A Year Off

by Alexandra Brown

  Although I could feel that David knew my reaction was about more than just the route, the conversation never deviated. Eventually, we had nothing more to express. We sat in silence, and I could feel David drawing close to me again. My mind slowly stopped whirling.

  David and I are more similar than either of us realized when it comes to how we approach life. He’s not the cool, laid-back adventurer, artist type who flows with whatever, even if he sometimes comes off that way. He’s very responsible, thoughtful, and dedicated. He’s a long-term planner, a creature of habit, and far from graceful when it comes to change. He has quirky ways of ritualizing daily living, and these rituals make me feel grounded even with all the insanity we bring to our life together. He has systems for nearly everything, and I love them.

  While all we could see in that moment were our differences, we knew we had more in common than not.

  FINDING MIDDLE GROUND

  If you plan to travel with someone, conflicting points of view are likely to arise. The obvious truth is that you can’t change your personality, but you can adjust your approach to make it easier to plan a trip with a partner. We managed to address the route issue and recognized our list was simply too long for the amount of time and money we had. Every choice would also involve a sacrifice. We simply couldn’t see and experience everything we wanted to see and do in one year. We went back through the list and approached each place with the question, “Does the idea of going to this place fill you with tangible excitement?” Over the next few weeks, we looked realistically at our list, the map, and how much money we had and made some difficult decisions. We recognized we had to hold on to seeing the things we wanted to see but let go of the need to see everything. We also let go of mapping out our entire route. We decided to adjust as we went. We finally felt free.

  In the end, we have questioned many parts about the way we traveled, but our route was never one of them. This is not to say our route was perfect, but we couldn’t have asked for something better. The list we ended with wasn’t the list we had when we started, and many of the places we didn’t get to see still hold the intrigue they did when we left, but we feel hopeful that someday we’ll see those places too.

  MAPPING YOUR ROUTE

  With the exhilaration of so much open time and space before you, it’s easy to get caught up and try to fit in everything you’ve always wanted to do. Realistically, this probably can’t happen on one single trip, not unless you’re gone for many, many years, so you make a plan. There are lots of factors to consider when figuring out what to see when. Some people will want to plan everything in advance. Others may not want to plan beyond the departure date and first ticket. Our own research and experience, combined with conversations we had with other travelers, helped us create a process that highlights key considerations for route planning. Our hope is that by addressing each element, you will be equipped to make wise decisions and have an easier time painting a picture of what your route may look like.

  1/ List Destinations

  Use a map and list every place you would love to visit. Do not overthink the first pass. Once you have a list, use these criteria to focus in on your must-visit locations and figure out what places you can let go of:

  • What places excite you right now? Most likely you will have places you wanted to visit years ago but spark less interest now. If you focus on what you presently want, it will help you be even more excited about not only the trip but also the time spent researching. It should also help narrow your list.

  • Once you have a sense of the places that excite you, identify your top three destinations. What do you think you will regret not seeing? If we had done this before we left, Japan would have made our list, but we were too focused on budget and an efficient route. We did, however, adjust our plans once in Asia and made it to Japan, and it was definitely worth the effort!

  • Next, mark where you have friends or family you could either stay with or who would be willing to show you around. Be liberal. This is a great time to reconnect with people even if you have not spoken in years, and having a local show you a place is invaluable!

  • Finally, mark places that may be better reserved for a future vacation. You will have more time on this trip, so this is the opportunity to really dig into a place if that is what you are craving.

  • We will dive deeper into budget in our next chapter, but you may want to consider ranking your list by high-, medium-, and low-burn countries. In other words, what countries will burn through your budget faster? For example, we lived comfortably for a week in Darjeeling on what we spent in a night in London.

  Once you have your filtered list, plot every destination on a world map. This will give you a sense of where everything is and whether the distances are manageable given your budget and timeline. After seeing where everything falls, you may notice patterns or a natural route taking shape. Depending on where things lie on the map, this will help form the basis of the overall direction you take.

  2/ Start Thinking About the Direction of Your Route.

  Having a list of destinations is a start, but there are a few important factors to consider when deciding what order to visit them in:

  • The Five Seasons: We chose to chase summer for most of our trip with some spring and fall mixed in. We highly recommend this, as it enabled us to have longer, sunnier days, little rain, and lighter packs due to the lack of winter clothes. We were also careful to avoid places where the summer heat was unbearable. Another season we kept top of mind was monsoon/typhoon/rainy season. Being in Europe for rainy season is tolerable and even recommended if you are a foodie because of the fall harvest, but rainy season can mean something else entirely in other parts of the world. This isn’t to say you can’t visit India during monsoon season, but be prepared for near-constant rain, major travel delays, and more dangerous circumstances.

  • Cultural Adjustments: Although extreme culture shock can be interesting to experience once or twice, it is draining. At best, it slows the process of understanding the place you are in and getting into the flow. At worst, it causes you to hate where you are and may necessitate a vacation from your trip. As a result, we highly recommend reducing it as much as possible. Factors such as economy, cleanliness, religious practices/restrictions, personal space, human rights, social norms, friendliness, and sense of order are well worth considering when planning your route. We consciously tried to “warm up” to unfamiliar or radically different cultural influences throughout our trip by gradually moving to countries that felt less and less familiar and reversing the process on the second half of our trip. Taking advantage of the fact that regions often have a significant amount of cultural diffusion, we moved slowly across the globe to help ease into a place while also being more efficient with our money. Although geography is a good general rule, it is far from infallible, so do your cultural research; it is fun and enriching anyway!

  • Peak Tourist Seasons: In addition to weather seasons, there are tourist seasons. The two often go hand in hand, as most tourists visit a place during times of optimal weather. This is a potential downside of following the sun, as you could end up in a place when it’s completely overrun with tourists, meaning costs are higher, accommodations are booked, transit is overloaded, and locals are frustrated and less likely to engage with you. On the other hand, visiting a place during the off-season often means poorer weather and fewer places open. It can be challenging to be strategic and still experience good weather without all the tourists, but one way to do this is to take advantage of fringe seasons. Right before or after the big rush is normally perfect. You may suffer an extra rainy day or two, but it is well worth it. Although tourists can make a place feel like an amusement park, they’re not all bad. Certain places come alive with a crowd, particularly festivals, beach life, and cultural events. When it comes to tourists, the rule of thumb is to know when you want them.

  BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER

  One thing to keep in mind while planning your route is tha
t nothing is final. The only thing really set is your start date. This type of trip is an iterative process, and your route will evolve as you travel. As we’ll explain more in the next chapter, a lot of your transportation, including flights, can be booked on the fly, opening you up to so much more flexibility. In the end, places not on your list may end up being some of your favorites, and your top destinations may not be everything you hoped they would be.

  Once you have your departure date, take a look at your map and see where you want to go first. A fantastic first destination would be one where the culture is not shockingly different from your own, as you may have your hands full transitioning into the travel life, and should be a place on your “must see” list with good weather and possibly a friend or two to build excitement. You will probably be able to handle the tourists better in the beginning of your trip versus the end, so do not worry as much about that.

  After you have chosen your first stop, you can try out several possible routes from there. As you consider routes, challenge them against where they are in your list and how they fit in with the timing considerations of weather, culture shock, and tourist crowding. You will likely find it less painful to plan if you take things one step at a time and remember you can change it all up at any moment.

  WHY WE LOVED OUR ROUTE

  When we talk to other people interested in doing an extended trip, many of them ask whether we have a recommended route. The simple answer is no. Every person is different, and every trip is different. We absolutely loved our route and felt like it was perfect, but we’ve heard of other people really enjoying routes drastically different from the one we took. Our route was an east-to-west one, partly because we started in California but also for reasons connected to seasonality and climate, cultural transitions, and budget.

  In addition to the good weather we had for most of our journey, we were able to catch some elusive seasonal moments that only happen once a year: cherry blossoms in Japan, harvest in Northern Italy, the Willie Clancy Festival in Ireland, and a waterlogged New Year’s in Thailand.

  Another benefit to the direction we took was meeting European travelers while traveling in Asia who later invited us to join them in their home countries once we got to Europe. This expanded our network of friendly faces, offered us more-immersive visits from a local’s perspective, and helped offset the cost of traveling in Europe tremendously.

  But our favorite part of our route was the way we naturally managed the ebb and flow of culture shock. We intentionally began our trip in New Zealand—a destination that felt completely far away but with a context very familiar to life back home. We then eased our way into Southeast Asia by starting in Singapore before moving up into Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand. We bookended our interlude in Japan with Thailand so as not to make the transition into India as jolting. When we got to India, we had spent enough time in Southeast Asia to feel more at home in a frenetic, hectic, and crowded environment. On the other side, we knew going from India straight to Western Europe could have been too much of a shock for our systems, so we transitioned into Europe by starting in the east before moving to the west. By ending our trip in Western Europe, we also felt more prepared to come back home to the U.S. Throughout the trip, we did experience mild culture shock at times, but generally, our transitions were smooth and often exhilarating.

  For as much time as we’ve thought about it, we’ve never questioned our route. In the end, we have no regrets on the direction we chose and the places we went. There are plenty of optimizations we could have made. We often talk about how we wish we had worried about money less or hadn’t rushed in some places, and we really wish we hadn’t let the anxieties about coming home occupy so much of our time and energy while still on the road. Yet when it came to the route itself, we were nothing but happy with our decisions.

  Chapter 3

  Setting the Budget

  When you tell people you are taking a yearlong trip around the world, the first question will likely be, “How much will that cost?” It’s not surprising that people go straight to the money. Understanding the financial impact helps put this seemingly radical and unobtainable idea into relatable terms.

  In this chapter, we explain how we arrived at our budget. Although there are lots of online resources and books with more detailed budget breakouts and greater precision, this chapter is intended to help you understand how you may want to approach budgeting in different parts of the world and maximize your money throughout your trip.

  When asked, most people guess we spent around $60,000 on the trip and are shocked when we tell them otherwise. We spent $37,000 total for nearly one year of travel. As David says, the trip was about the cost of a midrange sedan and well below what many people spend during a year at home—depending on where you live, of course. The budget you have for your trip will depend on a number of factors: how comfortably you want to live, what matters to you, how quickly or slowly you want to move from place to place, and what parts of the world you plan on visiting. There is no magic number, just as there is no magic route, and your budget is likely to be different from the budgets of other travelers, but we can share the wisdom from our own experiences and those of others to help you stretch your money further and make the most of your time.

  MONEY TALKS

  Alexandra

  Before we left, we dove into research, consulting different sources on average costs for a round-the-world trip. What we found was that a lot of it came down to how comfortably people wanted to travel. A no-frills backpacker could make their way around the world for a year for around $15,000, while many people would spend closer to $45,000 for a similar trip. The differences in budget were based on preferences for lodging, dining, transportation, and excursions. We wanted to fall somewhere in the middle. We were accustomed to a certain amount of comfort but also weren’t looking for an extended vacation. We were hungry for authenticity and cultural immersion, along with all the local flavors we dreamed of nibbling and sipping as we went. We also wanted to experience a few big-ticket items, like kayaking through Milford Sound in New Zealand, motorcycling the Mae Hong Son loop in northern Thailand, and visiting lots of museums in Paris. Fortunately, David and I were traveling as a couple, which helped us split costs, and were lucky to have friends and family across the globe, which provided us lots of free places to stay.

  Taking all of this into account, we settled on our budget of $37,000, which included everything: flights, other transit, accommodations, food, excursions, basic necessities, and gifts for folks back home and people we stayed with along the way. David also had a small budget of $1,000 for personal purchases and special occasions.

  I often found myself fixating on the dollars, wanting to dutifully stick to our budget like a Girl Scout intent on earning her merit badges. David helped us maintain perspective, often reminding me that the budget was a noble goal but not something we should let control our lives. He created a few sayings to help me fixate less on the budget, such as, “We won’t look back and feel proud of sticking to a number. We will look back and feel proud we had lived for a year.” We would frequently go way over budget for a couple days or even a week, but those times were countered by stretches where we were well under budget. We decided if we ran out of money earlier than expected, we would simply go home earlier. This helped take the pressure off the budget and keep us present to enjoy our trip.

  When David and I decided to take our trip, we didn’t have a budget in mind. After aggressively paying off his student loans, David started saving for a shorter but much costlier solo motorcycle adventure. My goal was to match that amount. Although I also had some savings, I was able to make up the difference by selling my Honda Fit, taking on a big freelance job, and greatly reducing my rent by staying with David and his two roommates for a couple months. In my world, everything went very smoothly. We sold my car, my freelance gig was great, rent was cheap, and I got to be with the man I loved so much more.

  It was not until we were on our trip tha
t I realized David had been silently freaking out during that time. Things had gone way too fast, riddled with far too much change for him to process what was happening. Months later on a beach in Thailand, David casually brought up how difficult that time was, and I thought to myself, What is he talking about? That was blissful! A couple of “How did you not see that?” looks from David were followed by blushing and guilt from me. I guess I had been living in a bit of a romantic fairy tale . . . alone. He tried to comfort me by saying he sincerely felt it had been worth the discomfort. I think we might have laughed about it at some point. I’m not sure I really laughed.

  While the logistics of saving for our trip may not have been perfect on both sides, they did enable us to gather enough funds to make the trip work. The budget proved to be an ongoing conversation throughout our journey, and there were definitely moments of tension—mainly when I got too worried about running out of money. It helped that our financials weren’t a taboo topic with us, though, probably because things had moved so fast at the beginning. Money is often a hot-button topic with couples, but being able to talk openly about our budget enabled me to slowly trust David’s financial judgment more and more, and to ultimately trust that everything would work out just fine.

  SETTING YOUR BUDGET

  The budget can feel like the most daunting part of your trip, but figuring out a rough number is actually a quick exercise. With a few key inputs, you’ll be able to get a good sense of how much you can reasonably expect to spend on your trip.