DETAILS, DETAILS, DETAILS...

I apologize to anyone that has actually missed my posting recently. I've spent quite a bit a time the last two weeks in bookstores copying out minute details from Lonely Planet guides and the like, and none of that is particularly interesting like stories of places and people accompanied by photos can be. I've also had some other things on my mind recently, and not this. I'm steadily working hard though. It's coming together. I started my first Russian lessons last week and kicked myself in the ass to work harder with Mandarin.

The good news though, is that I have a gigantic spreadsheet now full of information about schedules and such for all the places I will travel in Asia, Europe, and Africa, the culmination of a lot of work! I still need to work on all of Latin America, but I feel momentum on my side.

The realities of all this detail has caused a couple small changes in my routes, and put into higher definition some other places that I only vaguely thought about, especially in Africa. As stated before, I am hoping to avoid large cities as much as possible, and Africa is by far the best continent to do this, as rural life is altogether more interesting than urban, not to mention more genuine in my experiences so far. It will be hard to limit myself to the four months I have alloted to reach Cape Town from Tunisia, mainly because of all the interesting possibilities I have read about and most certainly will run across when traveling.

Movement has to be a priority though.