Changing Tides

As always, when it comes to a travellers choice of life style, we must move and adapt with whatever situations arise. This time we hit a brick wall that is Russia Visa applications.

Before we left England we rang and did research into getting a Russian Visa for our 2 weeks-ish of travel, and were met with many positive pieces of information about getting the visa while already in Lithuania - after we had hitch hiked and spent some time here. With this knowledge, we headed off gleefully into our future explorations... Only to be met with a brick wall of complications once we arrived here, with the final solution being an expensive and lengthy return to the UK to apply.

Our first thought was how can we get to Mongolia a different way. This would mean hitch hiking through Poland, Ukraine, a ferry to Georgia, across Azerbaijan, then either a ferry to Kazakstan where we could head straight to Mongolia, or a ferry to Turkmenistan and across Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and China to finally get to Mongolia.... Which all sounded very exciting, but in the back of our minds our reality was only having 4 weeks to cross due to Ship work calling us back, and both of us knew 4 weeks would not be enough time to actually see any of the places along the way except a lot of gas stations and road sides.

Feeling rather uninspired we took a little road trip round Lithuania -which I will write about in an up and coming post - to try and re-ignite the explorers fire than had been snuffed out.

The list of 'Ways to Tackle Life Right Now' consisted of;

- I pay almost £500 to get to Russia

- We rush across the Middle-East/Asia in 1 month

- We stay in Lithuania before going back to ship, then stay in Aus/NZ afterwards

- We move somewhere different to live and work and save money to go to Russia a different time.

Now fellow travellers will know that £500 is a lot of money to spend in one go. When you're working to live a nomadic, vagabond style life, £500 if a ridiculous amount to spend on one country. So, as much as it is a huge disappointment, Russia has been put on the back burner for the time being. Plan B to go across the Middle-East/Asia in 1 month - although the preferable option - has also been shelved for the moment as that kind of rush would create such a stressful environment it would take all the fun out of hitch hiking. A trip like that should be taken with as much time as you want, to take in the local cultures and enjoy your journey through lands many daren't to enter.

So, we are left with plans C and D, both of which leave room for us to follow some further goals we have and give us opportunity to save up enough money to explore quite extensively in 2017. Plan C has some complications as I can head over to Aus/NZ relatively freely, to just travel and/or work, but Reggie can only be granted the 3 month tourist visa in NZ and we are in the middle of investigating Australia. This means one of our plans is out of the question completely - to live and work in NZ for a year, and Aus for a year, before heading to Argentina.

This leaves us with plan D, the least complicated version of the rest of our 2016, to find somewhere new to live and work while we figure out ways around all of the above problems - Iceland has popped up in this conversation a few times, and South Africa, Norway... there are so many possibilities. Plan D will not be un-stressful however as we will have to find work, accommodation etc in a country that may need us to speak the local dialect, when the only language we share is English.

Changing tides can lead to stormy waters, and although it's been disheartening having these complications cause brick walls to be thrown up in every direction we try to head, we still have ways to conquer and quell these seas until we're back on track with land ho!