By the end of April me and my girlfriend will be on a 8-month road trip that will take us from Amsterdam to Cape Town.*<p>During those eight months I would like to spend time on learning a new software development skill. At the moment I do most of my work in PHP and ruby.<p>What would you start to learn? Internet access is most likely limited and/or slow.<p>*the exact route is unknown right now but we intend to roughly follow this route: Amsterdam, Istanbul, Tehran, Amman, Cairo, Nairobi, Cape Town.
How about doing some php or ruby side projects. These could be inspired by your travels. Load up the laptop with docs so you can get help without internet access.