Long haul air travel can be the biggest obstacle we face when embarking on a big international adventure. When it comes to international travel, there are no “easy” flights for coach travelers – especially when you’re taking trans-oceanic and continental flights from the USA to places in Europe, Asia, or even destinations further afield – like Africa or Australasia.
In September of 2011, I visited Mongolia. My trip came at the tail end of a long summer job at the tail end of my graduate program at the tail end of a long distance relationship. I had been traveling a lot in between Seattle and Seoul, Korea (a former home) to spend time with my then partner. On my third trip of the year, I decided I needed something more – so I started researching flights to other exotic destinations in that general part of the world.
So last I explained, my partner David and I had cancelled our plans to road trip around Tunisia due to some the terrorist attacks targeting tourists in Tunis and Sousse. While I was upset to cancel my plans to see the North African nation, I was also secretly excited to plan an entirely new trip to a new destination. For me, much of the joy of travel comes in the pre-work. I am a meticulous researcher and am prone to map comas – and the need for a location change provided me with an opportunity for both.
I am recently engaged. On our last trip (in Istanbul, Turkey and the South Caucasian nations of Georgia and Armenia), I proposed to my soon to be husband David. What’s more exciting about the marriage and party, however, is clearly the honeymoon. I’ve never been one to care at all about the romantic implications of a wedding ceremony, and have certainly been to enough of them to know what I do and don’t like, and so David and I have used travel as an excuse to not really have a wedding ceremony at all – instead we’re putting some of that dough toward the honeymoon of our dreams and a lot toward paying down the principal owed on our house.
I’ve been traveling in fairly offbeat/exotic places for a solid chunk of time now, and one thing I find myself talking to folks about over and over is how I choose a place to stay. Now keep in mind that, despite having closed the hostel chapter of my life (temporarily, at least), I don’t crinkle my nose at staying at places that wouldn’t be considered luxurious. Quite the opposite – as a story collector, I often find that a night or two at a grotty “hotel” in a random corner of the planet (I’m looking at you, Casa Iguana on Little Corn Island, Nicaragua) can yield some incredible memories that dazzle at cocktail parties. And while I admire the long term travelers who stay at such places without qualms (as being thrifty with accommodation is one prong of a strategy that allows those folks to stay on the road for so long), putting in my time at my 9-5 for 11 months a year financially allows me to spend a moderate amount of coin to ensure relative creature comforts while on the road.
When I was planning our trip to Turkey and Georgia last year, I hadn’t originally thought to make a little jaunt into Armenia. But after doing additional investigating into various places to see and things to do, I couldn’t help myself and booked a shoddy hotel in Yerevan – the Erebuni Hotel, if you’re wondering – for three nights in the middle of our 10 days in Georgia.
We had planned to spend 4 days and 3 nights in Armenia in total, one of which would be spent in Yerevan, one on a day trip, and two going to and from Tbilisi. I arranged transport (with the help of lovely folks at Envoy Hostel in Yerevan) so that we could see different things coming to and from the border – an arrangement that basically meant we took two different routes when coming from the Sadakhlo-Bagratashen border to Yerevan and back. Basically I was a total ninja in making sure we used our time in Armenia to see as many damn churches and monasteries as we could.
