Introduction

For my big holiday in 2017 I decided to join 3 holidays together into a single huge trip. My major holidays in previous years had been predominantly rollercoaster and theme park based but as I get older and my desire to ride everything reduces I wanted to do holidays that reduced the amount of rollercoaster riding in favour of other things. I wouldn't be able to remove it completely, as there are still lots of interesting rides out there, but I wanted a trip that leaned towards a move away from it.

The first leg was rollercoaster free and would take me to the USA to witness a total eclipse. Seeing one is on my bucket list and I had wanted to go to Easter Island a few years ago to see one there but that trip fell through. Fortunately Sirius Travel, the company that organised that trip kept me on their mailing list and made me aware of an 8-day trip that would visit 4 states, 2 of which would be new (Wyoming and South Dakota). Along the way we'd visit a bunch of landmarks including Mount Rushmore, another bucket list location. The more I saw of the itinerary the more I wanted to do the trip so I signed up.

The third leg was originally going to be a trip with the European Coaster Club to China but due to a lack of focus on their part it became clear that they'd left things too late and unfortunately had to cancel it. I had had my suspicions that this might happen so had prepared a couple of alternative itineraries to do on my own, however the last two times I'd been to China I'd lost my rag with the country; their social mannerisms are averse to mine and I find it an unpleasant place to visit for a long period of time. Also the rate of new coasters appearing meant that no matter where I picked I'd have to go back. So I dropped all of that and instead chose to go back to Japan, a country I have been to twice before and that I love; it's my favourite country of all those I've visited and with it being close to 10 years since the last visit I felt it right to go back. For this trip I chose to do a lot of sightseeing, things I hadn't had the opportunity to do on the previous visits but still include some of the new rollercoasters that had appeared since my last visit. I'd earmarked Himeji, Osaka, Kyoto, Nagoya and Tokyo for the 2 weeks here.

These two trips had a week gap between them which is where the second leg came from. I had various options for this but chose to visit a new country (something I like to do) and I went for Kazakhstan. This country was running this year's world expo and had relaxed it's visa requirements for this year and invested in some tourism so it seemed like a perfect opportunity to visit. The announcement of an exclusive Cirque du Soleil show confirmed I'd made the right choice. For this leg I would stay in 2 cities, the new capital Astana and the old capital Almaty.

So this blog is a write-up of the entire trip, a month long adventure around the world in a fairly ridiculous itinerary that would have me transferring in Iceland, the UK, Russia and South Korea.

Anyway, please enjoy the report and if the images look a bit blurry on your machine that's just the optimisation. Click them for the better resolution.

It starts by clicking the link below.

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