This Year So Far, Where to Next and Visa Logistics

I've wound up my freelance writing business, dealt with illness and death in the family, finished a construction project, rented out part of my house, and am finally ready to get on the road more or less permanently.

In April, I went south to the arms of great friends in Arizona, who reconstituted me after a year of many trips to Manitoba to take care of family matters.  I thought I was ready for the Uzbekistan after that but I was still not completely recovered physically.  

Khiva, Uzbekistan

In May, I went on a fascinating trip to Uzbekistan with a stopover in Istanbul.  This tour was very special study tour, tracing a group of Mennonites that had immigrated there in the 1880's from Ukraine. 

The tour company was TourMagination, which did an excellent job.  Going on a tour of this type provides an experience that no other tourists or travellers get. We met local people that we certainly would not have met otherwise (such as a museum director who had done his Phd. thesis on the subject of Russian Mennonites, and a local imam whose forebears remembered the Mennonites and who still had artifacts and photos), and visited small villages, met villagers, etc.  

Uzbekistan is an interesting juxtaposition of a Muslim population under a Communist government, mainly secular still.  The country is quite modern in many ways, especially Tashkent and the educational and medical systems, but you see donkeys and women covered in scarves and long dresses hacking away in fields with mattock like implements outside the cities.  

There are numerous well-preserved madrases and mosques with stunning blue and green tile work, and wonderful mud-walled cities and fortresses. The land had a cotton monoculture forced on it by the USSR, requiring extensive irrigation in a desert, which has and is causing environmental havoc.   Wonderfully, there is great WIFI everywhere.

I learned a few logistical things about visas on this trip. An Uzbekistan visa must be obtained in advance by sending your passport to New York. You need a letter of invitation from a tour agency in the country, which is obtained by your Canadian tour company. In my case, this document was very late because the company in Canada made errors in the paperwork.  I had booked a trip to Arizona in the month before the Uzbekistan trip, before I was told about the visa requirements, so I  needed my passport for that trip (thus could not send it to New York).  I had a very narrow margin of safety to get my U. visa but I did get it.  It was expensive and complex to get that visa and I thank Tunde at SIAT for handling the application process so well. It came in the nick of time for my trip.  It was very expensive, $356.  because I had to pay an expediting fee as well as the agency fee.  

The second learning experience was concerning flights, which were very inconvenient.  My agent and the tour company kept getting things confused.  Too many agents involved.  I finally booked an overnight Air Canada to New York via Toronto (never again)  myself, and sat in the terminal at JFK all day before finally checking in to Turkish Airlines in the late afternoon (horror airport).  

All went well after that, until the return trip, which was too much torture.  Adjusting to 4 different time zones within 4 weeks, 9 separate flights including 4 overnight flights --- it was a tough one.   Despite that, the month was extremely interesting and unique.

On the way back from U., I stopped in New England to visit a couple of friends (1 in Bristol, RI,  1 in Portland, Maine).  The highlights were a tour of Yale University in New Haven, CT (complete with eye-opening marketing video) and a tour of Maine College of Art by the my friend, the Head Librarian.  It was cold and windy which made the pains worse.

Yale University - Neo Gothic, not very old

I've spent the summer here in Vancouver, relaxing and getting ready for the next few trips.  I took numerous lecture-type courses at UBC continuing education, adding even more motivation to travel.

In September, I am off on two-month trip to Europe, starting with a John Atkin's London Perambulator (walking tours). John's a local guy who does courses on local real estate development and urban change and guides walking tours of  Vancouver neighbourhoods.  http://johnatkin.com/    I'll spend the last few days with an old friend (who met in Egypt many years ago) in London followed by a Eurostar train to Lille, where I pick up a rental car.  

There begins a driving marathon. I am determined to go to the places I keep missing when I am not entirely in control of my agenda. First Berlin, then Nancy, France for the Art Nouveau architecture, then exploring the West Coast of France to see whether I'd prefer it to my beloved Languedoc, into Spain to check out the Guggenheim in Bilbao, then down to Tarragona near Barcelona to stay with friends on their catamaran.

I'll be back to Canada for a couple of months. Then in January 2014, I am booked with Explore to tour Ethiopia.  I'll be meeting a friend from Oz that I met in India many years ago. We'll be there for the Timkat Festival.

In February 2014, I am going to Palm Springs for Modernist Week.  I've been putting that off far too long.  I'll be meeting friends there.

In March 2014, I've signed up for Cory Weeds' (Cellar Jazz)  Jazz Tour of New York. http://www.cellarjazz.com/

In May/June 2014, I am contemplating a Grand Asia Caravan Tour with Sundowners.  There are a couple of logistical issues with this one wrt to visas.  There are a number of visas  that require my passport to go walkabout again, right when I need it to go to the previously mentioned US trips.  So I will be applying for an Enhanced Drivers License from the Motor Vehicle Branch.  This also takes as long as 45 days after the initial appointment waiting for the new drivers license, so I don't have time before the trip to Europe where I will need my drivers license. I don't want to rely on the rental car company being okay with a paper interim license which would probably expire while I am in Europe.  Using the EDL, I can drive across the border (you can't use it when entering the US by air).  I can't start that process until I am back for Europe and I can't make an appointment more than 60 days in advance, but there is quite a wait for an appointment. So, the day I leave for Europe, I will book the appt for the day I return. That should be enough time to get the EDL before I am off to Palm Springs in February.  

I considering getting a Nexus pass (which would allow me to fly to the US), but it can take months to be approved to get the interview, the appointments take some time to get, and then it can take months after the interview. The instruction guide for completing the application is 99 pages long.  I took three tries to figure out what's required, and gave up.  I finally got a good tip -- just to out to the airport to the kiosk there and they help you with the application and answer all questions.

The Grand Asia Caravan starts in Beijing and ends in Turkey, going through 9 countries in all, including Iran.  It's a trip of a lifetime.   Central Asia has always attracted me because my grandparents lived in the area.  I hope someday to go to the villages they lived in in Russia near the Caspian Sea.

There is yet another logistical issue.  Iran has been booted out of Canada and the USA, so it is difficult to travel there for Canadians. There is a travel warning on the government website advising Canadians to avoid travelling to Iran.  http://travel.gc.ca/travelling/advisories   My instincts tell me to just go, everything will be alright.  I never worried about these things years ago (see my previous post, When Ignorance Was Bliss).  But then I thought Russia had toilet paper, road and street signs, phone books, food, and gas stations.

What do you readers think?  Would you go?

When Ignorance was Bliss

Me, France, 2011

When I backpacked through Europe for a year back in the day, I never gave a thought to any of the things you need today.  I never gave any thought to health and safety.  I took it for granted.

I never once considered travel medical insurance or any other kind of insurance.  I don't recall getting any vaccinations before hand but I could have forgotten.  Likewise, an international driver's license wasn't required although we did have a rental car in the USSR.

We needed a passport, but got all other visas along the way (except for Russia, which was definitely another story in 1973). Iron curtain countries required a minimum amount of money to be changed at the border but it was only a few dollars.

We did get a Youth Hostel membership and a gauze travel sheet (much heavier than the lovely silk ones we have now).  Other than booking a cabin on the P & O liner to Southhampton via the Panama Canal and the complex advance arrangements with Russian Intourist, we made no advance bookings.

Credit cards and debit cards didn't exist.  ATMs didn't exist. Every country had a different currency and a border check-point. British currency hadn't changed to metric.   We changed currency at each border. We carried a letter of credit and a list of correspondent banks, which made getting cash extremely cumbersome.  

I never ever checked any travel advisories.  There was no internet to check anything on.  You could seek out Canadian embassies, but we never did.  While we travelled, all kinds of unrest occurred, and we just dodged and ducked.  Greece had 4 different governments, including a bloody coup, tanks in the streets, a tourist shot in Omonia Square, a 24-hour curfew in Athens (and they meant business), and night-time curfew on Crete.  So we flew to Israel a few weeks after the October war.  Nothing like a 100% armed population and war wreckage strewn everywhere to give a person perspective.

We wrote letters and received letters addressed to Poste Restante at the main post office in cities and towns along the way.  We never made a phone call.  Cell phones didn't exist.  Call boxes did exist but were too complicated.  We never needed a phone.

We  heard no news along the way, other than what other travellers told us. All information was exchanged from person to person.  You always talked to everyone coming from where you were going to get tips on places to stay, border crossing, whatever you needed to know, and hopefully traded maps and reading material.  You talked to people who just came over to find out news from home.

We never watched TV along the way.  We read books, which we traded with other travellers along the way.

Cameras required film and flash bulbs. We carried film rolls with us until we got home.  

We carried no electronic appliances, and needed no plug adaptors or dual voltage chargers.

I don't recall bottled water being common, and we never considered paying for water.  We didn't have water bottles.

Wheeled luggage did not exist.  We carried everything in backpacks. 

We hitchhiked everywhere, camped in summer, stayed in hostels and cheap hotels in winter.  Some people bought vans (usually VW) and drove around Europe camping.  We had sleeping bags, a small tent, a tiny one burner stove, and one pot.

Hardly any guidebooks existed and maps could only be obtained in Europe.  No travel stores existed.  People on the road exchanged parts of guidebooks and there was free information and maps at all .  We had Europe on $5 a Day.  We relied on my memory, the sun, and instinct to find our way through Russia and Eastern Europe (no maps at all).

Our budget was $6,000, and we did the whole trip on $5,000.  That was for 2 people and included a ship from Vancouver to Southhampton, a rental car in Russia, and flights to and from Greece, Israel, and Tureky.  We were lucky enough to get work as movie extras in Israel, which was lucrative in those days.  Travel was so cheap then.  We were the rich people then. The Europeans were poor. 

Most people did not speak English.  You had to speak enough of the language of each country to get along.

Turkey was more secular than it is now. 

All of Eastern Europe and East Germany were behind the Iron Curtain and it was serious. I could tell you stories you would never believe.

Travelling is easier now, and I don't regret the changes.  But I am sorry the world is more and more the same everywhere.