First time, sort of sudden urge to travel, traveller

ok, I've gotta ask....why did they take the LP? Is it the info on tibet?

When you enter Tibet from Kathmandu you first have your baggage checked by customs, they saw my China LP & had no problem with it, they did however confiscate the Tibet LP which had the picture of a monk on the cover.

After the customs check you go through a duplicate check by the police who confiscated/stole my China LP because the map of China on page 2 or 3 included Taiwan, then had the nerve to tell me I could buy another in Beijing. Another of our group tore the map out of hers, put it in her pocket & made it through.

I made a thread on how to travel completely around the world for ~$2,000 USD. This is strictly talking transportation and nothing else...

BUT...it really shows how easy it is to travel completely around the world and not break the bank.

If you started with 16k, you'd be left with roughly 14k/365 = Right around $40USD/day. You can easily get by in a lot of places on 40USD per day...especially if you have some days where you arent doing much more than eating and walking around a new city...Days like that will bump your budget up for other days where you want to do excurions/tours...

Another idea that might work out better, for a first trip especially, is to just take what you have now and go to one region and travel there. SE Asia would be a great place to start. The path is well-worn and it's easy enough to figure everything out, it's affordable, and there are a lot of very diverse and interesting places in a relatively short distance. 5k Sterling will get you a long way there if you minimize flights and are careful. Doing this would only mean one major flight to BKK or SIN or KUL and back, which would definitely help to save more money for traveling on the ground here.

However, my first RTW trip, including everything, cost me about $11,000 USD, which is probably somewhere around 7,000 Sterling. I got to a lot of places, did a lot of stuff, and it lasted about 10 months, so if you're careful you can make it into a full RTW pretty soon if that's really what you want to do.

Have a nice trip!