Round The World Tickets
Planning your route to stretch your RTW funds
When we first consider a ‘round the world’ trip it’s definitely exciting to imagine visiting a bit of everything on your lap around the planet. Everyone who spends more than a couple months on their trip, and who actually crosses the International Dateline an odd number of times in the process, will definitely be seeing a lot, but certainly not everything. If you plan your route the right way you can spend twice as long on the same trip as you would have had you planned it a different way. So if your goal is to stretch your money as long as possible, the best idea is to skip most of the expensive parts of the world and save them for another time.
For example, Tokyo is an amazing place that nearly everyone can appreciate, but if you try to spend a week or more in Japan it will drain your travel funds fast. Just save it for another trip when it won’t mean sacrificing so many other things. A week in and around Tokyo will cost as much as two months in rural India. If you look at it this way, Japan becomes a bit less appealing in the context of this trip.
This is mostly a psychological issue for many of us. There is a desire to be as complete as possible when we do a RTW, but if you try to include all the budget-busters on your itinerary it will mean a shorter trip or having to make major cutbacks elsewhere. Save Northern Europe for another trip. You can cut a path through the south on a pretty tight budget, but 2 days in Stockholm will cost you the same as 5 days in Portugal.
Most large cities in the US and Canada can be a challenge as well. Even if you find a cheap hostel it will often cost a lot to get around. Forget London on a RTW unless you have a really good reason not to. Australia and New Zealand can be expensive as well, but for many of us the cost of getting back there another time actually makes it worth including them on your RTW.
Much of this advice is pretty obvious, but if you are in the early stages of planning your RTW you might feel the pressure to experience some of everything. One interesting phenomenon that many of us who’ve done RTW trips experience is that actually going round the world helps you realize just how enormous and varied it is. It’s common to be humbled by all that you realize you DIDN’T see on your trip, so there is no such thing as ever being complete.
With this in mind you have to adjust your goals and expectations. There is no such thing as seeing the world, so skipping the insanely expensive places on this trip will only be a minor sacrifice in the grand scheme of things, but it will save you a fortune and give you places to see on other trips in the future as well.
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