We plan to take anywhere from six months to a year off to travel. Here is our bucket list. We plan to do the trip in 2-3 segments. Quan is finishing a year long course at New Venture West to get her Integral Coaching certification so we will return to San Francisco twice during our sabbatical for her course work.
SEGMENT ONE: USA, Central Asia, Eastern Europe, & Europe
- USA July 8- August 3
- Roadtrip through Southwest Colorado (Great Sand Dunes, Pagosa, Durango, Silverton, Ridgeway) & Utah (Grand Staircase Escalante, The Wave, Bryce Canyon, Zion National Park, North Rim of Grand Canyon, Salt Lake City)
- Time in Virginia with Quan’s family & friends
- Time in New York with Jesse’s family & friends
- Return to Denver for 1 night to go to the Faith Hill & Tim Mcgraw concert (we bought these tickets on presale almost a year ago!)
- Central Asia “The Stans” & the Pamir Highway August 4- August 20th
- One Day in Almaty, Kazakhstan
- Along the way we had an interesting Border Crossing into Kyrgyzstan
- Pamir Highway: The three weeks we spent on the Pamir were challenging, inspiring and will remain one of the most memorable trips either of us have ever taken!
- The Lake Ala-Kol & Hot Spring Altyn-Arashan: Our friends Oihane & Aitor flew in from Spain to meet us. They planned the entire portion of this trip for us, but an unexpected illness had us making alternate plans for the trip!
- An unexpected but pleasant addition to our trips were the two layovers we had in Istanbul, on the European side and on the Asian side
- Europe & (maybe North Africa) August 20th – Sept 27th
- Athens: Early morning visit to the Acropolis & a Visit to a Greek Synagogue
- Our Week in Crete: Which included living in an Organic Olive farm!
- Bulgaria- a surprise stop in Charming Sofia and a history lesson on the Jews of Bulgaria
- Phil & Tommy’s Wedding: We attend the wedding of our dear friends from Shanghai who were married in Verona, Italy.
- Morocco Roadtrip
- Paris: Only because we found a cheap flight from Paris to San Francisco for Quan’s NWV class
- San Francisco: Sept 28- Oct 2nd
- New Venture West Session 3 for Quan, lots of napping & hiking time for Jesse
SEGMENT TWO: Asia, Africa, and Latin America
- China & the Great Wall of China
- Mongolia: Gobi Desert
- Sri Lanka, Nepal, India
- Sri Lanka: Ayurveda treatments, train through the country side, tea plantations, hikes
- Nepal: Everest Base Camp, Pokhara (one of Quan’s favorite place), and time to relax in Kathmandu
- Africa: TBD – Jan 1/ Jan 16 – Plan are a shot in the dark now, so welcome suggestions!
- Namibia: Basically everything Quan’s sister Phi and her husband Matt did during their shabbatical
- Zanzibar: So Quan can check out the surf shop/ yoga studio of Maria who she did a retreat with in Tanzania 4 years ago
- The rest is wide open, we’ve booked two different refundable low cost tickets for the Africa to LATAM leg with departure from Jo’burg. Whenever we figure out how to do polling on this blog, we will open a poll for suggestions!
- Latin America: Jan 1/ Jan 16 – Feb 20
- #1 on the list is Patagonia: lots of planning here still, but this may take the entire time in LATAM as we plan to do the W trek.
- Lots of Wine & Coffee Drinking (if time permits): TBD
- San Francisco: Feb 20- TBD
- The 4th and last session of Quan’s NVW course and when she will interview for her coaching certification!! (More napping & outdoor hikes for Jesse)
SEGMENT FOUR: TBD
It’s too far ahead to tell from here. We know that we don’t want to take more than a year off, so this will probably be when we both start looking for opportunities. We may also be tired of traveling by then and may want to find a place to settle (hopefully in South East Asia!) and build a home. We also love the idea of spending 3 months in Latin America to learn Spanish before we both return to work. Time will tell with this!
