Revisions to itinerary plan

No, the itinerary is not caught in an "analysis paralysis" phase, but a few revisions and a cleaner way of displaying it have come to mind, and thought it would be better to just have a clean new post of the plan (apologies for the redundance):

9 April: Fly from JFK to India, lose the 10th via connection in Brussels, time zones, etc.
11 April: Spend the day with a layover in Chennai (Madras), then fly to Kochi in the evening.
16 - 30 April: Probably still planning a trip around India, but still not sure where or when exactly. Still thinking of Bombay, Pune, Pondicherry, and perhaps Leh or Simla up north.
5 May: Fly to Istanbul, Turkey - Plan is for this to be the last flight until at least China, perhaps even Singapore or Indonesia.
9-13 May: Perhaps an excursion out of Istanbul to either the western (Aegean) coast, or down to Capadocia.
14-16 May: Take a 37-hour ferry from Istanbul to Odessa, Ukraine
17 May: Take an overnight train to Kiev, Ukraine
20 May: Take an overnight train to Lvov, Ukraine
23 May: Take an overnight train to Budapest, Hungary
29 May: Arrive in Brno, and then Trebic, Czech Republic
31 May: Take the 3-hour train from Brno to Prague, Czech Republic
1-22 June: From Prague, take trains up to Krakow, Warsaw (Poland), Vilnius (Lithuania), Riga (Latvia), Tallinn (Estonia), and eventually the fast boat to Helsinki, Finland (which I will explain in another post was a necessary cheat from the "2nd world"/"road less traded" countries), spending 1-4 nights in each.
22 June: Take the 6-hour train from Helsinki into St. Petersburg, Russia
25 June: Take the overnight train to Moscow
30 June: Begin the Trans-siberian railway with an overnight train to Kazan.
1-21 July: From Kazan, take mostly overnight trains to Ekaterinburg, Omsk, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk, maybe Irkutsk, and definitely Ulan-Ude, spending 1-2 nights in each. From Irkutsk or Ulan-Ude we would need to plan any excursions to lake Baikal and get the Mongolian visa. As of now, we are applying for Russian visas we hope will expire no earlier than 21 July. The major change is that it looks like it will be a bit of a rush to get to Vladivostok on current plans.

Then:

Late July: pass through Mongolia, most likely with a few days in Ulaanbaatar or a nearby Ger

Early August - Late September: Travel through China for about two months or as long as our visas allow. Most likely we would start in Datong, then go to Beijing and perhaps Shanyang, and from there down into the Shandong province, perhaps into Shanghai, and then down to Guilin.

October - November: Hopefully cross from China into Laos (otherwise cut straight to Vietnam). After the hopeful few days in Laos, cross into Vietnam and see Dien Bien Phu, then head to Hanoi. From Hanoi, take the reunification express down to Hue and then Saigon. From Saigon, cross Cambodia somehow, and once in Thailand, start again by train from Bangkok down the peninsula, through peninsular Malaysia, to hopefully arrive in Singapore by November.

Checkpoint: Based on the "Singapore by November" goal, from Singapore decide whether the tour of the "2nd world"/"Road less traded" was a good enough survey to start getting back to work, or continue traveling.

Possible follow-ons: Assuming we don't go straight back to work after the checkpoint, the main thoughts (one presented in a previous post) would be:

1. Continue on through the Indonesian islands, then find a boat to Australia. Drive around Australia to either Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, or Perth, and catch a flight to Cape Town, South Africa. From there, travel overland "Cape Town to Cairo", most likely through Botswana, Rhodesia, Tanzania, Kenya, and Ethiopia. From there, cross the Red Sea to Saudi Arabia, cross over to Kuwait or the Persian Gulf into Iran, then up to Azerbaijan, across the Caspian Sea to Turkmenistan, then tour Central Asia with the secondary goal of reaching either Almaty or Astana (Kazakhstan) by July 2010. Central Asia would be a re-entry into the "2nd world"/"Road less traded", while Australia and Africa arguably fit on either side of the graph.

2. Try Antarctica, given the timing would put us there right at the southern summer, but the economics of this (both in terms of cost and in terms of my "Road Less Traded" survey) are far more dubious.

Anyways, apologies again for the repeat of the itinerary, but the "Blogabond" widget doesn't seem as easy to update as I once thought, and I felt this cleaning update might even be a better way to clearly post plans going forward...