Feedback on RTW Itinerary

Hello there!

My husband and I are planning a RTW trip in the late summer of 2012 and we were hoping to get some feedback from some seasoned RTW travelers out there on our tentative plans and itinerary.
Here are some of the things that are going through our heads that we are hoping this community can help provide their advice and opinions on:
1. Did you prefer to spend a longer time in fewer places, or see as much as possible? Did you experience burn-out often on your own travels? In other words, is this itinerary too ambitious and are we packing in too many countries for the year?

2. Are there any countries on our list that you have been to already that you would suggest skipping or ones you would definitely recommend visiting?

3. Does anything about this itinerary stick out to you as either being undoable or subject to complications?

4. We would love to hear the opinions of those who have had complicated RTW itineraries to hear which method they chose – RTW alliance tickets or One-ways as well as their experiences with it.

Here’s our tentative itinerary –
UAE - Oman - Rwanda - Madagascar - Malawi - Namibia - Ghana - Argentina - Chile - Peru - Bolivia - Galapagos - Sri Lanka - India - Tajikistan - Kazakhstan - Cambodia - Laos - Thailand - Vietnam - China

As much as we really wanted to make a RTW ticket work through one of the alliances out there, our itinerary which we set beforehand, seemed too complicated to be able to be accommodated through it. And thanks to Bootsnall latest article, we plan to try our hands at DIY and various travel agents to stitch this route together for us. However, the opinions of this community are invaluable to us so we are very eager to hear your thoughts. THANK YOU all in advanced!

Whether your trip is doable or not depends on how long your trip is. If it is 1 year, then yeah, it's too much. You listed 21 countries, which gives you about 2.5 weeks for each country, without including travel time between them.

For how long do you plan to go?

How much is your budget? That's a lot of moving around. How long do you plan being on the road?

Madagascar is expensive to get to and is worth 3 -4 weeks (or more) alone. To get to Madagascar from Africa the easiest (and cheapest?) is to go through Nairobi, Kenya. I would recommend taking a Safari in the Massai Marra if your in Kenya.

While your in SEA I would recommend going to Burma (Myanmar) and Malaysia - Borneo in particular.
Vietnam is awesome and cheap and the food is outstanding! Have fun crossing the street!

Hey! Thank you guys for your advice so far!
For the route we have laid out, we are planning to do in a year...we may spend an extra month or two in China at the end of that.
Though there are 21 countries on the list, we planned to do a good portion overland on certain continents (South America, SE Asia, parts of Africa) and maybe spend more time concentrating on 12-15 of those countries (3-4 weeks), and the other 6-9 countries as quick visits (1-2 weeks).
We haven't started pricing out tickets just yet, but we have a relatively healthy budget for this trip though we do plan to do everything as cheaply as possible when it comes to accommodations, etc.
Hmm...we were originally hoping to fly to Madagascar from somewhere further south (i.e. Malawai), but I will look into flying from Kenya - thanks! Did you have trouble traveling through Burma at all? We plan to have a lot of camera equipment on us and we've read they are really strict about what you're allowed to film and we didn't want to risk getting things confiscated. PS - Have you seen the documentary Burma VJ? I highly recommend it.
Thanks again for all the input!

Emily

I was 3 weeks in Myanmar (Burma) no problems at all, very easy to get around in & the people very friendly. Tied with Laos as the cheapest countries of the 35+ on my 11 month RTW.

Just make sure to take in all the money for your entire stay in US $100 bills, just don't be taking pictures of any army convoys or the like.

AroundthisGlobe wrote:Though there are 21 countries on the list, we planned to do a good portion overland on certain continents (South America, SE Asia, parts of Africa)

Based on your itinerary and timeline then you will spend a majority of travels in Africa and South America on a bus.

Where are you from?
If you're from the US, I'd recommend saving the South America bit for a later trip and just concentrating on the other areas. If you're from Europe, maybe skip Africa for now.
If, like me, you're from NZ you're stuffed! Whenever you want to go anywhere it's expensive and a long flight to start with. Definitely worth not trying to fit too much in though. To feel like you've actually been in a place I think you need at least three days. Any less and it's a transit stop. Keep that in mind.

Thanks for all of your opinions and input. I am from the US so saving South America for later is a good alternative - just reluctant to when I think of how many years away it may be before the opportunity like this comes about again to take a year off! Right now, we're thinking to knock out a couple countries and extend our trip by another month or two...still trying to narrow things down! Thanks again!!

Spirit Airlines has cheap flights to the Central American capital cities + Lima & TACA often has specials from CA to some SA cities so no reason you can't do SA on t series of holidays instead of taking time away from other countries on your RTW.