My father and I have finalized the countries we will be traveling to this summer. Now I begin the difficult process of obtaining visas.

Here is a tentative itinerary: Fly from San Antonio to Istanbul, via Paris. From Istanbul I will travel overland to Georgia (stopping briefly in Tbilisi) and then through Azerbaijan. In Baku I will board a "ferry" that crosses the Caspian Sea and makes port in Turkmenbashi, Turkmenistan. From Turkmenbashi I will make my way North across the border into Uzkebistan towards what is left of the Aral Sea. There I will meet with several representatives of Doctors Without Borders and a few other NGOs working in the region. (This work is towards my masters thesis.) After the Aral Sea I will make my way to Tashkent. In Tashkent I will meet my father who will be arriving via Amsterdam.

From Tashkent we will move on to Kirghizia (Kyrgyzstan) and will meet the man who will guide us up over the Torugart Pass. We will ride camels and Yaks most of the way up and down. Then my good friend Chun Wen Gan will meet us at the border crossing in China. From there we will go to Kashgar, then back North to Urumuchi where we will board a train that will take us to Dunhuang, Mogao, Xian and finally Bejing where we will fly home.

In case you are wondering: I will be blogging along the way.

I can't wait!