Big Trip '09: Planned Route
Summer ‘09 seemed like a natural time for some adventure travel, since I have a break in the MBA program and a stockpile of frequent flier miles. In talking to Luke, my adventure buddy in rafting the Futalefeu and climbing Kilimanjaro, the idea came up to do camels across Sinai desert. It sounded perfect, since if you’re going to go all Lawrence of Arabia, you might as well do it in the peak of summer. I mean, if you trekked in Sinai in January, you’d be forever wondering “I wonder how much worse that would be in July.” We, on the other hand, will not have to wonder.
Once the idea started coming together and I began mentioning it to other folks, Lars signed on, and then Anna as well. So there will be a total of four sunburned and heatstricken loons wandering around the Sinai desert come July.
As we started talking to our guides, it turned out that a full trans-Sinai trek was out of the question given time constraints and the heat, but we will have seven or eight days in Jebel El Tih, which will probably be plenty.
In addition to the trek in Sinai, we’re planning to spend about a week on the Nile in Egypt, making our way from Aswan or Luxor back up to Cairo, with a minimum of advance planning. We’re hoping to use small boats and just go as far as we feel like on any given day.
The problem came in when looking at time off and travel plans. It seemed to make sense for Anna and I to use some of the frequent flier miles I had piled up, but when looking at mileage redemption costs, it was nearly the same to book a round trip ticket to Cairo as it was to book a OneWorld mileage award good for a total of 20,000 miles with up to 16 stops on any combination of OneWorld carriers.
Well, we’d be crazy not to do that, and at least stop at a few more places, right? Right. Initially the plan was to go all the way around the world, but the right itinerary eluded us, as we would burn up a ton of miles just to connect through Tokyo or Hong Kong.
Instead we settled on starting in Jordan, heading down to Egypt and meeting Luke and Lars for two weeks in the Sinai and on the Nile, then a hop over to Morocco, possibly a ferry across the Strait of Gibralter for a day in southern Spain, and then back to east for Turkey, Croatia, a night in Budapest, and a couple of days in London to see friends. All told: 19,000 air miles traveled, and 40 days in a total of 8 countries. Considerably more distance and time than I was originally expecting… but it should be a pretty fantastic experience.