Getting some air time

I was surprised again today when a camera crew from Deshi TV turned up to film a documentary about the CRP for next week’s national disabled day and they wanted me to tell them a little about my fundraising for CRP and I happily obliged, I got to briefly explain the outline of what’s going to happen and also plug the website (www.justgiving.com/rollingbackhome) which was unexpected but enjoyable. So I’m hoping that my bit of time on TV will spark some interest and some donations!

Useful contacts visit the CRP

Today we had a visit from the people at DFID (Department for International Development) which is the UK government’s fight against world poverty (according to the business card). I told them about my journey back home and my attempt to raise £5000 for the CRP and they were impressed and offered to help me promote it and even hold a fundraising event in Dhaka at the ex-patriot club. This should be useful as they have offices in some of the countries I’ll be going through so if I come across any difficulties with visas then I’ll have some help on hand.

Fundraising for the CRP

I’ve decided that instead of just doing this trip for me it would be more worthwhile to do it for charity, while I’m already at the CRP it seemed like quite an obvious option. The just giving page is at http://www.justgiving.com/rollingbackhome, so please take a look, post the link wherever you can just to raise awareness of what I’m doing and please give whatever you can!

More travel plans

So after a trip up to New Delhi last week I’m feeling a lot more confident about getting home, I did fly for parts of the trip but I got on a lot of public transport as well with no problem which makes me think that going home in January is definitely possible.

I’ve decided to add Nepal to my places to go on the way home, I met someone from a spinal unit over there and I thought while it’s on the way home I might as well stop by. Visiting Mount Everest would be a cool sightseeing experience while I’m in the area; one of the people at the spinal conference in India told me that they do a flight around the peak. That’s the only way I’ll get up to the top these days and I’m okay with that.

I’ve decided the best plan for picking up visas will be to do it on route. I can get an Indian visa from Dhaka and the Nepalese visa on the border, once I get to Kathmandu I’ll collect the Chinese and Kazakh visa leaving the Russian visa until I get into Kazakhstan as I need to have my train ticket before I can get a transit visa. Very exciting plans!