Trans-Mongolian trip - D-day preparation

Hi readers!

I’ve decided a few weeks ago to take (another) career break, leave this (comfy?) Monday to Friday corporate life, reclaim my freedom and refocus my energy towards chasing up my personal dreams and projects, pushing up my boundaries and limits to come out of this experience stronger, satisfied and ready to tackle any challenges thrown at me.

This year, I’ll go for the ultimate train trip: the Trans-Mongolian. 9000km rail journey from Moscow to Beijing through Mongolia completely on my own. From Beijing, I’ll be exploring China for a full month from the North all the way up to the South, then not much plans about where I will end up next ..

It has been quite a major logistic exercise to make this happened:

• Step 1: Leap of faith: hand over resignation letter to the manager

While still working, sort out:

• Travel insurance
• Travel vaccine
• Stop some monthly recurring charges such as for phones, gym, etc..
• Sort out electronics for the trip: Netbook, Kindle for the 50 hours leg journey without electricity
• Find new tenant to sublet the room in London
• Ensure the banks won’t block the cards as soon as they will see some (dodgy?) transactions in Russia, etc..
• Sort out the train tickets, stopover dates and duration for visa application
• Collect paperwork and submit Visa application at Russian. Mongolian & Chinese embassy. Mongolian visa was granted as -quickly as a Letter in the Post as we say in France. Russian visa was a lot of paperwork and Chinese visa quite though.
• After initial rejection from Chinese embassy, sort out and provide a 30 days itinerary including hotel, train ticket & list of the daily planned activities at each location (Just to ensure I don’t intend to go to Xinjiang province to plant bombs). Then pray that you will receive the visas on time.
• Do all these activities, while additional workload is generated documenting what I’ve been up to for the last 12 months and bringing the replacement up to speed
• Try to add everybody on Linkedin before leaving
• Get a lot of Roubles, US dollars & renminbi to avoid heavy cash withdrawal charges (and to survive through card loss!)
• Buy a proper backpack and carry out a volume optimization exercise

It’s amusing how the closer you approach that date and the more you start to appreciate your comfortable and routine life: The overcrowded tube in the morning, the Caramel Latte with Cream at Starbucks just before starting day of work, the familiar faces of your colleagues and even my daily “interactions” with our vendor BT. Then going back home after work, finding yet another excuse to have a take away dinner, buy ciders at Tesco down the road and enjoy the evening with my dear house mates.

Then the date gets closer and you start wondering: What the hell am I doing ? Why not just doing like everybody else ? Working Monday to Friday, with a steady paycheck seems suddenly so attractive and comfortable when you weight it against the risks associated with this solo backpacking trip. But no, I won’t give up. Should I fail, then I will have the satisfaction when I get older that I have at least attempted it.

Next thing you know, I’m on a one way flight to Moscow; beginning my journey. It’s my second time there, so not much of a discovery but still managed to get lost in the Russian Metro. They might have tidy plans with color codes like in London tube but it’s a nightmare figuring out in which direction the Metro are going when you’re expected to read Cyrillic.