Where to go?
I made the decision early on that I wanted to travel for a year. I therefore knew that I would only be able to visit a finite list of places and considered it a good idea to plan out where I was going to go.
When I first started thinking about my itinerary I placed some markers on a map and started working out how to get between them. After comparing the prices of individual flights against the price of a round the world ticket, it was obvious that the round the world ticket was the way to go. Round the world tickets are available from several airline alliances, therefore where you can go with each alliance depends upon the routes of its member airlines. The tickets also either limit the total number of flights you can make or the distance that you can travel, so a lot of careful planning is required to work out the optimal route. I will be using the round the world ticket for the big journeys, but I will be booking internal flights, trains, buses and boats as I go.
My intial plan was simply UK – Africa – Asia – Australasia – South America – North America – UK. After quite a lot of research that basic plan has been fleshed out a lot and I know which countries I would like to visit. I’ve always found that having some sort of itinerary keeps me focussed and keeps me moving, without one I think I would be too tempted to hang about in one place for far too long and I’d end up regretting it. Conversely I would likely regret rushing through places, so for me the key is flexibility and I will be using my itinerary as a rough guide only and am very open to change. For each of the countries that I intend to visit I have allocated a number of weeks that I will spend there. This not only allows me to think about what to do in each country in more detail, but it also importantly lets me know what dates I should book the flights for!
I will be booking the flights next week and then it really is all go!
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