Dubai to Casablanca, 2nd attempt

The chorus call of alarms commenced slightly out of sync as each clock ticked over 5am, we had taken care to set alarms on every electronic device in the apartment, within 5 seconds of the first I was up and on a mission to get out the door. I’d been crashing on the floor of Salmana’s studio for the last 2 nights, she also jumped up and I was amused to see she was still fully clothed in what she was wearing when we arrived home from her colleagues farewell party a couple of hours earlier. I started laughing when she told me she hadn’t actually gone to sleep. There was no chance I was missing this one…

Dubai-Casablanca 1st attempt

Its 4.30am when I arrive back to my hotel.  With a couple of hours of sleep on the flight the night before and an afternoon nap being the only rest I’d had in 2 days, the allure of sleep is too good to pass up, even if it is only 30 minutes. Any misconception I had held about alcohol not being available in Dubai had been shattered in the hours earlier thanks to Salmana and her friends who had taken me to a bar, a nightclub and a house party on my first and only night in Dubai. I drift off to sleep with memories of the night going through my mind.

I open one eye and see the glow of the sun against the curtain. Something isn’t right but it takes me a few moments for it to hit me. I roll out of bed and scramble over to the dresser and pick up my phone, 8.30am. No amount of rushing can fix this, my flight left over an hour ago.

An introduction.

One of the things people keep asking me when they hear I am going travelling for 2 months is if I have a blog. I kept a blog during a previous trip but the momentum slowed and the blog posts became less and less frequent as time went on. In spite of the initial internal resistance, I have decided to give it a go and have bought myself a small laptop which will hopefully take away any excuses for not updating regularly.

The trip will be in 2 parts. The first half I will be hanging out in Morocco and Spain and visiting some friends in the Netherlands, Germany and Poland. I have a working plan in Google Docs that you can see if you click here. I've got some adventures planned that I look forward to posting about and uploading photos.

The second part of the trip will start at the beginning of June in Berlin when I meet up with Richi, a friend I know from when I was living in Sydney. We will fly to St Petersburg and spend a few days there before embarking on a journey that will see us crossing Russia and Mongolia by train before arriving in Beijing. You can see our plan here.

I will be using this blog to update my plans and share some experiences. If you are interested in following along, please subscribe and feel free to email me with any feedback that can help make the posts more interesting.