Planning a RTW trip but haven't planned at all

I've been "planning" this RTW trip since last year but really I have no plans at all. I'm supposed to leave in late October.

The only thing I have is my gear, which I'm quite satisfied with. Other than that I have only a general direction of where to go... start off in Fiji, go to NZ, AUS, work my way through Asia, train to Russia and through EU, fly to S. Africa, then to S. America and work my way up. That's all I know.

I really like the idea of having no itinerary, schedule, budget, etc. Not only is it a lot of work and a buzz kill, but it also takes the adventure out of it for me. Is it possible to play it by ear, and on the go, or is this a really foolish plan?

I left on my RTW 10 months ago, with only my initial one-way ticket planned out. I've been winging it all the way and it's worked out quite well. I've gone to places and countries which weren't on my radar and it's been a blast so far.

You still need to manage your funds and at least travel or think within some 'rough' budget constraints. Not saying you need to stick to a specific dollar per day figure, but I recommend you have an idea of how much you can afford to spend on accommodation, food and transportation in each sector of your trip.

Jason

JasonT wrote:I left on my RTW 10 months ago, with only my initial one-way ticket planned out. I've been winging it all the way and it's worked out quite well. I've gone to places and countries which weren't on my radar and it's been a blast so far.

You still need to manage your funds and at least travel or think within some 'rough' budget constraints. Not saying you need to stick to a specific dollar per day figure, but I recommend you have an idea of how much you can afford to spend on accommodation, food and transportation in each sector of your trip.

Jason

Awesome Jason, good to hear you are having fun. Just curious, what is your personality type? I'm very mellow and borderline lazy at times. Maybe this might be a factor in how well this works out.

In addition to having a general finaance guideline, you could also consider ROUGHLY how long you have available/want to spend in general areas. You may find that you easily spend eight months in Asia - if you only have twelve months available, will you be happy to skip the South America leg or perhaps some other? Or is time no issue at all? If time will be a factor I would recommend making sure you get to the places that are harder to make shorter trips to some other time. Such loose planning will not detract from the adventure on the road. And unless you want to be booked on a minute-by-minute planned tour (which obviously you don't), more detailed planning is really unnecessary (other than making sure you know of visa requirements before arriving at a border - information I am assuming you would discover as you plan each leg)

As others say, I don't really see an issue with this. On my last trip I ended up in China after looking up various flight prices while sitting at the source of the Nile in Uganda and Hong Kong was just about one of the cheapest on my general list of places that interested me, so I went.

I always have a *general* idea of what an area has to offer (because it would be silly to show up and miss cool stuff!) and often you need an idea of about how long you'll be in a country too because of visa issues. But hey, that works for me... I'd also consider budget a little if I was in a "go until the money runs out" situation but I never have been, just because a rough idea of how long my money would last would be good, but once again I don't think it's a requirement if you're ok with money perhaps going quicker than you've planned.

I agree with everyone else, except when it comes to the train through Russia. It's certainly possible to make arrangements on the road, but Russian bureaucracy is such that it's quite challenging, and you may have to courier your passport back to your home country to get a visa.

Laid back, no real plans is a great way to travel, but when it runs into governments that don't trust foreigners, it can become a problem.

We managed to get our Russia visa having been out of our own country for many months. Yes, it was a HUGE headache and we tried three countries unsucessfully before hitting the jackpot in Hong Kong.
That's exactly the kind of thing I had in mind when suggesting knowing visa restrictions!

Mama-to-many wrote:We managed to get our Russia visa having been out of our own country for many months. Yes, it was a HUGE headache and we tried three countries unsucessfully before hitting the jackpot in Hong Kong.
That's exactly the kind of thing I had in mind when suggesting knowing visa restrictions!

Hi! Where can I find more info about getting a Russian visa when travelling out of my own country? Does getting it in HongKong works only for NZ'ers?

We emailed each and every country office that was en route for us in the right time frame. None replied. We visited the embassy in Phnom Penh (where it would have been possible to have it done if we had had more time but our Cambodia visa was running out - we had already used up our time getting our Vietnam and China visas there), heard from someone who had tried that the Russian embassy in Vietnam would not issue out-of-country visas, heard from someone else that we could ahve had it done in Guangzhou - but my father-in-law who was bringing the some documentation from NZ (letters verifying that we were not able to get them at home) was not meeting us until we got to Hong Kong.
It's all very much a matter of hit-n-miss I think! If at all possible, try to get a Russian visa before leaving your home country, but if, like us, the timing doesn't work, then you've just got to do a whole lot of tyring!

Thanks everyone for the great advice here. I've been planning my upcoming RTW
for a few years now and I finally got to the point of being saturated with information.
You can only plan so much and after reading this thread I firmly believe less really is
more. I'm gonna wing it!

This question is so similar to one I posted about 3 years ago!
I left with only a one-way ticket to Prauge, a boat trip booked in Greece a month later and a promise from my brother to meet me in Egypt a month after that.
I some ways it was hard to not have a plan. I seemed to just get to a place right after some spectacular festival or event and a couple of times I wasn't sure what or where was next and inertia would set in and I would spend way too much time doing nothing of any interest or value in one place (like 2 1/2 weeks in Amman, Jordan - sigh)
But in other ways, winging it was fantastic! My favorite stop of the whole trip (Syria) was someplace I never considered and would have never planned on going! I ended up some amazing places because it was a cheap flight, the next bus headed out of town or I'd just met someone coming from there.
All in all, I vote for planning as you go.