Indian visa

Took form, passport and photos over to the visa centre near Barbican this morning. Surprisingly painless (I suppose most of the pain came with the online form), I was called up to the desk about five minutes before my 915 appointment time and out the door at 915. I paid when I did the online thing for text and e-mail updates. The woman said the earliest it would be done would be Friday, so I have reasonable hopes of getting it back in time.

Only fly in the ointment is they only allow collection (which I chose) between 3 and 430pm, which seems a bit crappy but not the end of the world.

Flights to Georgia

(In the unlikely event anyone but Future Steve is reading this, massive
amounts of tedious detail alert. Frankly even Future Steve might want to
skip this one...)

If I fly out on Friday night after my last day at work, the only option
at a remotely sane price is £342, LHR 2230-IST 0420, IST 0705-TBS 1020.

If I fly out on Saturday, the absolute cheapest (on ITA's matrix, which
I am kind of trusting - maybe I will double check on expedia before I
book anything) is £234, but that gets me into Tbilisi at 2325, and I'd
really rather not be arriving in an unfamiliar city where I don't speak
the language at midnight.

Now, what seems to have popped up but wasn't available before is a £235
flight LHR 1635-TBS 0420 via Athens (2h 15m there). And, oddly enough,
the Polish airlines flight I was flirting with which seemed to have gone
up £80 last night is now back down to the original price. I wonder if I
just ballsed up my search last night. Anyway, that Polish airlines
flight is £256, LHR 1750-TBS 0400 via Warsaw.

I am not paying an extra £100 for the Friday night flight in order to
get an extra day's holiday, even if I weren't at all concerned (and
there'd probably be no problem) with flying out directly after work on
my last day. That would be quite cool in a way, but at this price no.

Last night there seemed to be a cheap flight via Azerbaijan (Baku), I
even e-mailed to check I didn't need a visa to change planes there. That
would have been oddly cool, plus the Baku-Tbilisi flight would have been
in a smallish plane which would also be novel, but it seems not to be an
option any more.

You fool Steve, you've been looking at the Sunday by accident.

So the cheapest and probably the best option is now the via Baku flight.
£257. LHR 2205-GYD 0735, then GYD 1010-TBS 1011 (in an Embraer RJ-190
for 1h1m). It's a real shame that isn't an option on the Friday night
but it isn't (or if it is it costs like £800 and I filtered it out). In
a way it seems a shame to be "wasting" the Saturday like that, as I
wouldn't arrive until Sunday morning, but basically the trip takes about
7-8h minimum so unless there is a flight on Friday night, I either
arrive late on Saturday (which I really don't want to do, as noted
above) or fly overnight on Saturday and arrive Sunday morning.

Hmm, sorting by arrival time, there is actually a £234 flight via Kiev
which leaves Gatwick at just after midnight on Saturday, arriving 1540
in Tbilisi. However, it has a 6h 45m layover in Kiev.

OK, expedia can't turn up any decently priced flights on the Friday
night, although they do turn up the via Kiev flight just after midnight
mentioned above at £236.

On Saturday, expedia is offering the LOT Polish flight LHR 1750-TBS 0400
flight for £235, although ITA is showing it at £331. Not that it's a
major factor, but that also involves a probably small plane (Embraer
RJ-195 this time) for the second hop, although in this case it's 3h 20m
on the thing.

I am thinking I need to look at the London-oriented times of these with
a view to comparing the sleeping potential.

So, going via Baku (£257, ITA) I leave Heathrow at 22:05 BST and have a
5h 30m flight to Baku, i.e. we land at 03:35 BST. I then spend 2h 35m at
the airport before flying out at 06:10 BST, landing in Tbilisi at 07:11
BST, 10:11 local.

Whereas going via Warsaw (£235, expedia) I leave Heathrow at 17:50 BST
and have a 2h 30m flight to Warsaw, landing 20:20 BST. I have a 1h 20m
stopover there, we take off at 21:40 BST and after a 3h 20m flight land
in Tbilisi at 01:00 BST, 04:00 local.

Now looking at that my gut feeling is that the via Warsaw flight is
better. I have more chance of sleeping on the plane via Baku, but I
could very easily just be falling asleep by the time we land in Baku and
then I don't really get much of a chance to sleep after that (too risky
to sleep at the airport, and only 1h flight to Tbilisi). If I go via
Warsaw, because it's a bit earlier, I probably won't sleep, but given my
typical UK hours, I probably won't be particularly tired when I land at
01:00 BST. If I assume I could check in as early as I liked, I'd
probably just be getting really tired by the time I got to the ho(s)tel
maybe 2-3 hours later, i.e 04:00 BST ish, 07:00 local.

I would probably be knackered, especially if I couldn't check in and had
to occupy myself with coffee until check in time, but the Baku flight is
probably no better in that sense. I'd probably not get to sleep on the
planes at all (I often don't fall asleep until 1-2am anyway), and I'd
just be even more knackered when actually travelling from the airport to
the ho(s)tel.

I suppose either way it's like staying up all night and not being
allowed to go to bed until check in time. If check in time can be early,
that's a big bonus for the Warsaw route as it means I can go to bed by
04:00 BST-ish, which wouldn't be that big a strain. If check in time
can't be any earlier than (say) midday local, which would be 09:00 BST,
I have to effectively stay up until then, it's just that via Warsaw I
spend the last 6-7 hours feeling tired in Tbilisi a staggering distance
from the ho(s)tel, whereas via Baku I spend more time feeling tired at
Azerbaijan airport or trying to navigate transport in Tbilisi. Throw in
the fact that the Warsaw flight is a bit cheaper anyway and it's
starting to look like a no-brainer.

[I'm going to stop writing ho(s)tel and just use whichever word seems
appropriate, without implying anything about my plans unless I'm
explicitly waffling on that theme.]

Hmm. I might hope to book something today but I clearly need to brood on
this a bit more anyway. I'm going to send this to the blog now and I'll
perhaps avoid waffling further online.

Lack of progress

Been a hectic few days with other stuff. Very little progress on
Georgian - I am reviewing the first three lessons now and that will have
to do. I haven't booked any flights yet, just had a quick check and the
flight I was going to get to Tbilisi via Warsaw has gone up about £80
(from memory, not exact). There is a sort of good-ish/better-ish flight
with another airline for about the same price - this one leaves 10pm
Saturday via Kiev (I think) arriving 10am ish Sunday, vs leaving 6pm ish
Saturday arriving 4am Sunday. I am not likely to book tonight but I
really need to get at least this initial flight booked soon - any
further flights will be two weeks further in the future so things are
not "pressing" and prices presumably escalating as much.

Anyway, shall return to the Georgian lesson review and muse and just
maybe I will book this tonight or tomorrow or something.

Vaccinations

0905 At surgery in waiting room. Forgot to bring little yellow book of vaccinations with me, only realised while filling in form. Ran back home to get it. Questions on form not answerable, asks for country and location to visit. Frankly I don't know exactly where, except for India. Will see what nurse says. Not going into the Latin America trip here, I suspect these vaccinations will cover me and I can always come back if necessary.

I suspect malaria tablets are going to be the big difficulty.

0935 Waiting for DLR to work. No vaccinations, typhoid was apparently sort of a bit recommended but they don't have any in stock, there is a national supply problem and if I avoid places which prepare food unhygienically I'll be OK. Frankly a bit dissatisfied with that but what can you do? I just might see if I can get it done privately.

I don't need any malaria tablets. Thailand doesn't have malaria except where it 'leaks over' the borders. Basically the nurse made out it's a huge drag taking malaria tablets 1-2 days before and 1-7 days after entering a malaria region, so unless you're going to be away from medical attention it's not worth it. I didn't realise "that's tedious" was how this worked. I guess I won't exercise or watch my drinking because "that's tedious". She didn't quite phrase it like that, it was more "and are you really going to bother taking all those tablets?". I thought malaria was kind of incurable once you got it but you know, it would be tedious taking any tablets. Advice basically seemed to be use DEET etc.

The map she had (travax.nhs or something) showed no malaria risk for the New Delhi-Agra-Jaipur area of India, and none for Georgia, so that's not a concern.

Oh well. I guess it's all OK, it just feels like this is very much of 75% kind of effort deal. Probably I'm just in a bad mood.

India visa application

Not done a huge amount re the trip recently, although I have 75%
mastered the first two of the Georgian lessons. Progress is slow but WTF.

I filled in the Indian visa application online tonight. What a tedious
load of crap. However, I have submitted it online, I have paid and I
have an appointment to hand my paperwork in next Wednesday at 09:15. I
hope that will be OK. I somehow struggle to believe they are ever going
to grant me a visa, there has to be *something* wrong with my
application (e.g. the fact I asked for multiple entry, on the advice of
the guide book, even though I don't strictly need it), but it will
probably be OK. Oh, I got two 50mmx50mm Indian visa-sized photos taken
at Timpson at Canary Wharf on Monday, so I'm good to go there.

I probably need to think about booking some flights this weekend if not
before, at least the earlier ones which are perhaps looming a bit more
than the others and could get suddenly expensive if I'm not careful. No
real thoughts about the after-Christmas part of the trip yet, I guess
that can wait a week or two. I still haven't bought a guidebook for
Thailand or read any more of the India guide, although to a certain
extent I don't really need to now as I more-or-less know I am flying
into and out of Delhi and I can read more nearer the time.

Anyway, it's getting late and I have to be up early tomorrow so I'll
stop. Oh, I have an appointment with a doctor/nurse at my local surgery
about vaccinations at 9am on Friday.

Switching India and Thailand

Having fiddled around with the flight planner a bit more, it seems in
reality breaking the return journey from Singapore in the Gulf is not
particularly cheap. I'm not over confident in my conclusion, but I guess
it's a question of carriers competing on certain routes and hence the
prices for A-B via hub C can be considerably lower than the combined
prices of separate flights A-C and C-B. Given I was only stopping in the
Gulf because it seemed "helpful" - not that I wouldn't like to go, but
I'm not desperate - I think I might knock that on the head.

What I am leaning towards now is going to Thailand before India. So
instead of approximately
London->Georgia->Istanbul->India->Thailand->Singapore->Gulf->London it
would be London->Georgia->Istanbul->Thailand->Singapore->India->London.
In other words I am increasing the length of my flight out of Istanbul
eastwards in order to allow me to break what would otherwise be a long
flight Singapore-London into two halves by stopping in India going west.
My current draft itinerary has mostly direct flights (the only
non-direct is London->Georgia, which has an hour or so in Warsaw
airport) and no flight longer than 9h 45m, most being considerably shorter.

Having had a quick look on a couple of random websites, the best time in
terms of climate to visit Thailand is November-February, and although
for India it does depend where you go I found something saying that for
most of India the tourist season starts in winter, which is
November-February. So it looks as though visiting these countries at the
times of year I'm proposing to be there is reasonable. I think
especially for India I should let the time of year help influence where
I go within the country.

There seems a hell of a lot of stuff to sort out before I go - flat
sitting, flat insurance, vaccinations, maybe some new clothes - but I'm
sure it will all be fine. It is sort of fun in a strange way, even if it
does feel a bit hectic. Perhaps I should have done more work on this
preparation earlier, but a) I didn't, so that can't be helped and b) it
was perhaps never going to happen with all the other stuff I've been
concerned about.

As I said in the previous entry, I think Georgia is sorted in terms of
the planning I'm doing at the moment. So given the itinerary is firming
up, I probably need to buy guidebooks for Thailand and India and give
those a skim through. I suspect in a way India is the more "pressing",
since - perhaps naively - I assume for Thailand I pretty much do want to
fly into and out of Bangkok, whereas for India I could imagine it making
sense to fly in and out of different cities, so my plans for my time in
India have more bearing on my main flight plans.

(I should say that while I don't want to leave making my plans for the
second half of the trip until I'm back in the UK at Christmas, I
obviously feel that's less pressing right now. Maybe in 2-4 weeks when I
have hopefully got flights booked up for the first half I will start to
mull over that a little more. However, while I do expect to be doing
some flying in that time, I suspect there will be a lot more overland
travel by bus between countries, so booking flights is less critical. Of
course, I do want to get the outbound flight from London to wherever
booked with a good few weeks in hand so as to avoid paying over the
odds. I do wonder if I will have the balls not to book a return flight
to London before I leave to give myself more flexibility. Anyway, we
will see how the plans fall out when I start thinking about that.)

[Several hours pass]

OK, I've been doing other stuff and half dithering over buying an India
guidebook. I fiddled around with the Georgia one converting it to PDF so
I can view it properly on the netbook and also on the phone; the Kindle
version does not seem to be zoomable on the phone, which is not good for
maps. (Also, if I have a PDF version on the phone I can be 100%
confident of viewing it without internet access, whereas the Kindle
version just might decide to get uppity.) I didn't want to buy another
electronic guidebook in Kindle format without checking that sort of
problem was overcomable.

Anyway, judging from the amazon reviews the Lonely Planet guide is not
so great in the latest edition, so I think I will take a punt on the
Rough Guide to India. Disappointingly all the books seem to be 2011
editions, but I don't think I've ever stayed in a ho(s)tel listed in the
guide book - it certainly hasn't been common - and I guess that's the
kind of stuff which ages most rapidly. (Must admit the mention in at
least one review that Rough Guide is aimed at a broader range of
travellers whereas Lonely Planet seems aimed at gap year students and
backpackers sort of helped, but that isn't really why I've picked it. I
suppose in some sense I am a backpacker anyway, although I can do
without an excess of SYT "tone" in the text. The Lonely Planet Georgia
travel guide seems superficially relatively free of that kind of thing
anyway.)

[Oh, I did find myself reading the paragraph of blurb about each of the
writers of the Georgia guide book. As always they sound like insanely
interesting people whose lives sparkle in a way mine doesn't. But I also
thought, not for the first time, there's a lot of spin about these sort
of things. I'm oddly tempted to write my own potted biography, sticking
strictly to the truth but sticking to the cool-sounding bits, just to
prove it can be done. I don't intend to stick it on here if I do, of
course.]

Reading the guide book now, I find I actually need to apply for a
tourist visa. By the looks of it this shouldn't take more than a week or
two (I have only just skimmed the details), but it's a good job I didn't
find this out nearer the time. Not applying just yet, but will probably
do so at some point during this week. It also seems that you basically
can't leave and re-enter India within the same two month period, so
although I don't particularly intend to do this, the plan which floated
through my head briefly while fiddling with the flights earlier of doing
India twice in two 1.5-week-ish bursts once in each direction wouldn't
have worked anyway.

While the guide book is trying to be reassuring about the health
situation in India, it has naturally had the opposite effect. Still,
I've been ill (at the diarrhoea sort of level) abroad before and I've
got through it, and maybe I have finally learned my lesson about
drinking the water, and I have to assume anything worse is pretty
unlikely. I am wondering if I should take some water purification
tablets or something, if only so that if I do get caught without bottled
water when drunk or ill I can take advantage of whatever water is available.

While I am hardly any distance through the book, even just skimming it,
the obvious thing to do, and apparently good at the time of year I'm
going, would apparently be the so-called golden triangle which I believe
is Delhi/Agra (for the Taj Mahal)/Jaipur. Not having anywhere particular
I'm desperate to go (although I suppose the Taj would be cool, and is
pretty much mandatory :-) ) I don't see any need to be deliberately
contrary. I suspect that area could quite easily fill three weeks by
itself, but if it wouldn't be pushing it I could imagine venturing
further afield. On the other hand, my style of travel is lazy so I might
do well to spend the three weeks solely in those areas, perhaps a week
each. Anyway, still skimming the book and will see how it goes; except
for making flight bookings I don't need to make detailed plans yet. At
this rate I suspect I would fly into and out of Delhi.

Georgia

Not got as much done re the trip today as I might have liked, but still.

I have now skimmed most of the guide book on Georgia (skipping the bits
on the other countries). In no particular order:

Looks like there could be a jazz festival in Tbilisi during pretty much
the exact time I'm there, which could be interesting.

Tandem paragliding is probably an option "in" Tbilisi; this scares me a
little as I don't want to break a leg so early in the trip :-) but would
be pretty cool.

I very much get the impression that flying into and out of Tbilisi is
the way to go, which sort of minimises the amount of planning I need to
do up front.

The guide was (I think; haven't double checked just now) published in
2011. The country looks almost scarily off the beaten track; typical
accommodation details seem to be of the "son/daughter X speaks a little
English and is sometimes around" variety outside the bigger cities. I
have just had a look and hostelworld.com does at least have a number of
places in Georgia listed, which is probably helpful.

The Georgian language has its own script. This makes the idea of hardly
anyone speaking English even more scary. ;-)

I think it will be cool. Probably best is not to try to cram too much
stuff in, take a few risks with buses/trains around the country and do
what I can. I don't think it's my style anyway, but trying to cram in as
much stuff as possible in the two-odd weeks I intend to be there seems
like a recipe for toppling dominoes when I accidentally end up on the
wrong bus somewhere. Oh, and obviously I also want to have a nice buffer
of time planned in Tbilisi at the end of my time in the country so any
delays are less likely to result in me missing my onward flight.

The guidebook says Russian is widely spoken in all three countries it
covers (though I only intend to go to Georgia) and few people find it
objectionable to be spoken to in Russian; I do wonder if I should invest
in some kind of basic language course (of the "please may I borrow your
garage?" variety), although whether I'd find the time to work through it
properly would be another matter. If cheap it wouldn't hurt too much. I
imagine English will be more widely spoken in India, so that would
"only" leave me needing to do Russian and Thai for the trip, which is
probably just about achievable. (I also suspect English is moderately
common in Thailand, although I really don't know - but it is such a
stereotypical backpacker destination I feel justified in making the
provisional assumption, I will of course be reading a guide book on it
in due course, and that's not to say I won't make some effort to learn
the language anyway.) I suppose I could possibly do Georgian, if there
is a suitable CD+book type course available, on the grounds that I might
as well go for maximum goodwill if I'm learning the language from
scratch specifically for this trip. In reality I don't think these
courses get you to a fantastic level, but on the other hand I've never
been anywhere so probably non-English-speaking before, and something has
to be better than nothing. (I have also read that just a few words of
the local language make you seem more like a human being and less like a
target for exploitation; there is probably something in this.)

I hope I can get wifi at the typical accommodation over there. The
guidebook rarely seems to show its wifi symbol on the places it lists. I
can live without surfing, but it is a very convenient way to book onward
accomodation, not to mention e-mail if not Skype contact with friends
and family and of course this fascinating blog. (Oh, I am also hoping to
keep up my Spanish lessons over Skype to some extent while travelling.)

I think beyond possibly ordering a language course (can I get something
over the internet to avoid waiting for it to be posted? I am not so sure
for an audio-based item like this) I can provisionally consider Georgia
sorted. Two weeks will be fine, I think. When I come to book the flights
I also need to be sure I can book a ho(s)tel in Tbilisi for the first
two or three nights, then I will probably make my onward plans while I'm
actually there. Quite apart from not wanting to be too harried with a
rigid plan, I want to remain open to any interesting options that come
up, or meeting other people who might provide comfort if nothing more to
travel with, or tours offered etc.

Looking on amazon.co.uk for Georgian language material, there is a
bizarre subgenre of lightly sexually suggestive clothing/mugs (in
English), e.g. T-shirts saying "If you don't ask me in Georgian, I won't
do you!" Maybe this exists for all languages, I don't know.

Sod it, there was a DVD (e-book+MP3 files) on amazon.co.uk for £7.98
including postage, I've just ordered that. That's only the price of two
or three pints and I might manage to get some of it studied. It says the
course was prepared for diplomats, ambassadors etc and was "digitally
remastered"; I have the possibly half-baked idea this is going to be
some material produced by (e.g.) the US government in 1940 which has now
been acquired cheaply and tarted up. We will see. Delivery is in 3-18
days, I hope it's nearer the former but 18 days would still give me some
time with it.