There are so many places I want to explore, but even with the freedom now available to me, it was really difficult to choose where to go and when. Once I had rough idea of the countries or regions, it was the ‘when’ I had most difficulty with as I had to plan around various wet or monsoon seasons.

Initially, I wanted to spend time in India and China, both being vastly huge places and so culturally different to England. I also really wanted to travel overland through Central America, visit some friends in Canada and get some diving in along the way too. So that was the ‘bones’ if you like for my route. The trouble is, due to how the redundancy dates worked out, I’m starting travelling in July. This would be fine to visit Canada except for maybe the midges and mosquitos, but I want to experience Canada in winter all covered in proper snow so those dates did’t work for me.

July and August tend to be wet seasons in India and China so best to push them back a bit. Equally, the best time to visit Central America is around February to April. I’ll look at Canada around March as there should still be a decent amount of snow then.

So, where to go between July and August? America was an option but surely it would make sense to do later when am travelling between Central America and Canada and save £’s on air fair. Then something on TV caught my eye, it may have been a Gardeners’ World special or a Bear Grylls type show which was in Morocco and I had never really considered before but it looked great and thought I have to go there. Going to a country with the Sahara Desert in, in July? I must be mad but it’s one of those places you hear about at an early age and it has always made me wonder what it would be like. Decision made, Morocco in July is my first port of call.

It’s still too early to visit India or China and looking at annual average weather reports etc., it would make sense to visit China before India, maybe mid to late August. Having found some guides in Morocco, I know I should only be there for about a month and so I’d still have a few weeks to kill afterwards. Looking at the Map, Egypt was on the way. I have been to Egypt many times, always scuba diving, but have never visited the Pyramids or any of the ancient sites around Luxor, well now I have that opportunity and it’s on the way, plus I get to spend some time diving in the Red Sea Riviera. Morocco and Egypt sorted, followed by China. The route is starting to come alive.

Now late September, after the monsoon season, backtracking to India, starting in Delhi heading down the west coast and up the east coast, into Nepal and the Himalayas in December. Am not entirely sure how to get out of Nepal, flying from Kathmandu is perhaps the obvious choice but it is a notoriously dangerous airport with several recent airplane crashes, so am keeping my options open here. But I do need to go on to Thailand for Christmas, then into Cambodia and Vietnam around January / February. This is the perfect time to head to Central America, but the other day, a friend mentioned New Zealand and as I would be ‘in the area’, albeit 5,700 miles, why not go there instead? Maybe I will, maybe I won’t, guess will see how I feel around January / February. But I definitely want to get Canada in on this trip.