Sweating the Details

Even now, 3 weeks to the day before our flight into fantasy, we are not certain that we have all the pieces to the puzzle. So many details had to be dealt with and are still being dealt with. Many a night I did not sleep well as I dwelled on a stubborn aspect that couldn't be resolved. Many of the components of the trip had to be paid for in advance, or at least required a non-refundable deposit. At what point should we just shut our eyes and take a leap of faith that this trip is really really going to happen and then pay a tidy sum that may not be retrievable if the plan falls apart? We are past most of the hurdles and won't be looking back, but resolving some of those stubborn details took a lot of perseverance.

Razelle and I had to first agree on which destinations we would visit and how long we would spend at each of them. This took a lot of time and deliberation between us to work it out. Once that was resolved we had to put together a ticket that would take us to these places. Several different consortia of airlines have formed associations for round-the-world tickets. A single multi-destination ticket is written and you are passed from one airline to the next in that particular association as you progress around the world in one direction until you return to your starting point. One association takes you to a set of cities it flies to while another association takes you to a different set of cities. After all our compromising we still had to redo the list because the cities on it were covered by different associations.

Next, we had to get visas, vaccinations and travel insurance. All of these had to wait until a short period before our flight date. The travel insurance was the biggest headache. Because of our ages and our pre-existing medical conditions (her rod; my ring) we couldn't for the life of us (literally) find an insurance company here in Israel or anywhere overseas that would insure us for more than 90 days. Our trip is 121 days. This looked like a deal breaker. I never anticipated this. It looked like the whole trip would implode. A mere soap-bubble pipe dream. <POP>.  Then we learned that because Razelle is a university employee, their group insurance would cover us for the entire trip. [Sigh of relief]. So the trip was back on.

We will visit two countries along the way that require entry visas: India and Australia. The Australian visa is simpler than simple to acquire over the Internet. Done. The Indian visa has still not arrived. In order to get it, we had to submit our Israeli passports to our travel agent who sent them to the Indian Embassy in Tel Aviv. Because we are duel US-Israel citizens they next asked to have our US passports sent as well. Furthermore, because Razelle's Israeli passport was very recently issued they also asked to have her expired Israeli passport sent to them. Then they even called me on the phone to ask me (very pleasantly) some more background questions. I hope they are happy with us. We are only planning to be in Mumbai for 3 days. I hope against hope that our passports are returned to us within the remaining 3 weeks before we fly. Without them we can't go anywhere. It's details like these that make me sweat.