BootsnAll Travel Community

So, I wanna travel, I want to see and experience as much of the world as I can. I'm a freshman in college and know that after I graduate from college (and possibly grad school, just one year w/a program my college has for education minors), I want to travel for a few years before I do anything else. I'm trying to decide on where I want to go, what I want to do there, and how I'm going to get the money. I'm one of those people that wants to see everything, an RTW trip would be great, however, I want to spend significant amounts of time (at least 2 months) in some places so that I can really get to know the culture. So, my question to you is, what have you done that worked or didn't work? What tips can you give me on thinking about my trip? I won't be leaving for 3 - 4 years, but I love planning and thinking about stuff well ahead of time, it's almost as fun as the trip! I really don't know how to get started. How did you begin thinking about your RTW trip?

Two books you should read:

• Vagabonding by Rolf Potts. This will give you lots of inspiration, and make you excited to travel (though it sounds like you may not need much inspiration!)
  
• The Practical Nomad by Edward Hasbrouck. This is the single best book on the practicalities of independent travel

The travel blogs here on bootsnall are good to read to get a feel for what long-term travel is like, as well as to start thinking about places you might want to go.

That's where I started, about a year before I took my trip.

Thanks! I've seen Rolf Potts' website and it is awesome, so I'm sure the book will be great. The other one I've never heard of, but just the title sounds intriguing. Thanks for the recommendations!

Definitely get your feet wet with some shorter term travels. That will help you find what kind of traveller you are (plus more practical things like the style of packing you do - i.e. I always end up bringing too much stuff, and it's good I learned that on shorter trips before I embarked on a longer one).

I like the idea of more short term travels! I've already done quite a lot of travelling, but there's always more to learn. Like, I already know that I'm too weather optimistic, I never pack the right clothes (tip: Paris is cold in April and the Grand Canyon is REALLY cold in January). Most of my travel has been with a large group of students though, and all I know about my travel personal travel style is that I'm ready to break away from the group. Short term travels, another great tip! Thanks!

Two things I did years before I actually took my trip:

I bought a guide book for where I was planning to go. I used the book for years to dream and get ideas -- which meant that by the time I actually left on my trip I already knew a lot about where I was going.

I also got a big map of Africa, which is where I went. This helped me to learn the geography of the area, plan possible routes, show my friends the places I was talking about and provide inspiration. Seeing the map in my room every day really helped to keep me excited and working toward my goal. Plus, it made an awesome decoration!

Ooh, I like your ideas, too! I have a Rick Steves' guidebook on Europe which I read most of last summer just for fun. I love guidebooks and maps. Thanks for the tips!

Go to your local public library (hopefully it is a larger one) and go to the early 900s (pretty much 900-919) and browse the shelves. Take home guidebooks, travel memoirs, anthologies, etc, and get an idea of where you want to go and how people did what they did. I decided I wanted to travel in Oct and spent Oct-Dec doing preliminary reading and research, and had a plan (and a bit more money) by Jan and left in May. Good luck.

Cool, more books, more fun for me! I'll just keep reading and saving and when I get to leave, I should have an itinerary and the $$ to make it happen. Thanks for the ideas!

We decided in Oct 2005 that we were going to go RTW starting in Oct 2006. We are going for about 6 years with only 3 flights, NZ to Bali, across the Atlantic then across the Pacific.

We have a map of the world and went to Hillman Wonders to find the "Wonders of the World", then put black pins all over the map.

We then joined the Hospitality Club where, while we are still in NZ we host people from around the world and learning about their travels. We have red pins on our map where they are from as they will host us while in their country.

We also have white pins for any place that does not fall into the above categories that we want to go to, like Cox's Bazar, Kashgar, Flores etc.

We then went to Project Visa and found out all of the visa requirements for NZ passort holders for all countries. Printing out the Continent Maps we marked each country with N for no visa, B if we need to get one at the Border or O if we need to obtain one before going. We also put the days that the visa is valid for - for example N 90 is No visa required for 90 days. Doing this allows us to see how much time we can spend in a country, what areas of the world we don't need many visas and what areas in the world we need a visa for every country! We also marked the countries that won't let us in if we have an Israeli stamp, so we can work out our route accordingly.

We also went to a free travel show where tour operators were all under the one roof. We collected every single brochure for the whole world to lean a bit about countries and what places they went to. We have also used that to find which places in a country are "off the tourist path" and then, using the net we have surfed around to find information on those areas - needless to say we are going to them!

As we are interested in cultural exchange, we have also surfed the net for places that we can do that, as well as outdoors things. If you have a certain interest, you could surf around and find places that offer that.

One of us is a web master so we have written a site where we can do our budget (and actuals when we start travelling) and an itinarary. Our site also automatically tells us the visa days and that has been a big help - we were merrily adding in places for one country where we had a N30 visa then found out our itinaray was for 57 days!!! - we are now going to buy a 2 month visa for that country, but at least we did not find out the hard way by turning up at the next border, only to find we were overstayers!!!

Our website has lots of links - all the above links and other interesting sites we have found. Not all countries have info yet, but we still have a bit of time to keep researching!

Good Luck and happy planning!!!

Wow! Thanks for all the great information! Your post is very informative, I'll be checking out each of those sites and really starting to think about my trip even beyond deciding where to go. Your six-year adventure sounds awesome! Have a wonderful trip!