Planning - Stage Two
It is gratifying to see that my first post has collected a few subscribers, including (at least) one person I know in real life (hi Kate). While I am still in the planning stages, you can expect a new post from me each week, but they will be more frequent when I am on the road, which will be at least six months every year.
Over the past week, I have locked in a few more hotels in China. Since I have decided not to go to Kashgar, mysterious as it seems, because I couldn’t actually find affordable fares when I wanted to go, my original plan stays. I’m using a combination of Trip.com (the international version of the big Chinese OTA, CTrip) and Agoda. I prefer the latter, because my history with them means I get good rebates, but Trip has a better selection. I’m a fairly frugal traveler, without going totally threadbare, so I am happy that I’m finding decent looking hotels for around the $NZ30 mark - the less I spend on sleeping, the further I can go. I have booked into one hostel, in Xi’an, but it has bunks which look fairly private, and the vibe was just too good to turn down. Trip will let me waitlist my first train, but they add a $9 service charge, so I’ll hang fire and book on the official 12306 app when bookings open.
I have also sorted my travel arrangements from Dunedin, where I live, to Auckland. The flight up there when I wanted to go was actually going to cost about as much as the flight on to China - crazy! After some trying out of different options, I’m taking the bus to Queenstown and flying direct from there, at a third of the cost but on the less reliable of the two New Zealand domestic airlines. With the rental car place closing an hour after I am due to get to Auckland, there’s a little risk that things won’t work - Queenstown is our snow capital: airports and snow are not great mates.
After China, I go to Kazakhstan. I had hoped to not plan this part of the journey until I get there but trains book out so early, I’m going to have to book them when bookings open 45 days in advance. I have worked out a fairly logical route as far west as Khiva in Uzbekistan, but till have to make decisions about onward travel. The purist in me wants to go to Aktau, on the Caspian Sea, and fly across to Baku (land borders into Azerbaijan are closed, otherwise I’d sneak through a corner in Russia). The realist in me is saying “come on, Barry, you’ve already been there, and you don’t have forever”. There is still some uncertainty over how best to handle Kyrgystan.
I do enjoy the planning stage of journeys like this, but I also enjoy a more free form style. I remember my first ever trip out of New Zealand, in the 1980’s, to England via Bangkok. My only way to plan was the Let’s Go guides and travel agents - I booked my flights to include a hotel in Bangkok. For England, I went in to the Post Office for an IRC (International Reply Coupon - a way to pay for return postage) to send to the YHA in Windsor for my first couple of nights. That was the extent of planning what was going to be two years out of the country (maybe more, as I really didn’t want to come back). I don’t think I ever got a reply from the YHA but in any event, my passport got stolen in Bangkok and I missed my flight.
With high speed rail moving railway stations out of the centre of cities, I think the days of what I did in Vietnam in the 1990’s are gone, at least for me. On that trip, when I was ready to move on, I’d catch the train to the next place, and then just look around the railway station for the closest hotel. The technique only failed me once, when I got to Thailand - the hotel I picked near the Hualamphong station was the second grottiest place I have ever stayed in (top awards go to a now torn down backpackers in Westport, New Zealand, where I actually felt scared). Now I like the chance to see what hotels look like, what people have said about them and where they are in relation to things I might want to see, do or eat.
Lastly, I recently read Christopher Robbins’ account of his voyages in Kazakhstan - I don’t think mine will turn out like his, but it was an interesting read. I wrote about it here.