We actually leave England on 13th September – our first stop being Doha where we will be visiting our nephew who is currently living out there.  It really would be rude not to, seeing as this is en-route to India which is the first stop on our trip!

We arrive in Udaipur, India, on 20th September where, for our wedding anniversary, we are treating ourselves to a stay at the Taj Lake Palace Hotel – an absolutely stunning hotel in the middle of a lake!!!

On 23rd September we arrive at Delhi and participate in the ‘Golden Northern Triangle’ tour – taking in Delhi, Agra and Japiur – bazaars, colonial buildings, Taj Mahal, Red Fort amongst other things.  We hit Kathmandu on 4th October in readiness to join our trek to Everest Base Camp (15 days – EEK!) – which is high on Neil’s bucket list!!!!  Preparing ourselves for this is a huge task and, I must say, it looks like it will be quite an amazing experience.

A ‘holiday’ is the order of the day after this and we then head for a week in Goa on 21st October 🙂

As we start November, we head over to spend a couple of nights in Chennai before leaving India for Sri Lanka where we will join a ‘Splendours of Sri Lanka’ Tour (10 days). This will involve visits to cultural areas, world heritage sites, temples as well as a game drive and jeep safari  –  much too much to summarise here!

After Sri Lanka we head for Hudhuranfushi in the Maldives where we’d already arranged to meet up for a holiday with our good friends Carina and John.  At this point I think we will appreciate seeing a couple of familiar faces and hearing of tales about home.

At the end of November, we find ourselves heading to Perth and plan to travel around the Margaret River / Karri Valley areas before flying to Melbourne on 8th December.
We pick up a motorhome in Melbourne and will tour around the Great Ocean Road and make our way to Sydney where we are spending Christmas and New Year (SO EXCITED :-))

I love this bit … …
Kieran flies to Melbourne to join us on 10th December to travel with us on our journey to Sydney.  We arrive in Sydney on 22nd December when Lauren joins us and we are booked on the North Narrabeen Beach Site where we will be spending Christmas !

Lauren will be staying with us in the motorhome whilst we travel up via the Gold Coast to Brisbane – the motorhome is due to be dropped off in Brisbane on 13th January.  Lauren will then fly home to the UK and we will ‘pop’ over to New Zealand before re-entering Australia to finish what we started, lol.

That’s where our current itinerary finishes and our new one will begin. We have left this open as we feel we will then be confident enough to ‘go it alone’ formulating the route as we go along.  En-route we will be making arrangements for the next stages of our trip and plan to move forward like that.

However, we do have an idea of where our exploring will tentatively take us on our return to Australia, namely; the coast of the Great Barrier Reef up through Townsville and Cairns and in land to Alice Springs and Ayers Rock.  We are planning to leave Australia via Darwin and travel through South East Asia, into China across to Japan, over to Hawaii, into Alaska, down The Rockys, into the USA, Mexico and into South America, over to South Africa, up into Egypt and back into Europe. PHEW!

It goes without saying that should any of you know of any ‘must see or do’ places, then we would gladly welcome any information.

As of today’s date (16th August) all efforts are concentrated on winding things up regarding the house which we have let from 4th September.  We are all able to stay together at a friend’s property in Tamworth until we go 🙂   at which time the kids will be moving back to their respective Uni Accommodation.