Before - Blogabond

The flight tickets are booked, the immunizations have been jabbed and a very rough itinerary has been sketched out. In the past few weeks, I've been religiously reading my travel guides to narrow down the many places to visit within one of the largest regions of the world. Halfway across the world India looks so tiny on a map, I have to keep reminding myself of how large Canada is and what a pain it is to travel between Vancouver and Calgary, given the mountainous terrain. Because we're going for 2.5 months, we're trying to go budget, thus far, all our planned travel is by bus (sketchy driving), train (overnight sleeper trains!) and taxis (more sketchy driving). Between my ambitious destination desires and Dan's indecisiveness, at one point our trip looked like it was going to be spent on the Indian Railways. Although the railway system is an integral part of India, I'm thinking my time may be better spent sampling their fine teas.

The reason why we're traveling the Indian subcontinent this summer is a program called Insight Nepal. I found it online sometime back in March when I was deciding what I wanted to do with my last months of freedom before going back to school. After backpacking India for 2 weeks, we'll head to Nepal (by bus) to start the program. We'll probably be volunteering in Pokhara City, one of the larger cities in Nepal. The program finds a placement with a local NGO as well as places us with a local homestay family that will provide us with room and board. Past participants have said a lot of good things about their entire experience. Interestingly, the majority of participants we got in touch with were also young Canadians, which is also comforting.

Amazingly I have felt little nervousness or anxiety throughout all this planning. Perhaps once the chaos of figuring out the logistics ends and I'm in the car on the way to the airport, it will all hit me. For now, let the excitement reign supreme!

T- 6 Days to takeoff!