In this post series, I document my upcoming trip to Australia from inception to accomplishment !
Planning a trip excites me and engages me beyond anything that I can think of.
This is the very first post in the series and I’m still quite far from my Aussie trip. Therefore I think this is the perfect opportunity to bring out the mighty and often intangible efforts that go behind planning a trip. I would try my best to spell out each detail so that it benefits fellow travellers and also serves as my trip memoir ! My excitement levels are way too high and with each passing day I’m getting more pumped up about the trip.
Why Australia ?
This wouldn’t be my first trip down under. My sister moved to Melbourne after getting married around 12 years back. I’ve visited her twice in the last decade. Me and my brother first went there in 2007 when I was in 1st year of college. We stayed for a month and my sister and brother-in-law took the best care of us and took us to so many beautiful places. The next trip was in 2011 with my Dad when I was in between jobs and spent 2 months there. We explored further on this trip and made some more unforgettable memories.
In the span of the previous two trips, I’ve been in and around Melbourne and have visited Sydney, Canberra and Gold Coast. There’s still a lot more to explore and I’m eager to meet my loving niece (8 yrs) and nephew (5 yrs). I’m also excited beyond comparision this time as it’s my first Aussie trip with my husband who shares with me this wonderful passion of travel. My parents (and hopefully my brother, who’s presently in the US for his Master’s Degree) would also be there, so it would be a nice family reunion.
When ?
As soon as I get the holiday calender of the year, my mind starts planning trips around the long weekends. For 2015 and 2016 we planned 2 Eurotrips and had another opportunity to build one around my husband’s work trip to France in September 2017. We decided to take a break from Europe and finally made up our minds for an Aussie trip. My sister had been insisting us to visit her ever since we got married in 2015 and we finally zeroed in on December 2017 for the trip. I am excited that I would finally witness summers in the southern hemisphere as both my previous trips were in June and July.
How long ?
Ideally we thought that in order to cover a sizeable portion of Australia (and probably some parts of New Zealand as well) we would require atleast a month off from work. My husband joined a new company earlier this year and he would not be able to take more than 2 weeks leaves at a stretch. And even though I have been working at my present organization for 6+ years, the nature of my work does not give me the luxury of taking a month off for travel. But I somehow gathered the courage and decided on a 3 week long trip. We also dropped New Zealand from the plan as the tickets were humungoulsly expensive during the Christmas and New Year holidays.
What’s Next ?
The next step was to decide on the dates and book the tickets.
the drifting satellite 
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