the longest way 'round is the sweetest way home

Well we have made some decisions about our trip home. As most of you would know, we've been planning to leave around July and be back in mid-October in time for our friends' wedding (Bec and Darren). After a few chats with STA we have found flights ourselves that were cheaper and have firmed up dates and where we'll be headed. So here's a rough itinerary:

June 28 - Fly to Croatia, head up to Bosnia (Sarajevo) then back to Croatia (Dubrovnik). We'll then catch a ferry across to Italy (Bari, on the east coast) after a week or so.
From Bari we'll head across to Naples, up to Rome, Pisa, maybe Verona and then Milan. From Milan we'll head to the south east of France and do Nice and Monte Carlo (maybe Marseille and Avignon also).
July 22 - Fly Nice to Paris in time for the final stage of the tour de France on the 23rd. I just couldn't talk Jane out of it...
We'll then spend a couple of weeks in France, including hopefully seeing the DDay beaches and battlefields before heading down to Bordeaux and across to Lyon, then making our way through Switzerland and Austria, ending up in Vienna around the 9th of August.
August 11 - Fly Vienna to Cairo. We're doing a 17 day tour of Egypt and Jordan and will be back in Cairo on the 27th.
August 28 - Fly Cairo to Mumbai (Bombay). We're still working out exactly where we'll volunteer for the following 6 weeks but we're hoping through Oasis India, another arm of Jane's employer. Most likely it will be more towards Bangalore.
Round October 7 or 8 - we hope to maybe head to the Maldives for a few days just to have a bit of a relax.
October 12 - fly Bangalore to Singapore and stay in Singapore for a day or two.
October 14 - Fly home (Melbourne) from Singapore.

So that's it in a nutshell. We'll cover most of Europe we've not yet covered, Egypt and Jordan and India. In total, we'll be travelling for around 3.5 months which will be great, but expensive. So we'll be working hard to save the dosh for the 15 or so weeks of travelling.

Let us know what you think and if you have been any of those places and have suggestions of what to see/what not to see, please let us know. I know a few of you will be in Europe at the time so we hope to catch you at some point somewhere.

We will be away a few times between now and leaving London for good. We're off to ski in France and visit Mark in a couple of weeks, we're heading to Berlin in May, and the week after the marathon we're off to Venice for a belated wedding anniversary (our anniversary is the day after the marathon).

Let us know how you're all going. We love to hear from you and look forward to seeing you in October.