Which way did he go, George?

This is my first blog ever, so be gentle.

As some of you may know, I am planning on taking at least six months off work and travelling around the world. This blog is intended to document the process, and to communicate with my friends while on the road. One of the first things the blog asks you for is a profile, including a photo. I spent this morning looking through my digital files and realized I have taken over 46,000 photos since my first digital camera in 1999. Pictures of all kinds of things like flowers and mushrooms, a dozen marriages, tons and tons of buildings, camping trips, and many fabulous vacations in places like Oregon, Vermont, London, Lisbon, Berlin, Vienna, Belgium, New Zealand, and Brazil.

You'd think with all that travelling, I'd be satisfied. Why am I doing this? In some fundamental way, this is a spiritual necessity for me, a need to reconnect with the beauty and wonder of the world. I've been feeling beset by problems lately. I'm frustrated being an architect, which pays reasonably well, but is hardly as socially useful as I thought it would be, and is seldom as creative an outlet as I would like. I'm also feeling like I'm grappling with a lot of other people's emotional and mental health issues, frequently at my own expense. And I'm finding it harder and harder to like the direction my virtual society is taking; the direction my ethically and economically bankrupt country is taking; and the direction my consumerist, unscientific world is heading in. I think that a journey is the answer to these issues, in terms of seeking out other voices, finding new experiences, sifting through new data, staring at things in wonder and awe, working through my own thoughts, and sharing them with others. I think such a voyage must, necessarily, be taken alone.

Oh, and I can not shake the feeling that such a trip might be impossible in a few year's time.

I have some big concerns about this journey. First and foremost, I'm worried about being alone and stuck inside my own head. When you travel with someone else, you share thoughts immediately about the things you are experiencing. It affects the way you see everything. When you travel by yourself, the only critical voice is your own. I've been travelling solo since I was 15, but I've never even contemplated something on this large a scale. I'm also worried this trip will be wasteful and self indulgent, so I'm trying to frame it in an experiment context that has questions that need to be answered. Last, but not least, since I'm planning on going to a lot of places I've never been before, I'm afraid of being hurt: getting some disease I've never heard of; having everything stolen; or just being stuck in a place where I don't speak the language, can't read the signs, and don't understand what the hell is going on.

So far this is all in the planning stages. I owe a debt of gratitude to Mark Chung, who turned me on to this site, and AirTreks who are working on my two around-the-world tickets. I also thank Jackie Green, who told me about Intrepid Travel. I thank all of the friends and family who have been incredibly supportive and excited about this; but most of all I thank Charles, who against his better judgement is willing to put up with me and this.

I am currently planning on starting this trip in late September, in two installments, with a with a three or four week hiatus back in New York around Christmas and New Year. The proposed itinerary so far is:
1 Hong Kong
2-3 Bangkok, Chang Mai, Angkor Wat
4-5 Bali, Borabadur, eastern Java
6 Sydney
7 Santiago
8-9 Lima, Cuzco, Macchu Picchu
10-11 Quito, the Galapagos
12 Mexico City

then 3 or 4 weeks in New York, followed by:

16 Marrakesh
17-19 Athens, Rhodes, Ephesus, Istanbul
20 Cairo and the Pyramids
21-23 Delhi, Agra, Jaipur, Himchal Pradesh, Varanasi, Kolkata
24-25 Kyoto, Nara, the Japanese Alps, Tokyo
26 Vancouver

then home.

What I need from you is your opinion. Am I missing something obvious to you? Is there someone I should meet up with, or bring your wishes to? Let me know what you think.