We have dubbed this trip Epic Asia. We will visit Chengdu & Tibet, China, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, Bangladesh and India. (4 new countries for us) Highlights will be visiting Base Camp Everest, Hot Air Balloon ride in Myanmar, Tiger Safaris in Nepal & Bangladesh, hiking to the Tiger’s Nest Monastery, Inle Lake fishermen, Bagan Archeology Site and we are excited to experience everything! Tom & Cathy are doing the trip with us so it will be extra special.
This trip was a challenge to put
together. I started with Asia Highlights since we have used them several times
before on various trips. They started as China Highlights then added Asia
Highlights and are expanding to tours all over the globe and have changed
their name to just Highlights Travel. https://www.highlightstravel.com/destinations They
have group tours you can join and plenty of suggested itineraries for you to
plan. They also set up private tours just for you or your group and I like the
fact that they work with you to organize what you want to do so it all flows
easily. Jason jason@asiahighlights.com is my travel advisor and we have worked through our likes and
dislikes for many things from guiding styles to hotel styles and of course
working out the things that are important to see & experience.
Highlights didn’t
offer as in depth a tiger safari in Chitwan, Nepal so I went with a company
called Tiger Encounter https://tigerencounter.com/package/tiger-encouonter-in-chitwan-national-park/ and Ghanshyam has been very responsive
and helpful in working out an itinerary for us and we were able to weave it
into our Highlights Travel trip where they get us to Chitwan and Tiger
Encounter picks us up and takes us back to the airport at the end of their
portion and then we resume with Highlights Travel back in Katmandu.
I had some pretty
specific wants for Bangladesh and Jason couldn’t find a guide that could
accommodate that, so I found a company that seemed to fit the bill. Nijhoom
Tours and owner of the company, Hasan has been very helpful. https://nijhoom.com/wp-content/uploads/brochure/bangladesh-2020.pdf It does a tour of Dhaka and includes a couple of nights on a
private houseboat in the Sundarbans for Tigers & other wildlife. They will
drop us at the border of India where we will go through immigration and then
meet our guide for our time in India. We have used Magic Tours on several
occasions so even though Jason does India we stayed with Magic Tours. We
haven’t been to the Kolkata area on previous visits, so it seemed like the
perfect fit. Ranjeet has always put together interesting sites. https://www.magictoursofindia.com/
Luckily, the four of
us already had 10-year China and India visas so we didn’t need those. Tibet
needed a travel permit to visit and they don’t mail to the U.S. So, we adjusted
our itinerary to add Chengdu, China for a couple of nights and our guide there
will deliver the permit to us, so we have it prior to landing in Lhasa. We have
been to Chengdu before (we were Panda Keepers for a day), but Tom & Cathy
had not been, so we are visiting a different Panda Facility, and we have a tour
of the historic town. Highlights Travel is handling requesting that as well as
our visas for Bhutan and Myanmar. Nepal has visa on arrival as does Bangladesh.
Bangladesh needed an invitation letter, and Hasan has done that for us. So, it
was a challenge to research every place and decide what to do and then finding
the company to do it with.
We will have cold
weather and hot weather, so packing is more of a challenge. (but most of our
trips tend to have mixed weather)
Flights going to Chengdu were
easy enough to set up but getting back from India wasn’t as easy. Just no good
times (late at night or in the middle of the night). Both ways take a couple of
days so lots of time in airports and on planes.
It will be interesting
to see the progress since the earthquake in Mandalay, Myanmar. We had to change
hotels as the first floor of the original one was still damaged. (Mar 28, 2025 was when the earthquake hit)
The airport reopened in April. Then we got an email from Jason encouraging us
to possibly reschedule our trip or substitute another country due to the
protests in Nepal. We had heard about it on the news but didn’t think it
unusual. I contacted Ghanshyam with Tiger Encounter as his office is located
about a block from our hotel in Katmandu and asked his opinion. He said there
were 2 days of protests (Gen Z) over the cancelation of social media and the
Prime Minister stepped down and social media was restored. The military has
taken over until a new PM is elected. They are still protesting as they want
change in the government, but he said it is peaceful and it's business as
usual now. So, we kept our plans as is.
As always, I will not
do the blog posts until after the trip when we are back home.
I recently undated our
country list count. Due to some cancelations of ports on cruises I had some
marked that we hadn’t been, but I found a few that I hadn’t marked. We netted 1
more country! So, I have 108 and Greg has 110. (Pakistan and Scotland) So, we’ll
add 4 more countries on this trip. (fingers crossed)
We are back now, and I will slowly get the blog posts done day by day.
