It’s that time of the year again. One day left in this year, in this decade, in fact. I hope all of you have had a great year, seen some new things, met new people and simply had fun.
2009 has seen some of the best travelling I have done up till now. A year ago I was stuck in Kuala Lumpur, waiting for my Indian visa to be approved. I didn’t have anything planned for the night, except watch the fireworks. In the end I met a couple really nice people and I ended up in the Reggae Bar and still can’t remember how exactly I got home. I might have gotten in a fight with an Air Asia pilot, who’d recently crashed his plane, but my memory of that night isn’t exactly reliable.
I went to the most boring rave ever in Goa, where the music had to be turned off by 10. You then had to rent headphones to continue dancing. A party can’t get any worse. What ever happened to that hippy paradise?
In Jaipur I was chased by a mob of street children and some dogs through the slums. I was ripped off on a camel safari in Jaiselmer, but met some really cool dudes along the way.
I crossed the craziest border from India to Pakistan at Wagha. I almost reached my melting point at 47 degrees Celsius in Lahore, almost froze to death while crossing Shandur Pass in northern Pakistan and would most likely have been blown up had I stayed a day longer in Peshawar. In Quetta I’m pretty sure I saw a Taliban.
The first 100 km in Iran I was protected by an 18-year-old police conscript without any weapons. He hadn’t started shaving yet and I’m pretty sure we’d seen him get smaller in the distance very fast should we have encountered any bandits. Five days later I ran out of money, 40 km from the border to Turkey.
Where have you been last New Year’s Eve? Let us know in the comments. Whatever you have planned for tonight I wish you all a fantastic party and a great 2010!