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 Plan It Or Wing It? |
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| lar4290 |
 Dec 30 2008, 08:55 PM
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Wayfarer
Group: Members
Posts: 48
Joined: 14-December 07
From: Nashville, TN / Charlotte, NC
Member No.: 115081
Nominate me as a Local Expert
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I usually pick a place I'm interested in and try to find long term opportunities there (i.e. job, internship, study, volunteer, etc.). Once I'm there, I try to explore the region. When I do trips, I have to get a hotel/hostel in advance and airfare if I'm flying or bus tickets if I go by bus...I don't buy train tickets unless the route may sell out or make any concrete plans in advance...just sort of let the wind carry me once I get there, but I have to at least know when and where ahead of time if I'm spending the night...especially since I'd be worried about wasting four or five hours trying to find an open hostel during the summer if I didn't book ahead! If I'm just going somewhere for the day, I'll wing it the whole way - when I was in Munich, I used to go to the train station and more or less randomly pick where to go out of the places I was interested in seeing based on the train connections available.
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| travelmonster |
Jan 3 2009, 07:45 AM
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Rolling Stone
Group: Local Expert
Posts: 4691
Joined: 28-October 07
From: England
Member No.: 101826
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I'm still working on different theories of how to do it at the moment - I need to work out how much it costs to book our flights separately as against how much it would cost on a round the world ticket - some places though, such as Tasmania, I won't find on a RTW ticket, but I'm guessing I could get a separate flight from Aus to Taz without much problem. So, I need to look at pricing for that.
Some of it I'm going to book in advance because we want to go to India and there is a specific wildlife company that I want to go and see Tigers with, they only take very small groups and get booked up really quickly. But then there are some things we know we are going to do, such as bump around New Zealand for a month in a campervan, but I don't see the sense in pre-booking sites for that because I just want to go where the mood takes us.
Same with South East Asia, still can't make up my mind where or how long to go for there, but think it's relatively easy just to go unbooked - unless I find some specific wildlife I want to see. I always book wildlife things well in advance, because the ones I consider to be good, knowledgeable and responsible generally get booked up well in advance.
Now that we're going to Canada, I'm thinking Polar Bears!! So I need to look at prices for that and see if I think we can incorporate it or not.
Soooo many things to decide!!
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In Search Of ..........."Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment sparkling like a star in our hand -- and melting like a snowflake" - Marie Beynon Ray
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| jeremystravels |
Jan 3 2009, 09:12 AM
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Commuter
Group: Local Expert
Posts: 613
Joined: 26-July 08
From: Dayton, Ohio
Member No.: 217489
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QUOTE(travelmonster @ Jan 3 2009, 06:16 AM) 
What route are you thinking of taking?
I keep looking at the map and changing my mind every few months as to where we're going!!
Well it all depends on how much money I can save between now and then. Being a single male in graduate school I can scrape by on very little and bank a lot (I am living at home and working 2-3 positions at any given time). But even at my estimates it would take all of my feasible savings ability to do the whole route so I may have to do some cutting along the way, I am on track on saving right now but I only have $3000 and need about $25000 haha (plus extra to return on!). Right now my ideal route is as follows: Fly into Japan, use the train system to get around, ferry over to China, overland down to Singapore, fly to Indonesia, then fly to India, work my way around India and Nepal before flying to Brazil (I found a fairly consistently cheap flight from Delhi to Rio), then working my way down through Argentina, Chile, possibly flying out to Easter Island, up through Peru, then stopping in Mexico before I hit home. I am still dreaming of going to Bhutan but that is too expensive to justify especially if I want to do an Everest trek and Easter Island. I might try and add Dubai in there too since flights from Delhi are cheap cheap cheap. I found flights on kayak.com for about the same price as a RTW ticket pre-tax ($4400 individually or ~$4200 + tax on a RTW). I haven't found any tickets cheaper than on there so you might want to check that place out but RTW tickets from the US are the most expensive anyway as I have found out. They crawl all the major ticket agencies and a lot of airlines sites for the best deal. The only problem with overlanding it and non-RTW tickets is some countries need proof of onward travel which could be kind of difficult. I am working on a blog www.livingthedreamrtw.blogspot.com if you want to check out on how I am planning things. I am going to post a daily update blog on here, of course, when I go and put major articles and updates on there.
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Local Expert for Ohio, USA Next Countries: May 2010: Banff National Park - Canada Planning RTW in 2010-2011 for Asia and South America - coverage here |
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