel website.

When I see it now I realize that it's not a particularly impressive picture, but at the time that I first saw the photo, I had an overwhelming urge to go somewhere like this; to break away from the airports, hotels, and cab rides that were currently my life and do something exciting and different. Out of this, the idea for a three month backpacking trip was born. 

So I began tentatively planning; feeling out the possibility of not working for three months, researching places to go, checking out prices, and I came to realization that this thing might actually be possible. Nine months later and my airfare is booked, my itinerary is loosely planned, and in barely a month, I depart. 

Because I am generally terrible at long-distance communication, I decided that I would create a blog with all photos and updates that everyone can check. My hope is that if there is just one place that I have to update, then I will be more likely to do so. 

So, please forgive me if I don't return Facebook messages; I often listen to and promptly forget voicemails; and I am delinquent when returning e-mails. However, if my travails interest you, I'd love to have you follow along on (what I hope to be) my exciting journey!