Skipped flight home, wandering turkey, georgia, Armenia

So I was supposed to be travelling for only a few months, then head back to canada for tree planting.. That was the beginning of may... Now I am South of Istanbul, and following the coastline towards Syria. The idea is to hitchhike, couch surf, wild camp, and volunteer my way east. There are places I would like to see quite close to the Syrian border... We will see how dumb I get.

From turkey I will go to Georgia and Armenia, where I will then decide whether I go to Iran, or up into Russia towards Finland.... If I go to Iran I will be damn tempted to make this a hitch from Europe to South East Asia. Very tempting.

I think this might turn out to be another yearlong trip.

So anyone else going to be on these areas?

Well I have a lot of people calling me Viking. Randoms off the street talk to me more than I thought.

I'm South of Istanbul now, so not so many people bugging me about carpets. Gonna see how people are the closer I get to Syria. Will keep, or try to keep up, with my blog

anterrabae said:

generic question here but pertinent. do you speak other languages? if not, how in hell do you guys get by?

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Oh man, sorry for the late reply. I don't speak other languages... Well, not fluently. I can speak words of Hungarian, Greek, Turkish, Russian.. But not even full sentences. Once you know key basics, sign the rest of what you need to convey. It's pretty easy once you learn how people understand you when you're trying to mimic what you need.

Although, I gotta say once I hit Kazakhstan it got pretty difficult. Nothing in English, and the Western Kazakhs are kinda dicks. So if i'm gonna learn a language first, it'll be Russian.

My first big two year travel around Europe and North Africa I didn't have much, just what I saved up from the army. Spent like 6k in those two years (6k Canadian, mind you!) This time I think I spent...4k in those 10 months.

I always travel with money, because I do high paying, high stress work back here Chef, I wouldn't call myself experienced but treeplanting and the following forestry work definitely pays for my travels. I'll be going back to that this May, and likely working until next winter/spring until I figure out what my next adventure is.

I wish the Appalachian Trail and/or Pacific Crest Trail was in Canada so I could do them while receiving EI benefits