More on the Tour

Well here we are on the 1^st of March and I know should be somewhere else on this amazing planet.  Originally I was meant to start the MIDS Tour at the end of January, then the middle of February and now the plan is before the end of this month.  The Christmas holidays, my marriage separation and other personal matters have kept me not only from finalising the tour arrangements but also to a lack of solid production for the project.

This project is not the sole reason why I have decided to travel (see here for personal reasons) and it would be hard to justify it if it was.  It is really unlikely that I would be able to get thorough ground based research in the short period I intend to stay in each country but it will hopefully allow me to access the research and writing done so far, to observe the current social environment and to inform decisions about the countries that would provide interesting material for the first of the documentary series when we get that far.

The longer I stay here, the more I lose from the tour budget and so some places may not be visited at all, unless some form of income is forthcoming either from short term work or from the project itself.  So far, the Pacific Islands and the more expensive countries such as the Seychelles are the main casualties.  On the other hand I intent to ‘pass through’ some other countries that are not on the tour list but hopefully will make for some interesting blog posts.  For example, I intend to start the tour in Australia where, for example, a recent press article ‘Everyday Australians make multiculturalism work’ seems to go against what many people think about Australian racial relations.  Obviously I intend to blog on other aspects of the countries I visit.

There will be no expensive hotels and plush food for me – travel arrangements are not quite backpacking, I’m too old for that – but more like ‘vagabonding’.  I have had some `couch warming` offers from friends and family (who seem to have managed to stretch themselves all over the planet) and I hope to find many more friends through the project who even if they don’t offer accommodation or food, will help me find cheap, clean and safe places and maybe a tour or two J.

Once I start travelling, I will be leaving behind all the distractions that keep me from writing and exploring this wonderful aspect of the human experience and I have high hope that not only will I learn so much myself but that so will all my readers.