Off we go. Since we met nine years ago, we have been talking about taking a round the world (RTW) trip. We would say things like “Oh, when we take our RTW trip, we will go to Turkey”. Or, “Yeah, we’ll see that when we do our big trip”. But life (vet school, jobs, buying a house) got in the way. That’s not to say we weren’t able to travel frequently. We were fortunate to have been able to do quite a bit of traveling in that time, but generally for no longer than our 2-3 weeks of vacation time allowed us. Still, in vague terms, we continued to discuss the monumental trip, never letting go of the idea.
When we decided to move back to Paul’s hometown in Australia, it seemed like the perfect chance to finally realize our dream of long term travel. Since we were already quitting our jobs, packing up our house, and flying halfway around the world, we might as well take the opportunity to see some sights along the way. So, we emptied our savings account, and cashed in our frequent flyer miles.
The itinerary we decided upon is based on attending certain events, and experiencing countries at certain times of the year. Really, the sequence of countries makes no sense. Like, we will be about 2 miles away from Morocco in August, but won’t actually make it there until December.
These are our projected flights (note, it’s the flights we are planning to take, not necessarily the countries we are visiting).
It looks like a child scribbled on a map. I’ll post another map at the end, showing the flights we actually took.
Note: the vast majority of those flights were booked on credit card points or with frequent flyer miles. We have paid very little for flights.
We plan to see the following 21 countries in the next 8.5 months:
- Netherlands
- Spain
- England
- Czech Republic
- Germany
- Serbia
- Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Montenegro
- Turkey
- Russia
- Norway
- Morocco
- France
- Sri Lanka
- Myanmar
- Cambodia
- Laos
- Vietnam
- Thailand
- Yap (Federated States of Micronesia)
- Palau
It’s a pretty ambitious plan, and we won’t be able to spend as much time in each country as we would like. However, it’s the itinerary that works for us.
Now, off we go, fulfilling a decade long dream of seeing the world, experiencing different cultures, sampling new beers, and savoring local cuisines.