Planning a Gap year

Hey guys! I recently got bitten by the RTW bug. A friend and I have been planning a Rt. 66 roadtrip next summer from our home near STL down to Los Angeles (Where both of us are considering moving after High School), but I'm starting to dream bigger...

I have a rough idea of where I'd like to go, but nothing set in stone. I'm hoping for some guidance/push in the right direction.

I'm looking at roadtripping to LA, then -> Quito/Galapagos for a bit-> Lima -> Santiago -> Easter Island -> Tahiti -> New Zealand (Would be cool to see both islands) -> Sydney (I will hopefully travel by land up to Darwin area for my flight out) -> Bali -> Tokyo -> Beijjing-> Bangkok -> Nepal (I'd love to at least see Everest, maybe even try getting to base camp one - not sure how difficult it is, I need to research that more!) -> Delhi -> Cape Town -> Cairo -> Athens -> Moscow -> Berlin (Definitely a good place with my fairly workable knowledge of German. Definitely not fluent, but I can get by!) -> Paris -> London-> Reykjavik -> New York, then back home to STL.

Order is obviously not set in stone. Also, I feel like this is a *lot* for the year I'm planning to alot. Does anybody have suggestions on some of the less interesting here that I should consider cutting out? Also, I'm currently working around 30 hours a week at $8 per hour (before tax). I live at home with my parents so besides somewhere below 100 a month for gas, my once a week excursion to find a new restaurant to try, etc, that could almost all go to savings. Unfortunately, this job ends next month because it is a summer position at our school. I'm going to be working on finding an evening job that can work along with my schooling. (Might waiting tables at a decent restaurant with decent tipping suffice for reaching a good budget for the trip?) What would be a good budget that would be attainable at my age, but not leave me sleeping in the shadiest places on earth? I've seen some figures but I'm not sure how up to date they are, if they were accurate for my plans, etc. Would somewhere around the 10k neighborhood be workable?

Finally, will it be safe/workeable for me to be travelling the world at 18? My view is that you never know what the future holds for your health, and this is one of my major life dreams to attain. I'm hoping to learn more about tolerance of a wide variety of people, see the world, maybe make a difference volunteering here and there, etc. I also want to learn more about myself, and what I really want from life, and doing this before college seems to be the best route if I can gather up the funds for it. Thanks for your responses in advance!

Your rough outline is way too ambitious for your funds. If by STL you mean St Louis by all means do the route 66 road trip to LA.

With only I would concentrate on SE Asia, form a loose plan & travel until the money runs out. You have lots of time for more trips to the expensive places.

Also a work visa is possible for Oz & NZ which could extend your trip considerably.

Yea, research is showing that's way too ambitious for the funds. I'm going to have a look at cutting across the area, and hopefully take a look at more ways to bring in cash. Definitely will drop most of Europe.

Sorry mate but that trip is just not going to work with 10k- plane tickets alone would eat up a decent fraction of that! When I did my first rtw two years ago my ballpark figures were $1k/month for Asia, twice that for Europe, $1.5k for Africa, and while I haven't done South America enough it can range from as cheap as Asia to as expensive as Europe (the northern countries like Bolivia and Peru can be cheap as chips, getting down to Argentina starts getting pricey). Oz right now is on par with Europe when it comes to prices due to the exchange rate/ long distances one needs to travel, and I can't imagine NZ is that much better.

I think your best bet for such a budget is to pick a region and travel around in it until the money runs out as busman said- for one thing you won't spend nearly as much money due to bouncing around. Options:

- SE Asia is the tired and true and you'll have a fun time, plus one can easily get a flight and hop over to India/Nepal which is even cheaper (Everest Base Camp is certainly not an impossible thing to reach btw). Since it would take up the majority of your year and it's such a great area for first time travel in the long term, I'd vote for this one.

- South America is another one that wouldn't be too bad to check out, but is slightly pricier and the visas for an American passport are not cheap and will add up (loads of countries charging $100 and up just to get in for US citizens). A possibility if you want to, say, practice Spanish or just really really like the area more over Asia.

- Third would be to head to Oz or NZ with a work holiday visa. From what I hear you won't make much more than enough to "keep even" financially and I think you'd blow through the 10k quick enough with minimal travel heading there/back/around, and it would be a different kind of trip as you'd probably get to know one particular city or place very well, but certainly worth looking into.

Also by the way I've met plenty of 18 year old "gappers" from the UK while on the road so I don't think you'd run into problems in that regard. Happy planning!

10k won't even get you close. I would probably fly to Bangkok, and stick to SE Asia. If you have some leftover funds, perhaps try to get a work visa for Aus or NZ, as mentioned above. Both beautiful countries.

Yea I'm realizing the budget is ludicrously low. I'm hoping I could do what I can to push it up higher, but there's no guarantee. I'm currently working on seeing what I can cut as far as expensive places/flights go to reign in the budget. I'll report back with updates to see what y'all think! I think I'm going to cut out South America as well as South Africa (So far out of the way.) Likely Moscow, and maybe Athens depending on how my number crunching this afternoon goes. I'll probably be dropping the Pacific Islands as well (Maybe even Australia/NZ - or doing a short excursion there from SE Asia), in lieu of spending more time in Indonesia for the islandy type feel.

honestly..don't rush anything. the slower you go and the less you move around, the cheaper and more enjoyable it tends to be. i'd just wheel around SE asia till your money runs out.

just my .02

will

Good advice already. But can I add: remeber YOU ARE STILL YOUNG. You have a lifetime ahead of you to go places. DOn't be scared to go to one palce at a time. Moscow will still be there later. You might get a job one day that takes you to live there...or Athens....or London.....if you have that kind of mindset you will be able to make it happen.
I would agree with the tohers - hit South East Asia, pop over to Everest and India if you want, then wander down to Australia (or better still, NZ!) on a WHV to earn some dosh. South AMerica is easy for you to get to from your home base, so I'd leave that til later - you might even do a hop to a different country each year in your vacation time for a decade and see the place that way.
You don't have to do it all at once.
Write yourself a dream list and start nibbling away at it.

Mama-to-many wrote:Good advice already. But can I add: remeber YOU ARE STILL YOUNG. You have a lifetime ahead of you to go places. DOn't be scared to go to one palce at a time. Moscow will still be there later. You might get a job one day that takes you to live there...or Athens....or London.....if you have that kind of mindset you will be able to make it happen.
I would agree with the tohers - hit South East Asia, pop over to Everest and India if you want, then wander down to Australia (or better still, NZ!) on a WHV to earn some dosh. South AMerica is easy for you to get to from your home base, so I'd leave that til later - you might even do a hop to a different country each year in your vacation time for a decade and see the place that way.
You don't have to do it all at once.
Write yourself a dream list and start nibbling away at it.

Quoting for truth.

One of the first travel lessons I got was meeting a lovely retired couple on a bus in Auckland, NZ who were visiting NZ for the first time cause they hadn't been and advised me to "save part of the world for when you're older too."

I'm not saying do it for that country in particular but I definitely appreciated the sentiment enough that I haven't dipped a toe in, say, Central America yet even though it's right next door because I reckon that's an easy one to see when I'm older and presumably more time-constrained for various reasons. It's not like I need to make an effort to go see Mexico now when it's easy to get to, but a remote Asian jungle does take time...

Just becaue I was recently looking into Easter Island I'll go ahead and recommend scratching that off. Maybe someone else knows more but flights to and from the island were much more expensive than I cared to pay.

Also got the feeling that there wasn't a whole lot to do on the island and anything over 2 or 3 days was overkill. So I took it off my RTW list for the time being.