In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. Then, after a load of other stuff, God created the mighty British education system! (but back then it was situated around the Garden of Eden). Unfortunately, God also made this system a mind numbing, hoop jumping rat race, full of stress, worry, pressure and pain. Sure, you had friends and party's etc, but many of God's children felt unfulfilled, confused and disheartened with moving up a tier every few years in the same basic area. Was there any more to life and the world than Garden of Eden High School? Forbidden Fruit College?And of course, the inevitable dead end job in the Heaven/Hell processing firm. Hence, God then pulled up his sleeves, stroked his beard and got to work on his next big creation...the Gap Year!
Don't get me wrong, I'm really looking forward to university and stuff, not to mention I've had a pretty good time in life in general its just...I guess I felt like this was an opportunity not to be waisted. I had a chance to have a dead end job (no homework!), see what life is like with one. But mainly the thing I wanted to do with this year is travel! the world is a big place, with an infinite number of things to do and see and experience and to meet a lot of fun people on the way.
BUT this blog is not about the why! I'm not here to tell you about myself, or my life or to sell you the whole gap year thing. No, this blog is the best way to make a diary out of my journeys, which start in just over two weeks. Its a way that hopefully the people I know can see what traveling was like for me. Now, I make no promises to keep up with this on any regular basis, it may be a few words here, a paragraph or two there. But with any luck, if your bored at a PC in the evenings, or on a break from work or lectures or whatever, you can log onto this and find out what I've been up too in far away and weird places! like Heathrow.
Right, now that that's out of the way, I can tell you all the plan...
Basically the team consists of me, Laurence
And my Twin Brother Sam:
After much deliberation and investigation, we have now divided our travels into two parts. Kind've like Kill Bill. or the 7th Harry potter film if you believe the rumors.
Part 1 is 'Indochina'. We're travelling with an adventure group called intrepid on their trip entitled 'Indochina Encompassed', the main page of which is here. Below is a map of the trip.
Part 1 will take 40 days. We felt that this would give us a chance to some amazing places for a relatively cheap price, and let us find our feet rather than drop us straight into the hustle and bustle of backpacking. I'm going to see a lot of things and be in a lot of places that I've wanted to go to for a long time.
Part 2 is entirely one country: India. we looked at dozens of countries, but India was the place that we kept coming back too as having everything we wanted to see and do. I'm hoping I get to ride on at least one camel, and at least one elephant while I'm there. That one is a little harder to show a map for as...wait for it...we're sort of gonna play it by ear. Yes, as many of you know me I'm sure you all think I'm going to wind up in some prison for talking about comic books too much and attempting conversation with the rats. We have a basic idea of direction...but we're looking for something more than a holiday! We're looking for traveling! backpacking! adventure! gunshot wounds!
All in all we expect to be gone just over 2 months...maybe longer.
And I guess that about wraps up the Prologue, I'm now going to bug my friends and family to bookmark this page. I'll update again a day before I go, and then the adventure will begin. and not just any adventure, a Langan adventure. A Very Langan Adventure.
