We have our tickets!

On this wet August day (the English summer!) we made a trip down to Trailfinders and have come away with our itinerary finalised and our Round the World tickets purchased. And apart from the still rising fuel surcharges (which encouraged us to buy the tickets now rather than later) the ticket cost was as estimated.

Flying with the Star Alliance group of airlines has meant our preferred route was feasible with direct flights in all cases - with the exception of an additional stop in Dubai which will give us an opportunity to meet the family of our current house guest Ahmed - so an additional pleasure to look forward to.

So our itinerary is:

• We leave the UK on Tuesday 6th January and fly to Amman in Jordan (Petra and Wadi Rum among other places) then overland and ferry through Jordan to Eqypt (Sinai, Luxor, Cairo, Alexandria)
• We fly from Cairo to Dubai on Thursday 29th January
• Then Dubai to Delhi on Sunday 1st February for a six week tour of India mostly by train
• We finally leave India (Kolkata) on Friday 13th March for Singapore where we hope to meet our new blogging friend Chun See and for Brian to revist old haunts from his teenage years
• After a week or so in Singapore we travel to Sarawak, back to Peninsula Malaya, train up to Thailand and Cambodia and finally leave South East Asia by a flight from Bangkok to Tokyo on Tuesday 21st April
• We will travel in Japan until Saturday 2nd May when we fly to Vancouver and visit neice and nephew and their families in British Columbia.
• We then travel overland to the Rockies, take an internal flight to Montreal and visit Tess' sister Sue and husband Paul until our departure for London on Sunday May 31st

Something to look forward to! We now have plenty of time to arrange to meet friends, get visas organised, check our innoculations and also get the house let (and a thousand other things to do).