Finally, greetings!

I don't think I can accurately pinpoint when the travel 'bug' infected me- when I was much younger,  my parents would often take me on holidays abroad and I would completely snub the promise of adventure for a good book or video game. I was a bit of a nerd, you see. Undoubtedly part of the old me still remains. But I've learned to appreciate travel a lot more.

The result of this is widening and increasingly ambitious travel plans: since the age of 18, I have travelled extensively in Europe and visited South America for a month. These are merely the beginning, as you find me starting the most spectacular of my voyages yet.

The plan is (not so) simple: beginning at London Heathrow on January 8th, I fly to St Petersburg, Russia- I stay in the city with my dad for a few days, and a short while after his departure I board a train to Moscow, disembarking and taking in the city. Another not so short train ride takes me a fair distance across frozen wastelands to Irkutsk. This is apparently one of the coldest places on earth. Sounds peachy, right?

Back on the train and the first land border looms: Mongolia. Unfortunately, I'm not going to be in the capital city (the superbly named Ulaanbaatar) for long.

Instead, my next train journey takes me across the Chinese border to Beijing. I think I'll need a bit of time in one place at this point, so I've given myself a bit of a cooldown period before I join a gadventures tour first to Xi'an (terracotta army!) then on to Shanghai. Details aside for the moment, here the tour ends and I plan to meet my friend Jim who is teaching in the area for a year. A 'local' to show me round? Stupendous.

From Shanghai, I will be catching a plane to Kathmandu, Nepal. There, I will be volunteering for three weeks, hopefully indulge in a bit of trekking before I get on my flight to Bangkok, in Thailand.

From here on in things get slightly more open ended. I am meeting more friends, and travelling around Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. I shall let you know more as I go on this part of the trip.

June is my return, and I'll be flying back via Oman, of course(?).

So there we have it,  a very rough outline of my plans. I'll fill in dates and details soon. Also, I may struggle for regular picture updates.  Blogging on the move isn't going quite as smoothly as anticipated!

Oh dear.