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Live the adventures of Dan Walker's travels through reading his travel journal. The travel journals are listed below in descending order of date. To search the travel journals, use the keyword search at the bottom of the page.

Journal Entry:

Sunday, September 11, 2005 22:12:35

Himalayas & China 2005: 1 - Almost ready

Sunday, September 11, 2005

This trip will be quite different from the others. This is the first time Marilynn has joined me in visiting higher risk countries - previous trips were with my friend and companion of many trips, Tim Carlson. It will include some of the world's more remote and difficult to reach areas. Thanks are due to Vancouver B.C. based Bestway Tours & Safaris, who through their extensive network of contacts arranged vehicles, drivers and guides. Bestway also did a great job of putting together our trip through the Caucus countries, Iran and Central Asia in 2003.

A special thanks also goes to Han Iluk. We met Han when he was living in Ubud, Bali, Indonesia. He put together a superb and thorough exploration of Indonesia for Marilynn and I. Han now lives in Chaing Mai, Thailand. He made some very useful recommendations about travel in Bhutan, and put us in touch with Sonam Dorjee, whose Nirvana Travel has arranged our coming visit.

This email is going out early for two reasons. Our son Paul, the computer whiz who designed and built the travel website for my 60th birthday, has updated the site and this will to test the new edition. The layout has been enhanced, and the travel stories from previous trips are now available in an easy to access section called "Trip Reports". The site also pinpoints the location on a map where my last dispatch originated. The website address is www.talisphere.com/travel.

I also want to find and delete email addresses on the distribution list that are no longer valid. The "cannot deliver" messages are much easier to handle here than on some of the very slow connections we will encounter. While travelling I would appreciate not receiving jokes for the same reason. The time available on Internet is often limited, and deathly slow connections with frequent disconnections make opening some emails with attachments impossible.

The plan is to fly to Dubai via London, where we will find out if our early morning flight to Kabul, Afghanistan has been cancelled or not. Afghanistan is a sufficiently difficult destination under normal conditions, but after our trip plans were finalized national elections were called for September 18, two days after our arrival, so there is some question as to whether or not flights will be cancelled during this period. Adventure travel at its finest!

We hope to travel overland from Kabul through the Khyber Pass to Pakistan, over the Himalayas through the Khunjerab pass into China, through Western and Northern China, back into the Himalayas to Lhasa, Tibet and Kathmandu, Nepal. From there we will travel through Sikkim and West Bengal, India, into Bhutan and then to Dhaka, Bangladesh via Calcutta and on to Kuala Lumpur, Sumatra and Bali, Indonesia.

Bangladesh has become a little quieter according to the latest travel advisories, but Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nepal are still considered unsuitable destinations for the normal tourist. The Canadian government has a web site with updates and general information about various countries at http://www.voyage.gc.ca/dest/ctry/reportpage-en.asp . The first four sections give an overview of the current situation.

We have been running flat out for the past two weeks getting things caught up, and trying to deal with the daily disasters that always seem to come up just before a trip. We fly first thing on Tuesday morning, arriving at the airport here at 6 AM and reaching Dubai at 9PM the next night. The first travel report will be sent from there once I know if we are going to Kabul or if we are scrambling for an alternate plan to get the trip back on track.