You Can't See the World in Only One Year

toptraveller - Sunday, April 22, 2007 - 20:35 Tags: General Visiting • Adventure • Travel Tips

Viewing Platform in Miraflores (Lima, Peru)You are going traveling for a year. You’ve made the decision, and are saving the money. Now you’ll be able to visit every place you ever dreamed of seeing. Out comes your world map and you start fantasizing. You’ll climb Kilimanjaro, surf in Bali, and do the Inca Trail. Tibet, Australia, New Zealand, all of South East Asia, India, Nepal, China, and the Trans-Siberian Railway are musts, with maybe a couple of months in Eastern Europe added on. And Egypt, of course.

Then one day you sit down and write it all down. The list of places you want to visit, and the amount of time you want to spend at each stop. Out comes the calculator. Your plan has you traveling for over a thousand days, longer than Anne Boleyn was Queen of England or John Kennedy was President of the United States. Something has to give.

Maybe you have both the time, the money, and the inclination to travel for three years. You still won’t get to all the places on your list. As you travel, and talk to other travelers, the list will grow, not shrink. For every place you visit, you will add at least one new destination, probably more. There really is no point in trying to see the world in only one year, or in only three years.

Ten Itinerary Tips

Now comes the hard part, taking all your dreams and deciding which ones are going to come true. Remember these points as you work and rework your itinerary.

1. Do your research. Read forums and blogs, check out prices in travel guides, and talk to people who have backpacked in the places that interest you. Remember that guidebooks are researched a year or so before their publication date. Advice from other travelers is only valuable if they have been somewhere recently. Costs, safety, and ease of travel can change dramatically in just a year or two. When Viet Nam first opened up to independent travel, just a few months meant the advent of tourist shuttle buses, guest houses, and ex-pat bars.

2. Keep your itinerary flexible. Book as few things in advance as possible. When you hear, “Why don’t you come to Laos with us? We’re leaving on Friday,” you should be considering whether you want to go to Laos with them, not automatically rejecting the idea because it doesn’t fit in your schedule.

Some RTW tickets offer as many as twenty-two flights. That’s a flight every couple of weeks, which means a deadline every couple of weeks. Resist the temptation.

3. Consider seasons. Do you really want to arrive in Poland in January? Probably not. You can’t always hit the best weather, but it’s wise to avoid the worst. It’s better to drop a destination from the trip than spend the entire time there huddled indoors hiding from the weather. Some combinations of country and seasons just won’t work together in one trip.

You won’t always hit the best weather, but you can avoid the worst. Unless things actually close down, like Tioman Island in the rainy season, off season can be nice. November in Paris means no crowds in the museums, for instance.

4. Stick to your budget. If you really have a lot of money, go to Finland. If you are trying to keep costs low, or even reasonable, plan your trip with the maximum amount of time in less expensive countries, and less time in the more costly ones. Schedule more time in India and less in Australia.

When you are researching costs, add at least ten percent to everything. Some guidebooks give average daily costs for really basic travel as well as budget travel. Don’t plan to constantly live at the basic level except in very expensive countries.

5. Look at transportation costs. A basic RTW ticket with only a couple of stops can cut a thousand dollars or more off your cost. Adding Africa, Central America, or South America will greatly increase your air travel costs. Even including Australia and New Zealand can add quite a bit. Consider leaving on a one-way ticket and only pay for flights as you need them. Budget airlines have made this a good option.

6. Take time differences into account. A different time zone is one thing, but many countries have a different attitude toward time. Rushing is unheard of, and tomorrow is just as good as today. Some countries don’t just have a different attitude, they are also inefficient, and have a different attitude toward efficiency. In general, assume that everything you want to do will take twice as long. A store that opens at 9 a.m. may open at 8:30 today and 10:30 tomorrow, and it may take twenty minutes to get your bill in a restaurant.

In addition, roads are bad, buses are decrepit, traffic is awful, and there may be a protest or strike. The bus may not come. Ticket vendors will tell you the trip takes five hours, which was true when they first built the road. Now it takes eight. Always leave extra travel time. It’s wise to plan on at least one night in the departure city before any flight. These cushions are necessary, and they eat up time.

7. Leave time for life’s little necessities. You’ll have to do laundry, or wait for it to be done, and that may mean waiting for a sunny day. Keeping up with your on-line travel journal, picking up a new bottle of shampoo, or trading a book for a new one are small chores that take time. You wouldn’t get a haircut on a three week vacation, but you’ll need a few on this trip. Don’t make your schedule so tight that everyday life becomes a hassle.

8. Give yourself a break. You are going to need a vacation from your travels. A week at the beach that turns into two or a few extra days in a city you like can recharge your batteries and leave you ready to really enjoy and appreciate your next stop. Allow twenty-five percent down time. If you don’t use it, that’s fine, but if you need it, you’ll be glad you made provision for it.

9. Remember why you are going. No matter what the reason was, riding a bus probably wasn’t it. Don’t plan to arrive, walk around for half a day, and then leave. Paul Theroux is probably the only traveler in the world who goes places just to sit on trains, buses, ferries, and ships. Three of his travel books are called “Riding the Iron Rooster“, “The Old Patagonian Express“, and “The Great Railway Bazaar”. The rest of us take trains to get somewhere. Give yourself time for the experiences you wanted.

10. Leave something for the next time. Plan to do it again. Don’t assume that this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Certainly try to make the most of it, but remember that you will have other opportunities to travel. You wouldn‘t want to be so jaded that there‘s nowhere left to go, would you?

The Plan’s Not Set In Stone

Once your plans are made, remember that they are plans, not orders. You didn’t chisel them on stone tablets and present them to the world as your own personal commandments.

If you’ve done a good job of whittling down your original list, you will have very few commitments, and a lot of flexibility. Review it once in a while, tweak it or change it, and even after you leave, remember it is a plan, not a commitment.