Planning the trip
Links to all our articles about planning:
- How we planned our budget and how that turned out
- Planning the route and choosing RTW tickets. See our final itinerary and where we strayed off course
- What we took with us including rucksacks, electronics, clothes, medicines and toiletries, and everything else. See the full packing list
- How all those things worked out during the trip: rucksacks, electronics, clothes, medicines and toiletries, and anything else.
- Businesses and individuals who were really helpful during our planning
- Health matters including innoculations and malaria matters, and the short first aid course we took.
How long we prepared for
We both regret having missed out on a gap year after university, and it gradually dawned on us that if we didn’t see the world now, we might never do it. So around five years ago, we promised ourselves that in 2010 we would take a year out from our careers and actually do it. Why 2010? We’re both procrastinators by nature – making a promise and having a target was the only way to make it happen.
Between then and now we’ve had little bursts of itinerary planning, generally when we get a travel book of some kind and we start enthusing about a new part of the world. Our itinerary settled roughly into its current form about a year ago.
We started proper preparations eight or nine months before departure, and passed the point of no return six months before departure by handing in notice at our jobs. The final six months has been a gradually accelerating schedule of doing stuff. What stuff? See the links above!