Getting there might be the hardest part

Our outgoing wild Child!!!

Frankly, our first concern is actually traveling to India.  We experience a daily reminder of this issue each time we pull out of our cul-de-sac headed somewhere exotic (like the mall).   Within 5 minutes, Makenzie begins to ask, "When we are going to get there?!"  She is VERY patient, usually for up to 10 minutes.  In all seriousness, the idea of spending multiple, long days traveling just to get to our destination is a bit frightening.

Hwaseong Fortress in Korea, World Heritage site.

Agra Fort, India

In addition to this, we had to go through the ordeal of getting visas for India.  What a hassle that was!  Truly, just dealing with the application process nearly put us off going.  The visa process is "completed online" so you only have to submit about 8 pages of supporting documents with accompanying pictures, passports etc IN ADDITION to everything that we had to submit electronically.  All of this added up to over $800 for all of us, and we have not even left home.

Our Itinerary

Kanchi Puram, India

Kyungju Korea

Cindy is diligently working on an itinerary for our trip, not only for us but for Keaton.  For those of you who don't know, Keaton goes to a very unique school.  Every year for the first 3 weeks of January they do what they call a Winterim.  They do not have regular school, but are given the opportunity to study something of interest outside of school.  Our trip is what Keaton is doing for his Winterim this year!  How cool is it that he gets to go on a trip around the world, see London, India, and Korea and still get credit for it! All told, on this trip we are going to visit 17 different world heritage sites!  Thats much better than going to school any day of the week in my book.



Fortunately, some of the places that we are going to do not need a Visa.  We are spending 2 nights in in London, a long night in Taiwan, and 3 days in Korea. Thought you would be interested in seeing pictures of some of the places we will be going.

The bad part of the tourist portion of our trip is that it is going to all happen in the winter.  In Korea, we should expect it to be very cold with snow on the ground.  We will need to have very warm coats, hats gloves etc.  While in India we are actually expecting it to be quite warm, and will not even need a jacket when we are down south in the Leper colony.  On the other hand, in the north, where the Taj Mahal is, we are expecting it to actually be quite cool, although not as cold as New York or Korea.  London will be cold and wet.  Essentially, we expect to pack our entire closet to cover all the climates we will have to deal with.  All this while attempting to confine ourselves to carry-ons as much as possible, since we expect to lose a lot of baggage with our many flights and transfers.

Intelligent packing and lots of entertainment will be essential requirements before we leave.