After going on multiple trips the last few years, my travel plans for 2026 are kind of muted in comparison.

In the hopper are a month long trip to Central Asia (aka The Five Stans) at the end of August and a simple, little two week trip to Bratislava, Slovakia for a poker community meetup called Lex Live in June.

Lex Live

I actually went to the last Lex Live last summer but, of course, you wouldn’t know about that because I never blogged about it.

For me, the poker meetup just wasn’t in the same category as a trip I would blog about.   I wasn’t discovering new places or doing new things – it was literally just me hanging out at a casino every day for a week.   Not really exciting stuff to blog about.

Lex Live is a poker community meetup that Dutch poker pro and Twitch streamer Lex Veldhuis puts together each year where dozens of people from his online community come from all parts of the world to basically hang out for a week and play poker.

I went for the first time last year and knew immediately afterwards that I would be going back again this year.

I loved the community feel and meeting all these people I’ve only ever known online.

It was so much fun and, of course, it didn’t hurt that I came in 2nd in one of the tournaments that paid me a cool €1850 ($3000CAD).

Early in the year it was announced that the 2026 edition of Lex Live would again be held in Bratislava in either June or July with confirmed dates TBA.

So, we all waited for the dates to be announced.

And waited.

And then, on March 1st, the unthinkable…

Lex Live 2026 was being postponed until late in the year.

Let’s just say Dutch regulations when it comes to poker have put alot of red tape and obstacles for Lex to be able to run this event.

Well, shit.

Now what?

A change of plans

I now found myself with a gap in my travels.   My last trip to Antarctica was 3 months ago and my next trip to Central Asia wasn’t for another 6 months.

And, yeah, I know I’m spoiled when it comes to being able to travel.

I know most people are only able to have a couple weeks off each year and, even then, many aren’t able to travel.

But what can I say, I’m used to traveling.   It’s a big part of who I am and it just feels like I’m a little empty when I’m not.

So, yeah, the gap…

I wanted to go on a relatively simple two week trip somewhere in the next couple of months.

Only two weeks because I have a pretty major month long trip coming up and in the next couple of months would space apart the trips nicely.

Now, a little secret about me is that I have many trips I’ve dreamed about and, in fact, I’ve actually looked stuff up about them and bookmarked websites into a “My Trips” folder on my browser.

I’ve got folders for Easter Island, the Galapagos Islands, New Zealand, Greenland, Mongolia, Africa and so many others.

But it was the Tibet/Nepal folder that got my juices flowing.

These places just seem like they’re in some far away mystic land and now that the trip is actually going to happen, I couldn’t be more excited!

And, so, in mid April, I’ll be heading to Tibet and Nepal…