'Judit, will you come with me to Iran?' - David asked me unexpectedly last winter in a raunchy pub in Budapest where the beer was not cheap. We only met for 20 minutes as he just dropped by. 'Why not?' - he got the answer. In the next two weeks the idea crossed my mind several times. I didn't know whether I should take it serious. Then David called me again asking me 'So you are coming, right?' Then I realized he does think it serious. I felt I must say yes again...
Then he sent me an article about Iran. I confess that despite being an almost-geographer I had no idea about the country. It's in the east and it's big. Anything in the East is dangerous - tells us the TV (quietly) with a voice of maternal distress. So in the article, I saw pictures I could hardly imagine of this i-don't-even-know-its-coordinates country. It's not such a bad place. I should get it known! First, I focused only on travel blogs to see how others do it. The great challenge for me was planning the trip, for I had taken part in longer camping trips, but all these were organized by others, all I had to do is just to chill and collect seashells on the beach.
We started serious preparations in February. My geek friend created an easy-to-use forum where we put the most important pieces of informations. Many people buy a plane ticket spontaneously to some country they heard about from their grandma to find their freedom (thumbs up for them!) but because of our jobs we voted for planning things in advance. We also want to walk the path of Our Fathers Looking for Danger, while our money lasts. Passing through old hippie-meadows, taking part in summer universities (we're still waiting for the answer from them at the time of writing) and last but not least, spending our free time smart. Our principle is that life doesn't stop from moving to a sleeping bag and being dependant on other people, or ourselves. By the way, I recommend summer universities to anyone who likes it, as it's cheap and they make cool programmes for students. You can find lots of stories about this by young people.
In the end of all the preparation I turned out not just joining my to-be-wayfarer-mate until Iran but even to reach Thailand. I decided so after consulting some traveller acquintances. For example, saving some more money you can take part in a one month climbing course at the feet of the Himalayas. It's worth changing thought with the young people who already have been there, they usually share there ideas with pleasure.
Until now the end point of my journey is still not certain but I surely know in which fields I want to improve and what I want to learn in that six months. As we're going to have a laptop, an e-book reader and a camera with us, we can work, read, take videos and photos (I don't mean that kind of 'standing on a mountain' panorama videos) that we've been wanting to do for a long time. Also we will draw, prepare special foods by recipes of the countries we cross and learn languages. And the purpuse of our blog will be to show that it's possible not to spend time only with hitchhiking on the road and be looking for accommodation. By the way we want to fix these things before we leave not to have problems once we arrive there.
