Pakistani Visas Granted

Somewhat to my surprise Ellie and I were granted our visas to enter Pakistan today. We had to apply for them now, even though we won't reach Pakistan until the end of September, because the Pakistani government only issues visas in the country in which the passport is held. So if you're Australian, you can only apply in Australia. There's a part on the visa application form for the names and addresses of two people in the home country and two people in Pakistan who can vouch for your character and will also provide funds to repatriate you if necessary. I'm not sure that I know that many people in the whole world who would vouch for me and pay to get me out of trouble, let alone two in Australia and two in Pakistan. So in the Australian section I wrote the names and address of my two adult daughters. Lyndal and Michaela, if you're reading this, you just vouched for me! :-) I left the Pakistan section blank but the visa clerk insisted that I fill it in. She said, "Just write the name of the hotel you'll be staying at". "But I won't be there for three months - I haven't booked a hotel", I replied. She told me to write the name of any old hotel then, it didn't matter, as long as the section wasn't blank. So I asked her if she could name a hotel in Pakistan and I would write that. "No, I'm Iranian", she said. Of course. So I thought long and hard, trying to dredge up anything I could about a hotel in Pakistan. The only one I could think of was the Marriott, but I think it was blown up last year. Best not to claim that I was staying there. So eventually I wrote "Intercontinental Hotel, Islamabad" on the paper and scurried out the door. When I got home I checked the internet to discover that there actually IS a hotel called the Intercontinental in Islamabad. The only problem is, they haven't finished building it yet. Probably never will. Oh well. Thank you to the visa clerk in the Pakistani High Commission in Canberra for issuing my daughter and I with our visas, even though we claimed to be staying in an unfinished building with no scheduled completion date.

First Itinerary

Thanks to the very helpful people at the ANU branch of STA Travel we now have something that looks like an itinerary, although there are bound to be changes! We depart the magical Land of Oz on 6th July and our first stop is, yes, Disneyland. We then head to New York before spending three days in Iceland. What can you do in Iceland for three days? I don't know, but am bound to find out soon. We arrive in London on 26th July then spend a few days acclimatising to the new time zone. On 1st August Ellie will head off to Spain to attend the Don Quijote language school for a couple of weeks. Meanwhile, I get to do things in southern England that Ellie would find desperately dull, such as attending the Frome Convention, which is a meeting of people researching their family history in the region of Frome, Somerset. Ellie comes back on 14th August and then we head off to Cheltenham to work at the Greenbelt Festival. More about all of that later. We then have a few weeks to waddle about Britain and/or mainland Europe (haven't sorted that detail out yet). On 14th September we go from London to Islamabad via Brisbane, Australia. Yes, I know. It makes no sense. It will all become clear later. We plan to arrive in Islamabad on 24th September, then its on to Nepal, India, Cambodia, the Philippines, Indonesia and finally, Dili in Timor Leste. We should be back in our national capital, Canberra, on 4th February, just in time for Ellie to come down to earth and start Year 10.

Then I have to find somewhere for us to live and I have to get a real job. Sigh.

AusAID Fellows depart

At the crack of dawn on Friday morning 11th June, I farewelled the Visting Fellows of the AusAID-funded Bridging the Research-Policy Divide course. I've been managing this program for the past 6 months, between submitting my PhD thesis for examination and actually being admitted to the degree. This has enabled me to (a) pay off my debts incurred while completing my PhD and start to save for this trip, and (b) meet some amazing and inspirational people from the Asia-Pacific Region. As part of this trip Ellie and I will be visiting some of them in their own countries. To find out more about them you can read their brief bios.

Now that I've successfully managed to post a blog entry, it's back to packing, cleaning and sorting.

First Past the Post

Thank you to Michaela, my trusted editorial assistant, for setting up this blog.

More to follow. Over.