Planning For A Year of Travel – part one

I’ve probably been ‘planning’ my upcoming adventure for almost a decade. In the back of my mind, I always had a list of places I’d go and events that I would see if I had a full year to travel. If you follow my social media channels, you’ll know that this year of travel is finally about to be a reality! I announced my exciting plans in January, as well as my intentions to blog about the process, the cost, the whole pre-trip excitement. And now here we are in June and instead of monthly updates, it’s more like a massive collection of information that I’m going to present weekly. So get ready for ‘how to plan for a year of travel’, part one!

February

…was an exciting month, because, with less than six months until the start of my trip, I felt that I would be able to start to really hammer out some details, mostly about my route.

I always love to plan my travels thoroughly. While there is something to be said about spontaneous travel, I find the planning part almost as exciting as the actual travelling. And last-minute flights can be really expensive when you have to be at a certain place at a certain time.

So. I say ‘February’ planning, but actually, the first thing I did for my trip, was book the most expensive thing. No, not a flight package; but probably my most expensive booking: my trip to Antarctica.

The First Booking

I had to book Antarctica back in August, 2018. I had done a lot of research and, because of the ‘one-time nature’ of this trip, I had basically settled on the exact voyage that I wanted. Quark was the only company to offer a trip that included South Georgia, the Falkland Islands, and crossing the line, with a ship that had the extra ‘camping’ option (why go all that way if you don’t get to sleep on the continent…), and that didn’t cost my entire annual teaching salary. (I get that the place is expensive…but it doesn’t need to cost quite that much….) My expedition will mean that I will spend Christmas, New Years, and my birthday on the expedition ship! My early booking, research, and pre-planning meant that I was able to snag a coveted bed in a triple shared room. While it means I’ll share a room with two strangers, I’m sure that on a trip like this, how long really will anyone on the small ship remain a stranger? (150 passengers, FYI).

After booking my Antartica expedition, I was able to relax a bit and let my mind deal with my immediate concerns; mainly, how to survive an entire school year with this adventure on my brain.

So what did I actually book in February?

Flights

Once I had a basic itinerary plan, I began booking some flights in February. First up was a reward flight booked through airmiles. Canadians don’t have nearly as many options as Americans for credit card reward miles, and as such, the redemptions can be pretty lousy. Nevertheless, a flight credit is a flight credit, and I was able to start my trip off with booking my first transatlantic flight with these miles. I also booked a few shorter legs that I needed, and a few surprisingly cheap long-haul flights. My best score: Amman-Hanoi with a day layover in both Bahrain Island and Kuala Lampur. I might arrive exhausted, but I’ll have done it for less than $400 CAD… (considering that I paid that much in taxes for my awards flight…).

This total was $2844.73 CAD. This even included one flight close to Christmas (even with my advanced booking, these flights were crazy expensive – this one accounting for half my flight costs for this month!)

Accommodation

My first stop is Ukraine. Because Europe in the summer gets booked up *fast*, I booked most of my accommodation for the first few months. This was especially important for my first festival, Oktoberfest! Surprisingly enough, this particular option cost me less than I was imagining! Most of my accommodations are refundable. I probably won’t change my mind on my itinerary, especially with several key flights booked, but its nice to have the option when you need it. My Oktoberfest booking was non-refundable, as well as one booking in Dubrovnik, and a third in Belgrade. Total accommodation costs (paid in advance) for the month are $487 CAD.

Total Costs

In my hopes of creating an informative document that will aim to show exactly how much it costs to travel the world for a year, I’ll be updating my pre-trip costs before I go, and keeping a list of all on-trip costs. Total costs for this month came out to $3331.73 CAD

Route Planning

I am a planner by nature. I joke that the only area of my life that has any sense of organization are my travel planning skills. I always over-plan, mostly because I actually enjoy the planning part, almost as much as the actual travelling parts.

Plus, I’ve been in some tricky situations where even my over-planning has lead to connections that were supposed to work and didn’t, or attractions that were closed, etc. If I hadn’t planned, then I would have wasted time twice; once to plan and execute the experience while there, and once again to plan an alternate.

Again, when you plan, you have to be sure to add in rest and relaxing. I’ve planned those trips where you travel so hard and so intensely that you don’t have a single day for something to invariably go wrong.

This trip is different.

While a part of me loves to be busy and to go see everything, I know I won’t be able to keep that up long term. Nor do I want to.

This trip will have some ‘go go go’ moments (looking at you, Australia. 3 weeks isn’t enough!), but it will also have regular time to relax, recharge; for things to go wrong, and for days to spend in bed reading, without guilt (even if it’s the only day I have in insert-fancy-City-name-here – (and hey! Thanks to my planning, this won’t happen! 😝 hahahaha. Oh the things we tell ourselves….). I can keep the crazy pace up for my usual 8-week summer trip, but not for ~60 weeks.

So, continuing to plan my route, I made the most progress on this in February. The route, as it is, has me crossing oceans a few more times than I would have preferred, but the flights costs that I did for research are showing to be considerably less than I thought, so this is definitely workable.

Other Essentials

I also took a look at my travel items and was able to find a few essentials. I was looking for an awesome day bag that a) wasn’t too heavy or bulky b) would protect my camera from travel days c) wouldn’t be super obviously a camera bag and d) would hold comfortably other day bag essentials (water bottle, jacket, etc). I finally found what I was looking for, and it was even on sale! Yay! Check out the lowepro bag I got here.

My favourite packable day bag also went on sale again, after three years of being ridiculously expensive, so I bought a replacement bag. I love this bag because it packs into itself, weighs next-to-nothing, you can hardly tell you’re wearing it while it’s on, and it holds an impressive amount of weight and items. While the price fluctuates wildly, the best I’ve found is 17.99$. If you’re in need of a daypack, and you see it at that price, buy it now.

There you have it! Six months out, and coming up before I know it! Stay tuned for next month, and more exciting plans!