Twelve days to go...

The Intrepid Adventurers + 1

Well, seeing as there are no major developments on the travel front to announce, I thought I might just take a moment to fill you in a little bit on the main protagonists of this blog...Astrid, Christian, Shanks (Andrew) and me (Lorraine)!

Hmmmm...who can I start with...perhaps Christian...Christian Holyoak...sometimes known as Holy Smoke (he's the redhead on the left in the photo above). Christian and I met when we were both studying (well, okay, perhaps not really studying) at university in 1995. For some reason we both seemed to gravitate towards the front left hand side of the lecture theatre and at some stage we must have struck up a conversation and so the story goes. Christian, was and still is, a fairly lackadaisical, likeable chap, and our friendship has remained firm throughout the past 11 years. Christian is a psychologist (almost at the end of his Masters) and a keen traveller, having spent a lot of time in Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala to name but a few countries. This will be his first trip to India and the first time he has travelled with any of us...I wonder if he has any idea what he is in for...

A Scene from the Pilbara

On to Astrid. I met Astrid in 1997 at another friend's house. We connected immediately and have continued to be very close despite having lived far, far away from each other for most of the time since we met. Both of us have lived and worked out of the metropolis for a few years, I in Tom Price, in Western Australia's spectacular Pilbara region, and Astrid in Alice Springs, where she worked both in the town itself as well as at a remote Aboriginal community called Ltyente Apurte (pronounced Jenja Porta). Astrid is another eager adventurer and some of the countries she has visited and worked in are Kenya, Guyana, Spain, Portugal and North India with me in 2001 (by the way, she used to eat all my share of the Indian sweets that we used to take back to our hotel each night)! After Christian, Shanks and I head off to our various destinations early in January 2007, Astrid will be staying on to do some volunteer work at the Bahai-inspired Barli Vocational Institute for Rural Women in Indore for a further 3 months, before heading to Turkey, then Israel for her Baha'i pilgrimage.

Well, that leaves us with Shanks...someone else may have to write about me! Shanks and I first met in Tom Price in 2001. We got married 3 years later and now live in Perth with our menagerie (plus quenda)! Shanks is a farmer...we have a beautiful 140 acres of land in a town called Wongan Hills in Western Australia's wheatbelt (north-east of Perth). We will be moving there at the end of next year so that he can finally get started growing things...it's what he does best!

Well, until tomorrow, good night!

Our Block in Wongan Hills