Here’s the plan:
Hiking the Grand Canyon
We start our journey with a nine-day hiking trip in the Grand Canyon, something we’ve been planning for almost two years! Starting from the South Rim, we’re hiking down into the inner canyon on the not-so-heavily traveled Grandview Trail. We drop down almost 4,000 feet on the first day. Once we’re near the bottom of the canyon we’ll spend 4 days hiking on the Tonto Trail, which runs on a plateau about 1,000 feet above the Colorado River. April is a good time to hike more remote areas of the Grand Canyon because small seasonable streams have water and the high summer heat won’t have set in. After back country camping for five nights, we’ll reach Phantom Ranch—a lodge at the bottom of the canyon that people get to by either hiking or riding mules. We’ll spend two nights sleeping in beds and having hot cooked food. Then two days climbing out of the Canyon.
Note: A back packing trip with a stop at Phantom Ranch takes some patience to plan. After failing to get a permit in 2013 to hike one of the more popular routes (Hermit Trail), we marked our calendars 13 months ago to reserve space at Phantom Ranch. You have to call at precisely 10am on the first day of the month and hope you get lucky. Both Julia and I called and she got her call answered. Then we waited another nine months to apply for hiking permits (tip: include some less popular trails). You cannot do any of this online.
Short stop in Tokyo
We have a flight (from LA) that gets into Tokyo Haneda Airport at 10:30pm and leaves at 11am the next morning from Narita Airport about an hour north on the other side of the city. So we’re making a quick overnight trip into Tokyo—hopefully we’ll be able to get some sushi!
Biking Bali
Our first big adventure in Indonesia is a 10 day bike trip around the eastern side of the Island of Bali. Bali is 85 percent Hindu and famous for its art and dance. It is a very popular tourist stop, but less so in the areas in the center of the island and along the northeast coast where were are spending most of our time. We’ll be doing a big loop beginning and ending Ubud. We’re staying at some interesting bungalows, homestays and small hotels, including this one, Hotel Pantai Mas – The Spiritual Abode. Trip planning for Bali was a lot of fun because there were many affordable places to stay that had great comments on TripAdvisor.
Kayaking in Raja Ampat
From Bali we fly to Sorong in West Papua, Indonesia, and then take a ferry to Raja Ampat, a string of 1,500 islands. We’re renting kayaks from an N.G.O. called Kayaks4Conservation. They make kayaks locally, rent them out, and also work with local residents to help them set up homestays. We’ll be kayaking for about ten days all the way around Gam Island and doing a lot of snorkeling along the way. Except for one night camping, we’ll be staying in very basic—but beautiful- looking—homestays on the beach.
Myanmar (Burma)
From West Papua we head to Jakarta for a quick stop and then on to Yangon (Rangoon). President Obama was the first U.S. President to visit Myanmar in 2012, and he made a second visit in 2014. His first trip followed the decision by the military regime to release one of the world’s most prominent human rights and democracy activists, Aung San Suu Kyi, from house arrest. We’re looking forward to learning more about the politics of Myanmar and being exposed to Buddhism (Wikipedia says that Myanmar is the most religious Buddhist country in terms of the proportion of monks in the population and the proportion of income spent on religion). In addition to visiting Yangon, the largest city, we’ll be traveling to Bagan, which is famous for the more than 10,000 Buddhist temples that were built in the region between the 11th and 13th century. Then we head to Kalaw for a three-day Trek to Inle Lake. We’ll be staying in homestays in small villages along the way.
Bangkok
We next spend two days visiting Bangkok—too short a time in Thailand, but we’re lucky that the flights worked out so that we can at least get a bit of a taste.
Instanbul
We fly from Bangkok to Turkey by way of a short stop in Moscow. No leaving the airport, but I guess we’ll see the international transit zone where Edward Snowden hung out. We’ll spend about three days in Instabul being tourists.
Mountain biking in Cappadocia
We hadn’t heard about Cappadocia before we started planning the Turkey part of our trip. As soon as I showed everyone the photos of the eerie landscape, fairy chimney rock formations and cave buildings, and we started to read about the layers of history, we decided to go. We’re renting mountain bikes and doing a loop around the region on a mix of dirt tracks and roads. Lot’s of big climbs.
Kayaking the South Coast of Crete
Then on to Greece. From Turkey we take a short plane ride to Crete, Greece’s largest island.
Greece
Greece
Greece
Greece
Greece
Greece
Greece
The south coast of Crete has small seaside villages that are difficult to reach by car. We’ll be kayaking along the coast for a week, with a mix of camping on beaches and staying in villages. We’re renting two double kayaks through Enjoy Crete. Though we’ll be on our own, we’re following a route that they use for multi-day trips. There is a good description here.
Athens
From Crete we take a short plane flight to Athens (we looked at ferries and trains as ways of getting from one place to another, but except for one small part of the trip in Europe, plane flights were always cheaper – and generally really inexpensive, especially in Turkey and Greece). Athens was on the top of Isaiah’s list of places to visit before we even began planning this trip. And beside the ancient history, we’re looking forward to learning more about modern Greek politics and the rise of the Syriza Party.
Rome
With Pope Francis capturing the imagination of the world with his critique of inequality and social exclusion, it should be a great time to visit the Vatican…
Spain – Barcelona and cycling Andalusia
Great Mosque of Córdoba
We spend some time in Barcelona, then head to Andalusia for two weeks of biking. We’ve been wanting to do this trip for years. Our route takes us from Sevilla to Ronda to Granada to the small hill towns of Montefrio and Priego de Cordoba to Baena to Cordoba to Carmona and back to Sevilla. We’re looking forward to seeing how Islamic, Christian and Jewish traditions have shaped the region’s beautiful towns and cities. By mid-to-late June it will be hot, so we’ll try to bike at the beginning and end of the day.
Paris
We fly from Sevilla to Paris, and spend a couple days seeing the city…
Biking the Italian Alps
From Paris we take a TRAIN! to Innsbruck to begin a week long bike trip along the Via Claudia Augusta, an ancient Roman Road across the Alps. We’ll mostly be off road on a bike path, passing through some great Northern Italian towns. We’ll visit Bolzano, Trento, Verona, Vicenza and Padua; take a ferry across Lake Garda (Lago di Garda), the largest lake in Italy; and then end up in Venice.
Prague
Our last stop in Europe is Prague, in the Czech Republic, to visit good friends who are living there.
We’ll be back in the DC area for a few days in mid-July to celebrate at the wedding of Julia’s sister Susan and her fiancé Dean.
Bolivia
Then we’re off to Bolivia, to explore La Paz and El Alto, trek in the Apolobamba mountain range, and spend a month living in Cochabamba, followed by a visit to Cuzco and Machu Picchu in Peru.
Stay tuned!