After one year of research and planning, Ben and I are finally embarking on our eight month around the world backpacking trip on March 14, 2009!

For those of you new to our travel plans, we’re taking the rest of the year off to explore, work, read, volunteer, write, wander, and marinate in foreign cultures. This trip will take us through Japan, Northern China, Tibet, Southeast Asia, Nepal, India, Turkey, the Middle East, Tanzania, South Africa, Brazil and Paraguay.

Our style of travel will be the road less traveled and our itinerary is open—we will fly into one city and out of another and we’ll have weeks or months to get from “A” to “B.” We’re taking backpacks, a couple changes of clothes, a mini laptop, a pocket sized video camera and that’s about it.

Our departure from Washington will be bittersweet as we leave behind many friends and fond memories. Ben had the honor of working on Capitol Hill for two Members of Congress and he made a difference in the lives of thousands of constituents. I served two Presidents at the White House and managed to get scolded by the President only once. I also witnessed Ben’s mother serve as a Member of Congress with tireless dedication and commitment to the great people of Kansas.

And of course, when we depart, we want to include you in our travels! We’ll share our adventures through Facebook with blogs, pictures, and video. You can also see an interactive map of our planned route on our travel blog.

We’d also love for you to join us for a week or two (we might even stay in a real hotel for such an occasion!). My sister is meeting us in Thailand and others are booking tickets to join in Egypt, South Africa, and Brazil. The travel dollar is going further and further everyday….e-mail us to strategerize.

But if you can’t make it overseas, we’d like to invite you to our Bon Voyage Party in Washington, DC the night before we depart, on Friday, March 13, 2009, at 7PM. The address is below, stay tuned for more party details!

1117 10th Street NW
Apt#10
Washington, DC 20001

Cheers,

Kevin and Ben

Itinerary (dates are just a rough estimate)

March 14, 2009
Washington, DC

March 15 - 16
Seoul, South Korea

March 17 – 24
Japan

March 25 – May 1
China

May 2 – June 17
Vietnam
Laos
Cambodia
Thailand

June 18 – July 20
Nepal
Northern India

July 21 – July 26
Istanbul, Turkey

July 27 – August 30
Jordan
Israel
Egypt

September 1 – September 12
Tanzania

September 12 – October 11
South Africa

October 12 – October 29
Brazil
Paraguay

October 30, 2009
Washington, DC

written by  Kevin Naughton on February 17, 2009 from Washington, United States
from the travel blog: Around the World 2009
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Its hard to believe we've only been gone two weeks yet we've hit Seoul, Tokyo, and Beijing! We spent the first week and a half visiting friends in Korea and Japan so not too much to report, just great hospitality, good food, and great friends. What more could we want?!

I also apologize for not writing sooner, now that we've arrived in Beijing and I have loads of pictures and video to share with everyone, the internet connetions in Beijing have proven to be hit or miss. So, sadly all of our prepared videos and photos are in my pocket on a thumb drive that is banned from this internet cafe. I even had to have my photo taken by the "Chinese Cultural Law Enforcement Agency" before getting an account for an hour. So, please accept a rain check on the pics and read on for our most recent adventures in China.

Ben and I found Beijing to be interesting and agrivating at the same time. The weather was surprisingly crisp with clear blue skies for the last three days. We took advantage of the sun and hit the Forbidden City and joined literally tens of thousands of Chinese tourists who followed hired tour guides who screamed into cheap megaphones the entire time. The buildings were beautiful but it felt like a cheap disney world to us.

The next day I was determined to not let the other tourists ruin my trek to the Great Wall, so Ben and I traveled out to a very rural part of the wall that passes through a very sleepy farming village. The wall had not been restorted and it was incredible to climb the original steps that climbed ear popping mountain peaks. This part of the wall in Huang Hua, and is so remote that there is no admission fee and virtually no tourists (we were on the only people on the wall). There was a local peasant who decided to charge a few cents to gain admission to the trail that leads to the wall and skirts his property. We also encountered a very husky Chinese woman on the wall who threatened us with a pick ax if we did not pay her admission to pass through the watch tower that she was occupying. We ended up pushing our way through without creating an international incident...hopefully. :-)

More stories and pictures to follow!

Kevin and Ben

written by  Kevin Naughton on March 27, 2009 from Beijing, China
from the travel blog: Around the World 2009
tagged China, GreatWall and HuangHua
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Fred and I are going to see the world together!

With that being said, our transition into China has been tumultuous. Beijing, just like any big city, was rather unforgiving to the visitor and we decided to head out to Pingyao, a rural town to the southwest in a quest to find some country charm in this rapidly developing and harshly industrial country. Pingyao claims home to one of the last remaining walled cities in China and to get there, we had to take a 12-hour overnight train from Beijing. Our journey started when Ben and I arrived late to the Beijing West Train Station due to miscalculating the huge distances between the subway station and the train station in Beijing. The brand new subway line built for the Olympics did not connect to the long distance train station; it was a good half a mile walk. A lot of things in China don’t seem to be logical. After hoofing it through eight busy blocks and wading through a sea of humanity, we arrived at Beijing West Train Station, a sprawling monstrosity teeming with tens of thousands of Chinese, each shouldering enormous grain sacks packed with their belongings. Those too old to keep up were thrown on the back of family members and carried to their platform. It was obvious that these people were not making a casual weekend trip, train tickets are expensive for the average Chinese and these passengers were traveling because they had to. It is said that trains never run late in a dictatorship and these trains were waiting for no one, including us.

We arrived at our train drenched in sweat and out of breath. The car was stuffy and warm; we were hit with the smell of instant noodles, McDonald’s, and old clothing. The moment we appeared in the doorway, every passenger stopped and stared in surprise. Then, in seconds, we were greeted with warm toothless smiles and two men immediately took our huge, funny looking backpacks off our shoulders and began strategerizing on where they were going to fit our bags in the completely full overhead luggage rack. Soon, Ben and I had the assistance of ten passengers all providing their two cents in Chinese on where to make room for us. Everyone pitched in to help move around grain sacks, suitcases, and boxes. We were finally in our seats and we were stared at for the next 12 hours. Non-stop.

walls of pingyao, china

What makes this walled city unique is that it is still very much a living, breathing town. Inside the huge stone walls, ancient Ming dynasty streets teem with life. Kids attend school inside gray stoned buildings with crimson red lanterns blowing in the breeze, flour mills fill grain sacks and sell them on the street, banks conduct business behind ornate rice paper doors, and noodle shops sell tantalizing street food under the jade colored eaves of traditional Chinese roofs. Every turn into an alley or side street yields a Buddhist shrine or temple.

entrance to a family home

We stayed in a traditional Chinese home with rooms that surround a central, stone courtyard. We’ve made great friends with our Canadian and German roommates.

We're now on our way to Xi'an, China.

written by  Kevin Naughton on March 30, 2009 from Pingyao, China
from the travel blog: Around the World 2009
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The first stop since our last update was in Xi’an, China (pronounced “Shee-ahn”). I’m reading Colin Thubron’s book, “Shadow of the Silk Road,” which is a fascinating documentary of a modern day trek along the original Silk Road that connected Xi’an, China with Istanbul, Turkey. After centuries of trade and indirect contact with the west, Thubron describes the vibrant Muslim community that still exists in Xi’an today.

We then headed further south to Yunnan Province and I am writing this note from inside Tiger Leaping Gorge, one of the deepest gorges in the world. The furious and crystal clear Jinsha River carves its way through an incredibly narrow pass between two mountain ranges that soar 12,795 feet above the riverbed.

tiger leaping gorge

view from our guesthouse

This gorge is one of the most beautiful places I have ever visited. But sadly, a recurring theme in China is that all good things come to an end, and the preliminary construction has started for 12 dams that will forever change the landscape.