I’m preparing for my last big trip of 100 country challenge coming up in March, a trip that will cover 7 countries and take me to the total of 99, I can smell the finish line, but I’m not there yet.
I knew it will not be easy or cheap when approaching the end, what I did not know was that I’ll be living in Australia, upss.
In march I plan to go to Sri Lanka, several Middle East countries, such as Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and on the way back finish up in Maldives. This trip will be by far the most expensive short term (less than a month) trip I’ve ever taken, not only flights are ridiculously expensive, I have no close by countries left, and those who are left are not only far but also require visas, which unfortunately are needed for Latvians in most Middle Eastern countries, even UAE (Dubai). There was a point when I regretted not getting UK citizenship and staying proud Latvian, after having that opportunity living 5 years in London. But that weakness is over, you’ve got work with what you got.
So now my focus for next month is to get 4 tourist visas via quite complex requirements to ensure the trip runs smoothly. Wish me luck, I will definitely need it. Will keep you posted how my preparation goes. And keep traveling, world is such a beautiful place.
Posts Tagged 'challange'
If the road is not challenging, it’s not worth going
Published January 24, 2012 Life , Travel 4 CommentsTags: Travel, middle east, challange, 100 countries, big trip
What do you do when you need to change a passport?
Published October 23, 2011 Travel Leave a CommentTags: 100 countries, 92, armenia, challange, georgia, new passport, south korea
If you are are a Latvian living in Australia, you spend $2000+ on tickets and sit on a plane for 25 hours (each way) to go home. My latest trip was triggered by very practical reason of not having enough free pages in my passport to travel, so I had to go home to get a new one. You see, passports are normally issued only in the country itself or its legal offices of representation – embassies. Slight problem with being Latvian citizen is that we only have about 15 embassies around globe, most of them in Europe, and from Australia, the closest embassy is, wait for it, Japan, only 10 hour flight away. I figured if I have to fly to Tokyo to get a new passport, I might as well go home and on the way add some new countries. So I did, result – 2 week holiday, 7 flights, 3 new countries and a new passport.
I already posted about South Korea stop-over, this one is about more detail on adventures in Georgia and Armenia, where I was lucky enough to spend 8 days. Georgia gets my vote, super easy to get in (no visas, quick customs), great food (khinkali, khachapuri, lobio), welcoming people (60 year old dude on marshruthka sharing his headphones with me to listen to some Georgian dance music) and amazing nature, such as Kazbeki mountain range that I explored a bit, not to the top at 5033m, of course, only to about 3000m or so, here’s a complimentary snap.
I thought Latvia has had bad run in 20th Century, but look at Armenia. Not only had they endure Genocide from Turks that resulted in death of more than 50% of Armenian population, they lost most of their territory, and now have no access to sea, no minerals underground, little arable land, two aggressive neighbours with locked borders and Armenian pride and joy, mount Ararat, sitting on the Turkish side of the border. Look but don’t touch, how cruel is that, here is a picture from Yerevan, Armenian capital with Ararat in the background.
Full set of pictures from the trip are here.
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What should I do in every country I visit?
Published July 23, 2010 Life , Travel 8 CommentsTags: 100 countries, challange, every country, sperm, Travel, what to do
Here’s a deal, I’ve been to 50 countries out of my 100 country challenge, but so far there has not been any single defining moment or action that connects all these trips together (besides me being there). So I identified the need to establish a routine or something little that I do in every country that I visit.
So far I’ve had a few good ideas from friends about what to do in every country, ranging from simple ones such as ‘take a picture of favourite mascot/talisman in some typical scenery or in front of recognizable monument’ like here, to more extreme ones such as ‘donate sperm in every country you visit’, sounds very exciting, but hard to implement once you think it through, promise, I did think it through.
Couple other ones that were suggested are to ‘cut out or get 3 inflatable stars and stand as mother Latvia’ depicting our most famous Latvian monument. Another one was ‘do what locals do (for a living)’ meaning that I’ll try to be a local for 5 minutes, e.g. picking rice in Vietnam countryside, or shearing a sheep in New Zealand.
So chaps, please let me know what you think about any of these ideas or in case you have something else in mid. I’ll happily take it on board. The concept though has to be flexible enough to work in any country, I guess that’s where the donation would get stuck as not all the countries have easily accessible health clinics where foreigners can just pop up and donate sperm.
BTW next up is trip to Iceland later in the August, so I can test it out.
