It must be real!

So, it's really happening. I booked my flights for India tonight. And suddenly it seems real. I must really be leaving my job in under four weeks. Otherwise, why would I now be the future occupant of seat 19 on a flight to Delhi on 15 January?

I've also now arranged my first volunteer placement, which will be in either Delhi or Jaipur. I'm starting with just a three-week stint, to test the waters, including a few days of cultural immersion and language learning. I'll be assigned to an as-yet unknown project that's helping women build a sustainable income. I'll hopefully be able to do something to assist (or at least not hinder) for half the day, and then teach English to disadvantaged children for the other half. (You could argue that they won't be any less disadvantaged after learning English from a Northern Irish person... in fact, my very middle English boyfriend stares at me incredulously when I mention having taught English in France for a year while a student.)

At any rate, I'm under no illusions about who will gain the most from this short stint of volunteering; it will undoubtedly be me. If all goes well with the placement organisers, I'll use them again to arrange some longer placements later in other countries they operate in.

I'll arrive in Delhi ten days or so before I'm due to start the cultural and language programme, and the day I get there I'm hoping to board a train bound for the hills - to Shimla, to be exact. And after a few days' chilling out at this colonial hill station, I'll make my way on to Dharamsala, home of the Dalai Lama, and from where I'm hoping to have a few good leg stretches into the hills. What better introduction to India? And then back to the bustle of Delhi...

Now, I wonder has my furniture caught anybody's eye yet on Gumtree...

The grand plan

It's just over five weeks until I leave behind my flat in Penwortham and my job in Lancashire. I visualise my car, packed yet again with my stuff, as I set off for Cumbria on my last day here. It doesn't seem very long since my car was last packed with my stuff, arriving here, but it's more than two years ago.

There's a lot to do between now and then. All the usual things that go with moving, like sorting out the utilities. There'll be more 'getting rid' than packing up, which is even more time consuming in many respects. The local Oxfam shop will be sick of the sight of me! Some furniture to sell and give away; a few bits to move to Cumbria and a wardrobe going on holiday to my friend Frederique's house in Darlington, to be retrieved at some future point when I've a bigger abode to put it in. I get to be 'white van girl' again! (Is the stuff really worth what it'll likely cost me to rent a van and move it?!) And then there's another category of stuff, which will also be treated to a holiday - in my sister's garage in Ireland, where it, too, will await a future reunion if aforementioned bigger abode materialises.

And, of course, there's all the planning for my travels, which you'd think would be further advanced than it currently is. Not a single flight booked, not a vaccination had nor a visa applied for. I haven't even booked my boat home for Christmas! Instead of sitting here writing this, I should be doing that. But a fair bit of the research has been done and here's the vague grand plan:

Mid Jan - head for India. About a month's volunteering (likely in Delhi), and a month's schlepping about in the north west. It'll hopefully involve a desert trek, some sightseeing, plenty of train journeys, Varanasi, and probably also a visit to Shimla.

Back mid March for a month or so, to spend some time with my partner and do a ski trip together.

It may be South-East Asia for the next two-month stint - Cambodia's high on the list. Or Africa - likely Ghana and Tanzania. The African countries I'd actually want to visit are the Congos, but they're not really on the tourist trail... at least not for diminutive wee hussies like me who've never been to Sub-Saharan Africa.

After another month or so back in the UK, the plan is to set off with my partner to travel by train from Appleby to Beijing, via Mongolia, on some combination of the trans-Siberian railways. Once his three weeks of annual leave are up, I'll continue on by ferry to Japan and spend a month there, before returning to China to explore the Yangtze River by boat. That might be a more logical place to slot in a visit to South-East Asia.
Then another spell at home before a couple of months in South America, exploring Chile and Argentina... deserts, mountains, the end of the earth, and wineries. Can't wait!

Then I'll go to South-East Asia or Africa... whichever of the two didn't get slotted in earlier.

Now, about that ferry to Ireland...

And so it begins...

Jacking your job in... what an evocative phrase it is. The stuff of dreams on a Monday morning. So full of wondrous, endless possibilities. No more 9 to 5 grind. The world suddenly at your feet. Or the unemployment queue.

But, having procrastinated for years, I've finally done it. I've jacked my job in. If you could see smiles in typeface, you'd see one now on my face! My last day at my desk is around 21 December 2012. I plan to head off out into the world and see what's there. I'll be spending 2013 travelling and volunteering abroad, mainly by myself, and accompanied by my boyfriend during his annual leave. After two and a half years based in Preston, I'll be leaving Lancashire behind and moving to Cumbria, as my new home in the UK, with said boyfriend.

Bonkers or inspired? Time will tell.

Interestingly, though, no one I've told so far has said I'm insane... all I've heard is, 'I'm so jealous!' My subconscious reminds me they won't be jealous when I'm out buying a red lamp if it all goes wrong! Yes, leaving a steady job in the north west of England in the current economic climate doesn't immediately strike you as a sensible thing to do. But then neither is going to your deathbed with regrets. And, as the saying goes, I'd rather regret something I did than something I didn't do.

So I hope you'll come with me, virtually at least, as I plan and head off on a new life of Cumbria and the world.