So having found a job for my last remaining month in the UK before the fun begins, I’ve now got the time (and money) to begin the planning of routes, learning some Farsi and buying kit such as a few decent pairs of socks, for starters.

As you may know, onn the 28th of May, I leave on a British Council trip to Korea for 10 days. I’ll write about how that goes, elsewhere. When I get back though, I’ll have just enough time back at home in Sunny Stubbington to do the washing, and then I’m off again on what is, I hope, one of the most hair-brained, interesting, exciting, political and historical routes I could have imagined. The route is thus:

So highlights….

1) Bus to Fareham train station, then on to London Waterloo. Tube across London, then Eurostar from the sparkling new St Pancras International. Through channel tunnel, then on to Brussels for lunch. Afternoon train to Cologne, overnighter to sunny Vienna. No time to stop; too many tourists, too expensive. Must…go….east…straight onto train to Belgrade, passing through the marrrvellous scenery, forests and suchlike. The buffet car, apparently, has olde worlde charm and is fully licensed.

2) Arrive in Belgrade for evening. This time ten years ago, our boys from NATO were giving this place a cruise missile shower. Luckily for me, there’s a lovely hostel next door to the station, owned by an American boy and his charming Serbian wife, recently refurbished with Ikea furniture, all for $10 a night. Score. Spend a day in Belgrade, just for kicks.

3)Train to Bucharest, because I want to see what Orwell was imagining when he wrote 1984, and because apparently they have a massive ’statue park’, where all of the Soviet-era statues and monuments have all been moved and turned into a kitschy tourist attraction. How kitsch.

4) Enough faffing around, off to Istanbul. Spend a couple of days here because I’ve never been, and everyone goes there, so It’d feel wrong if I didn’t do it justice with a couple of days. Will be back, though.

5)Finally. Climb aboard the Trans-Asian express, bound for Terhan. This train is apparently packed full of Iranians who go on vacation to Turkey, and takes several days, including crossing Lake Van in Eastern turkey, where the carriage is carried aboard a ferry.

6)Arrive in Iran, spend (assuming I actually get my visa) 30 days there. Will outline that leg of the journey elsewhere.

7)(30 days later) back on Trans-Asian express. The Iran/Turkey border is, reportedly a little like Lynx Vice. It turns nice girls naughty. Not to mention chador-less. *gasp*. Booze also comes out from hiding.

8)Back in Istanbul. Back for more if it was worth it first time round. Enough trains, lets take a ferry. 36 hour ferry across the Black Sea, one of the most polluted bodies of water in the World. Also home to most of the World’s caviar. Joke’s on you Abramovich, assuming the ferry doesn’t sink, in which case, joke’s on me.

9)Arrive in Odessa, Ukraine’s primary seaport, and home to the hulky rusting, decaying remains of the Soviet Black Sea fleet. Spend a few days here exploring the Crimea (did you know Florence Nightingale died of syphilis?) and Yalta, home to the Russian Tsar’s summer palace, as well as the site of the famous wartime conference between Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin. Carving up Europe? Didn’t they do well!? As Brucie would say.

10)Train/Bus/Plane up to Kiev. This is the site of the Orange revolution a few years ago, where the presidential election was almost decided when one of the candidates got poisoned by the FSB, as well as the place that most of Europe’s natural gas flows through. Here I’m staying at the Hotel Mir, which, as many of you will be aware, shares its name with the old Russian space station. Expecting 1970s Soviet-era charm packaged in a crystal white concrete skyscraper here. They better not disappoint.

11)Chernobyl/Pripyat. A day trip into the ‘red’ zone surrounding the ill-fated nuclear reactor. It’s now perfectly safe to visit for brief stays, and tours are given by local people who lived there and in Pripyat, the abandoned city next to it, left exactly as it was back in ‘86. I don’t want to be a voyeur, but it should be a pretty shocking and powerful experience. I guess I’ll also finally work out how I feel about nuclear power.

12 )Train to Krakow, Poland. At the Ukraine/Polish border, the train has to be ratcheted up so they can change the wheels from Russian width to European.

13)Krakow; supposed to be some brilliant scenery here, and a really good medieval town. Poland was, for example, the first country in Europe to have a written constitution, and the second in the World, after the US. These guys were streets ahead before all the unpleasantness of the last few hundred years. Speaking of which, Auschwitz-Birkenau is only a short drive away. The Polish hate their country being the centre of what’s been called ‘Holocaust tourism’, and it’s true, because the country has so much else to it, beyond those couple of awful decades. But I may go, just depends how I’m feeling. May well be suffering from emotional/sensory overload by this stage, though.

14)Up to Warsaw, because, lets face it, with the speed at which Poland is moving, it’ll be a different place in 10 years. I’d like to see it before there’s a Starbucks on every street corner.

15)Berlin, because I’ve never actually been. Depends on the money situation. As with Krakow, I may also have had my fill of living history by this stage too.

16) Back on train/Eurostar home by same route as before to write up my notes, edit my video and take a month’s rest.

Then it’s off to the US for a month to do much the same sort of thing, but right in the middle of the Presidential election campaign. Marrvelous.

So that’s the plan of attack folks! From here on in, I’ll be blogging at every step of the way I can. This geeky traveller has the means and gadgetry to type/blog/video every step of the way. Will tell you all about the kit I’m taking and plans for the month in Iran over the next couple of days. Beyond that, wish me luck, and if you’ve got any comments, questions or tips, then please, please comment!