Notes From Planet Leesti

Right.

I ought to start really thinking about this.

As you may know, I have this ludicrous plan to take a career break and travel around the world. I'd plan on starting in January 2014 and it would last, er, I dunno, 9-10 months or something.

My overall plan (in vague terms) is:
2 and a bit months - West Africa
2 months - South America
Transit across the Pacific
A week or so in Australia
A couple of weeks - East Timor then overland through Indonesia
Just under 2 weeks - India
The rest - Dubai and then overland from Kurdistan back through Europe to the UK

[The specifics of the post-Australia stuff I'll worry about, er, next year :p]

The only time restraints I'm putting on myself are:
1) to be in Guinea Bissau on March 4th. Apparently virtually the only thing that ever happens in the country (apart from coups d'etat and drug running, in that order!) is a massive Mardi Gras celebration.
2) South America ought to be April/May, for both sporting and weather reasons.
3) to be in Australia on June 16th. It's my friend Lisa's birthday :p
4) not to be in Europe any later than late September. I intend to visit Ukraine and I'd rather not have to do it in a woolly coat and hat and gloves!

All of the above is flexible (I mean, who'd want to go to Guinea Bissau anyway (!), and points 3) and 4) might be mutually exclusive).

Now ... what I need to start sorting out in the first instance is the first aspect, the West Africa segment. A map may be of help at this point ... I'm sure you can find one on your mapping site of choice (I tend to use Bing Maps).

At the moment my "itinerary" is:
Burkina Faso -> Benin -> Togo -> Ghana -> Cote D'Ivoire -> Liberia -> Sierra Leone -> Guinea -> Guinea Bissau -> Senegal / Gambia

The issue with this is the first five countries:
Burkina Faso by the looks of it is the easiest.cheapest country to start with. In addition, one can buy a 'multi-country visa' that covers BF, Benin, Togo, and Cote D'Ivoire (it also may cover Niger and/or Mali, but, yeh), which is only available to purchase within the countries it covers, and which last time I checked was easiest to get in BF (and virtually impossible to get in Togo).

The trouble is, and this isn't evident on the map, crossing from BF to Benin is 'tricky'. Not because it's dangerous or anything like that, but simply because no-one really does it! Apart from twice-weekly buses from Ouagadougou direct to the capitals on the coast (they don't appear to stop many places en route), there's very little traffic (even local bush-taxi traffic) between towns on the border. Crossing from BF to Ghana or CI seems much more regular. In addition, since I'd arrive in Ouaga, and the other interesting area is around Bobo-Dioulasso in the South-West, travelling from BF to Benin means criss-crossing BF, and South-Eastern BF doesn't seem terribly interesting/convenient.

As (for visa reasons) I ony want to visit each country once, this means no backtracking. My (limited) research shows that Northern Togo appears to be fairly ordinary, but Northern Benin seems just that bit more interesting, so I wouldn't want to 'sprint' through the country on a fast bus.

I guess partly what I need to decide is whether Togo, Benin, and BF are worth visiting (are they interesting). From what I've seen so far: Benin is, Togo's a bit hit-and-miss, and BF probably is. But logistically, were I to drop any country, it would be BF rather than Togo (as then I can travel along the coast - interestingly this was my very first thought, before I started looking at BF). But this affects my visa and seems like it's more expensive to fly into Benin than BF.

The other aspect worth considering is Cote D'Ivoire. The North of CI has traditionally been 'a bit dodgy' with banditry and rebel factions, so crossing the BF-CI border isn't necessarily as 'safe' as crossing the Ghana-CI border, even if transport across both is pretty regular (or at least easy to source - there's a *train* from BF to CI, ffs!).
That said, crossing CI is better than the alternative, for two reasons: Compared to Mali, CI is as safe as the UK, and anyway I want to go to Liberia so that would mean entering Guinea twice.

So.
Logic would dictate starting in Benin and going: Benin -> Togo -> Ghana -> Burkina Faso -> Cote D'Ivoire but this is likely to be overall more expensive and possibly more dangerous.

For the record, the area in the border area between BF, Benin, Togo, and Niger (the country to the East, capital Niamey) consists mainly of National Parks and wildlife - probably quite pretty, but very awkward to get around. If I were into animal safaris then I'd be more interested in heading that way, but I don't really do animals. My interest in the area is cultural and historic - in Benin and Togo, these areas that interest me are in the South and heading up Benin's middle.

Any thoughts? Knowing what you all know about me and what I like, I mean, is there anything you know about BF, Togo, and Benin that you think I'd like (I'm in danger of being 'too close' to the journey and going 'I want to see everything because it's there!'). And if you think I'd just get bored if I were there?

:)

Several years ago, I went on a writing course in Scotland. It was an overview of writing fiction, it lasted about 4 days, and I learned quite a lot from it. The fact I was too lazy in the subsequent months to finish all the short stories that I'd started/contemplated is no fault of the course ...

This year, the same company (Arvon) are offering a course specifically in Travel Writing, in mid-June. I'd made a mental note of it, but the dates clashed with the quarterly 'experience share' meeting at work, when the 'customer experience/satisfaction' departments of all the other companies across Europe in our group come together for a two-day conference, and I was scheduled to go because we're due to give a talk specifically about one of the concepts we're working with.

Except today I've been advised that our talk's been pushed back to the next experience share, in September (it'll never get done! It was originally scheduled for the previous one, in March!). This means I'm now free the week the course is scheduled to be on. A quick check of the site confirms that the course still isn't sold out, so I've now booked myself on it! Yay.

Travel writing. Like all the courses they do, there's two tutors present (who are both published authors in the field) and one guest writer who comes in one evening for a natter. So in this case we have three people who've written several books about travel and documented their experiences of what they've seen - not travel 'guides' but travel 'literature'. Obviously travel can be any kind and any where (one of the tutors specialises in writing about travel in and around Scotland!), but regardless, the way of writing about it will be useful for me to pick up on. Especially if you've read my travel diaries!

Interestingly the course is in the same venue as the other one I went to, in Scotland, near Loch Ness. Miles from anywhere and with virtually no mobile phone signal. Arvon have four venues around the country and they're all quite remote, but this one I think is the most isolated. It's pretty. And the pictures I took last time on all my walks didn't come out that well so this gives me a chance to rewalk and retake photos of Scottish scenery too! :)

Apparently, it's quite difficult to surprise one of my work colleagues (Amy). You'd have thought the sight of a tall lanky hairy geeky man sprinting down the road chasing up to her, barefoot, in an unbuttoned fleece, mucky t-shirt, and knee-length shorts, holding his sandals in one hand and a lead attached to a small white fluffy dog running next to him in the other, would be a really strange sight. Apparently not.

I went to a running store yesterday, in Sheffield. It's one of those in-depth shops that has all manner of technical equipment in it, and staffed by people who seriously know their stuff. I've been meaning to go there for a while, but even though it's in Sheffield and I go there quite often, I'm often otherwise busy meeting people. So, yesterday, I made sure I gave myself enough time.

The main reason was because, last year when I was training for a half-marathon (would have been in Sheffield, weirdly), I may have over-trained and, 3 miles into a 6 mile jog, my right leg decided it didn't want to do that any more (and I ended up using a walking stick for my holiday in Belgium!). The doctor said it was some kind of infection, but I've never been convinced about that explanation (though we won't talk about the fact that it cleared up after a small course of antibiotics #ahem), so I wondered if it was something to do with my running style.

Apparently not.
Or at least, the chap in the shop saw my running on a treadmill and didn't see that there was anything unduly noticeably bad about my gait, apart from the fact that I run leaning forward slightly, but that's apparently not that much of an issue. He did suggest though that my lack of balance might be causing some issues. I don't have much balance and find it hard to stand on one leg; he suggested that this may affect things as if my leg muscles aren't strong enough to maintain balance, I may not be running with complete stability, and this may affect the strain on that side of my leg.
Also, my running shoes are cheap and nasty. But I could have told him that lol.

I don't have any issues when I walk (and I do walk a lot), so it is something specific to running, which I guess makes it hard to diagnose?

So, upshot is that I shouldn't do much running until I feel comfortable with my balance and my leg strength. I didn't tell them that the previous day I'd left my house later than I'd anticipated and ran to work in my sandals in 22 minutes. While this is a fairly good time for me (it's 2 and a half miles), I'm sure they'd have complained about it!

The walking I do with the dog is over the nature reserve near my house - a series of dead railway lines that's now country footpaths, and a small woodland on t'other side of the goods line. The usual walk's about 2 miles, or just under anyway. So on an average weekday I'll be walking about 7 miles. Yesterday's walk was a bit longer cos Amy suggested meeting up to go the pub, but she was late leaving her house on the other side of town, so I ended up walking all the way into town to meet up with her. And then finding she'd managed to slip past me without seeing me, hence why I had to sprint all the way back down the lane to catch her up. Still, Bobo got a good walk! :)

I seem to be getting a small handful of LJ entries dated in the last three years suddenly appear in my 'friends page'. Now, when it's happened before it's just been a one-off and I've put it down to that particular user posting a previously-unposted (or updating a previously-private) post. Except today I see one from 2010, from someone who hasn't posted anything since 2011! So now I'm thinking, weird LJ issue.

Righty, so that's my trip to Israel and Jordan done. If you have any overall questions, by the way, then ask me. I haven't done a 'summary' of my thoughts and feelings on the trip yet, so if there's anything you're curious about, let me know and I'll include it.

The next trip I have planned is to the USA and Canada, in mid-late September. I've been invited to a wedding in Philadelphia, and figured that while I'm in the area, I might as well *finally* visit Canada. So my plan is to spend a few days in Montreal, including a full day in Quebec City, then head to Ottawa for maybe two days, then to Toronto ... then at some point to Philadelphia, but I do have maybe 4 or 5 spare days here. Any suggestions about other places to go in the vague area?

Levant Travel Diary - Day 16

Levant Travel Diary - Day 15

Levant Travel Diary - Day 14

Levant Travel Diary - Day 13

Levant Travel Diary - Day 12