Click on a photo to enlarge it.
Our original plan was to ship the motor home down to South America this winter but we decided instead to go to Dubai for a week, followed by India, Nepal, Myanmar and maybe Tibet and China for 7 to 8 months. Our flight to Dubai was already booked for the 15th November and Helen got back to Vancouver on 15th October wondering whether we had enough time to plan our trip and get our motor home into storage.
Fortunately we could stay with our friends Brian and Lily in North Vancouver which allowed us to get everything done. Helen had jet-lag for the first few days and was up at 5am which didn't exactly please Kirsten!
Our first job was to apply for an Indian visa in Vancouver as we needed one before we can get into the country. We filled out the online application, printed it out and took it with us along with photos and passports to the office in downtown Vancouver.
Helen had to pay $235 Canadian but Kirsten only paid $92 - this is because Indians pay 70 Euros to get visas for Germany but have to pay $300 for England. In other words, it's reciprocal.
It takes 1 week to get a visa which is valid for 6 months from the date of approval so we needed to apply as late as possible because we may need the visa for the full 6 months. We went to fetch them a week later and decided to walk some of the way back through Stanley Park and then across the Lions Gate Bridge.
From downtown Vancouver, the bridge doesn't look that far away and we soon realised that it was a lot further than we thought. It was very foggy and we went wrong in Stanley Park a number of times as there are so many different paths. We ended up walking in the park for 90 minutes because the fog made it difficult to orientate ourselves!
Eventually we got to the bridge which disappeared into the fog and it looked as if we were walking into nothing - "Into The Unknown!" A weird and yet fascinating experience.
Brian and Lily offered us one of their Timeshare weeks which we could use in Dubai. It would've cost under $400 for admin and exchange fees for the week in luxury apartments that would normally cost $250 to $300 per night! Wow! Brian phoned up and we waited for a couple of days seeing ourselves starting off in luxury!
Unfortunately, no one wanted to exchange for the dates we wanted so it didn't work out. Well, it was nice to dream! So we booked an apartment online for the week that was 55m2, with a balcony, washing machine and kitchen not far from the airport for $65 per night - cheap for Dubai! We booked flights to Mumbai and a week in a hotel in the southern part of Mumbai. We also ordered various things online - a new laptop that is smaller and easier for us to carry, a new MP3 player and a WiFi Booster.
Our next project was to find storage for our motor home somewhere in Vancouver or nearby and work out what we needed to do to prepare it for winter. We needed somewhere undercover because there is no guarantee that our roof won't leak and found a storage place on Craigslist.
We drove down to the former dairy farm to look at the two barns where several boats and other motor homes are stored. It is owned by a family with two dogs and we liked the place as soon as we saw it. A perfect new home for Winnie.
Brian is a very good handyman and he helped us with winter preparations. We have never had to do this before so we needed advice. He used compressed air to blow out the water in our hot water heater and out of the pipes. Vancouver may go down to below zero over the winter although it won't be as cold as in other parts of Canada. (Alberta can go down to -40°C!) We needed anti-freeze in our pipes and in our windscreen washer bottle - the existing water had to be pumped out first.
The charge for storage is based on size, and because every meter counts we had to take off our bike rack. It hasn't been touched for 10 years and the attachment was extremely rusty and full of sand. The security lock had to be cut off with a grinder and then the rack itself needed a great deal of oil and brute force using a hammer to get it off!!
We had 4 weeks in Vancouver which we thought would be enough time. We had wanted to make a plan for the whole trip, or at least for India, so that we had an idea of what we wanted to see, where we wanted to go and what we wanted to do. But we never got to it. There were so many other things to get done and Helen spent hours every day writing her reports on the Camino (see Helen's Camino 2013 website,).
She wrote 70 pages and about 60,000 words. She managed to finish the last report on the last day, just before we were due to leave to go out for a meal with Brian and Lily who would then drop us off at the Seabus to get to the airport. Talk about last minute!! How on earth are we going to keep up with all the photos, videos and reports as we travel for the next 8 months?
We have never been so unprepared for a trip! Oh well, we'll just have to do the planning as we go along. It'll get done somehow! There is a new website ( see Asia 2013-2014) for this trip which we will be updating as we go along - well hopefully!!
Hope you enjoy reading it.
