We're off on a trip around the world!

I leave tomorrow with my partner Ruth Radetsky, who is taking a sabbatical from her job teaching high school, on a year-long trip around the world.

We’re headed for Silver Bay (New York, USA), Buenos Aires (Argentina), Recife (Brazil), Lisbon (Portugal), Aleppo (Syria), Istanbul (Turkey), Doha (Qatar), Zanzibar (Tanzania), Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), Asmara (Eritrea), Dubai (U.A.E.), Hong Kong S.A.R. (China), Guangzhou (China), Shanghai (China), and intermediate and onward points.

We’ll be back home in San Francisco in July 2008, in time for the start of the 2008-2009 school year.

This will be our third trip circling the globe, but it will also be our longest yet. Like everyone who takes such a big trip, we’ve been busy: planning, packing, renting our house, cleaning up and organizing our stuff, storing what we couldn’t get rid of, worrying about what might go wrong, fantasizing about what might go right, and trying to imagine what the big surprises and unexpected adventures will be this time around the world.

As part of the preparations for our trip, I’ve been getting ready to move to a new mail server. My e-mail address will remain the same, and will continue to reach me whenever I next get online. Be aware, though, that I sometimes don’t go to a cybercafe for a couple of weeks at a time.

My phone number, +1-415-824-0214, is being ported to a Voice-over-Internet phone (VoIP) service. You can call me at this number for the price of a call to a land line in the USA, and I’ll get your call or voicemail message wherever in the world I’m travelling. Depending on where I am, however, I may get it right away, or not until the next time I get on the Internet.

Once the new mail server is up and running smoothly, I’ll post updates on some of the issues I had to deal with for myself, and that other long-term travellers also confront, such as insurance, gear, gadgets, communications (computer and telephone), credit and ATM cards, financial services, and so forth. (You can also read Ruth’s blog about our trip.)

While I’m on the road, the newly revised and updated 4th edition of The Practical Nomad: How to Travel Around the World will arrive in bookstores everywhere in September 2007.

If I’ll be passing through your part of the world, and you’d like to meet, or to arrange to host a talk for fellow travellers, please let me or my publisher know.

And wherever you’re going, have a wonderful trip!

[Update, 27 July 2008: There’s no place like home ]