In the beginning...

Well, it took years of talking about it, but finally, we got our asses in gear to make the step towards leaving everything and seeing the world. Al, being Al, probably would have taken a lot longer in getting round to it (if at all!), but finally the time for talk was over.

The original idea came after a pretty messy night in Uxbridge—a pact made by a few friends over a couple of glasses of champagne at 5am sealed the deal. It is fair to say that whilst most people involved that night had forgotten about it the next day, Lou hadn’t—the idea had already taken hold, and the seeds of planning & organization had been sewn…
Fast forward about 2 years later, and both Lou and Al were fully underway with saving the cash needed to undertake the journey. Many weekend afternoons were spent discussing where we wanted to go and what route we would take over a pint or two in our local(s) - OK, there does seem to be a connection with alcohol here, and if we are honest, we can't refute it!
Once we had got the general idea of which countries we wanted to visit, the tricky task of working out when we were going to leave, making sure that we hit each country at about the right time—avoiding monsoons, hurricanes, and other such nastiness…
This was difficult, but eventually the helpful girl in the travel agents assured us that May was a good time to go to India (our first destination), and that it would help us to avoid any nasty weather.
We found out later that this girl was really quite clueless. Not only did she give us an itinerary that didn’t exist on any airline, but she neglected to tell us that May in India is actually mid summer…
Anyway, with tickets booked, we haven’t let this dampen our spirits—18 months away from blighty and we are damn well going to have a good time…