Will, Ben and Nevil

So, we’ve bought a van and have done lots of research on the web while supposedly going through the final few hoops we have to jump through to get our degrees, but we haven’t actually got much of a concrete plan yet. Having the van is good though – there’s loads of stuff that needs doing to it, mainly small cosmetic stuff such as building some bunks, a table and carpetting it out. It’s in the garage having a premature MOT today so hopefully we’ll know whether for our £475 we got a bargain or a death-trap!

I keep getting lots of questions about our route and seeing as this blog is public I guess some people might like to know what we’re doing…

This summer after myself and Will have finished our degrees at Bristol (Computer Science for me, and Mechanical Engineering for Will) we’re heading off in a van from the UK with the vague destination of India. I’m waving goodbye to freedom and a distinct lack of responsibility (i.e. university) in January 2008 when I start a full-time job so this is to be my last big trip for a while – hence the idea to do a big fat road-trip.

India has always been somewhere I’ve been dying to visit, and Will isn’t too fussed about India but wants to see Eastern Europe and beyond – so this seemed as good a compromise as any . We might not actually make it as far as the subcontinent but as our engineering degrees have taught us targets are always good and neither of us are particularly fussy about where we end up anyway… Mongolia? Beijing? Japan?… Folkestone? Who knows how far our 1994 Mercedes ex-carpenter’s van will take us. I’ve mapped a route out on Google Maps, the main thing to take from it is that we’re definitely heading EAST – everything else is a little more vague… http://tinyurl.com/32mc5x

Even though we’re not setting off for a while yet I thought I’d start this blog now for several reasons. Firstly it will be a nice record of our trip from it’s early preparations to our successful arrival in… wherever, and secondly it’s one more distraction from writing my thesis. Maybe we’ll put up some of the lessons learnt from the trip to do with… well, stuff we learn for anyone who fancies doing a similar thing themselves sometime.

Suggestions, comments etc. are more than welcome – just leave a comment below this post.