HOW TO TRAVEL AROUND THE WORLD
I spent 2014 traveling around the world. The information here captures what I did pre-travel, during my travels, and post travel.
Pre-Trip Planning
Preparing for an around the world trip consists of three phases: financial planning, unwinding your current life, and building up your new life. The financial planning may take up to three to five years to have sufficient funds set aside for travel. Once you have sufficient funds, you can begin the painful part of unwinding your life—the offset to that pain is that you simultaneously build up the life you always dreamed about. There’s fun but difficult work ahead.
Preparing for an around the world trip consists of three phases: financial planning, unwinding your current life, and building up your new life. The financial planning may take up to three to five years to have sufficient funds set aside for travel. Once you have sufficient funds, you can begin the painful part of unwinding your life—the offset to that pain is that you simultaneously build up the life you always dreamed about. There’s fun but difficult work ahead.
Finances
Around the world trip finances consist of three questions: How much? How to? And simply, How? When pondering these questions what may be overlooked is the financial mindset that must be adopted and maintained to ensure the financial objectives are met. The nice part about personal finance, budgeting, and organizing your money is there are basic techniques that anyone can master. The challenge is adhering to those techniques.
Around the world trip finances consist of three questions: How much? How to? And simply, How? When pondering these questions what may be overlooked is the financial mindset that must be adopted and maintained to ensure the financial objectives are met. The nice part about personal finance, budgeting, and organizing your money is there are basic techniques that anyone can master. The challenge is adhering to those techniques.
The Great Unwind
Congratulations. You are starting a new life. An around the world life. There’s one major activity before you start your new life: unwind your current life. Unwinding your current life is an awkward and depressing experience. It’s depressing to sell your belongings—your TV, your furniture, your surfboard. There are decisions with significant financial impacts, such as whether to sell or rent your house. There are minor decisions that could be an annoyance, like forgetting to cancel your Amazon Prime before it renews for another year. There’s the stuff you may not think about, like maximizing your healthcare flex spending funds. Then there’s the most morbid part, creating a file that lists your financial information that a trusted friend may access should you suffer an ill-fated incident. Fortunately, while conducting these depressing activities, you will also begin building up your new life, your around the world life. You will need approximately six weeks to unwind your life.
Congratulations. You are starting a new life. An around the world life. There’s one major activity before you start your new life: unwind your current life. Unwinding your current life is an awkward and depressing experience. It’s depressing to sell your belongings—your TV, your furniture, your surfboard. There are decisions with significant financial impacts, such as whether to sell or rent your house. There are minor decisions that could be an annoyance, like forgetting to cancel your Amazon Prime before it renews for another year. There’s the stuff you may not think about, like maximizing your healthcare flex spending funds. Then there’s the most morbid part, creating a file that lists your financial information that a trusted friend may access should you suffer an ill-fated incident. Fortunately, while conducting these depressing activities, you will also begin building up your new life, your around the world life. You will need approximately six weeks to unwind your life.
The Buildup
You’ve torn down your former life, now you need to begin building your new life. The Buildup is not without its agonizing headaches—purchasing a new camera is insane-asylum maddening. The Buildup is putting together the trip of a lifetime. It’s purchasing all the niche backpacking items you saw in REI but could never previously justify. And purchasing contact lens solution, Neosporin, and aspirin. It’s about reading camera reviews. The Buildup is visiting travel medicine clinics for vaccinations. It’s determining the visas you need in advance and the visas that may be obtained during your travels. The Buildup is laying the foundation for a website and creating webpage templates to chronicle your travels. It’s about figuring out what camera takes the best photos for your website. The Buildup involves developing a plan to backup your photos and files. The Buildup includes taking practice trips. And practicing with your new camera on those practice trips. Primarily, the Buildup is about the mental exercises around your camera. The rest of the activities are fun and easy.
You’ve torn down your former life, now you need to begin building your new life. The Buildup is not without its agonizing headaches—purchasing a new camera is insane-asylum maddening. The Buildup is putting together the trip of a lifetime. It’s purchasing all the niche backpacking items you saw in REI but could never previously justify. And purchasing contact lens solution, Neosporin, and aspirin. It’s about reading camera reviews. The Buildup is visiting travel medicine clinics for vaccinations. It’s determining the visas you need in advance and the visas that may be obtained during your travels. The Buildup is laying the foundation for a website and creating webpage templates to chronicle your travels. It’s about figuring out what camera takes the best photos for your website. The Buildup involves developing a plan to backup your photos and files. The Buildup includes taking practice trips. And practicing with your new camera on those practice trips. Primarily, the Buildup is about the mental exercises around your camera. The rest of the activities are fun and easy.
On The Road
There is nothing as liberating and exhilarating, and counterintuitively, as calming as life on the road.
You wake up every morning and do whatever you want to do that day. Everyday. Day after day after day. It’s mentally and physically liberating. I’ve never woken up as destressed as I did while traveling around the world. Each day was a new, exciting, uncharted adventure. I lost track of time. I lost track of worries. The fantasy cliché “do what makes you happy” often succumbs to the demands of reality but for one year that fantasy was reality.
You realize that you wouldn’t trade your life with anyone. Not for Jeff Bezos’s billions. Not for Tom Brady, LeBron James, or Mike Trout’s athletic ability. Even Paul Theroux or Anthony Bourdain. You’ve reached a pinnacle they never reached. If I had a billion dollars, I’d travel around the world, yet I didn’t have a billion dollars and traveled around the world. If I had to choose between a private jet to a business meeting or a twenty-hour train ride across India, I’d take the train across India.
Five years after I returned, and even though I have a full-time job, a mortgage, and other life commitments, I still maintain the liberated around the world travel feel—once you’ve captured that sensation, it stays with you. Once you realize you don’t need a billion dollars to live life on your terms…you live life on your terms.
There is nothing as liberating and exhilarating, and counterintuitively, as calming as life on the road.
You wake up every morning and do whatever you want to do that day. Everyday. Day after day after day. It’s mentally and physically liberating. I’ve never woken up as destressed as I did while traveling around the world. Each day was a new, exciting, uncharted adventure. I lost track of time. I lost track of worries. The fantasy cliché “do what makes you happy” often succumbs to the demands of reality but for one year that fantasy was reality.
You realize that you wouldn’t trade your life with anyone. Not for Jeff Bezos’s billions. Not for Tom Brady, LeBron James, or Mike Trout’s athletic ability. Even Paul Theroux or Anthony Bourdain. You’ve reached a pinnacle they never reached. If I had a billion dollars, I’d travel around the world, yet I didn’t have a billion dollars and traveled around the world. If I had to choose between a private jet to a business meeting or a twenty-hour train ride across India, I’d take the train across India.
Five years after I returned, and even though I have a full-time job, a mortgage, and other life commitments, I still maintain the liberated around the world travel feel—once you’ve captured that sensation, it stays with you. Once you realize you don’t need a billion dollars to live life on your terms…you live life on your terms.
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Train Tickets
Just go to The Man in Seat 61. |
The New Routine
Full-time travel has an adjustment period before finding your style and rhythm. Over time new routine develops: you research where to go, talk with others about their experiences, talk to locals on where to eat. You have your train ticket booked, in the class and berth you want, or if you prefer, you are scrambling on arrival at the station and heading to an exotic sounding destination. You go running every morning or convince yourself each night that the next morning you will go running. You call your parents on Sunday nights. You’ve deleted the bad photos and uploaded the good ones at the end of each day. It doesn’t matter what the routine is…because ultimately, what matters is, it’s your routine.
The routine can become a bit of a…routine. I found myself setting reminders to keep experimenting. Even though I developed a perfect routine, I tried to mix up my activities and take a different approach. I never wanted to assume I had traveling figured out. I noticed that my most exciting experiences happened earlier in the trip when I was new to traveling. The best stories came from my mistakes. I traveled long enough where I stopped making mistakes. I needed to force curveballs into my routine and hope to make some mistakes to keep the travels interesting.
Full-time travel has an adjustment period before finding your style and rhythm. Over time new routine develops: you research where to go, talk with others about their experiences, talk to locals on where to eat. You have your train ticket booked, in the class and berth you want, or if you prefer, you are scrambling on arrival at the station and heading to an exotic sounding destination. You go running every morning or convince yourself each night that the next morning you will go running. You call your parents on Sunday nights. You’ve deleted the bad photos and uploaded the good ones at the end of each day. It doesn’t matter what the routine is…because ultimately, what matters is, it’s your routine.
The routine can become a bit of a…routine. I found myself setting reminders to keep experimenting. Even though I developed a perfect routine, I tried to mix up my activities and take a different approach. I never wanted to assume I had traveling figured out. I noticed that my most exciting experiences happened earlier in the trip when I was new to traveling. The best stories came from my mistakes. I traveled long enough where I stopped making mistakes. I needed to force curveballs into my routine and hope to make some mistakes to keep the travels interesting.
Keep Traveling
There comes a point in your travels where you may think…I’m going to continue traveling…full time travel is my new life. There are individuals who claim you can travel forever. I’m not one of them. But if I was a forever traveler here’s a couple of ways that I’d manage that lifestyle. Four major options to keep living the dream:
There comes a point in your travels where you may think…I’m going to continue traveling…full time travel is my new life. There are individuals who claim you can travel forever. I’m not one of them. But if I was a forever traveler here’s a couple of ways that I’d manage that lifestyle. Four major options to keep living the dream:
- Create a professional website and blog about your adventures. You already made a website – make it more than a site that memorializes your adventures.
- Teach…or work for other social causes. Everyone “teaches”. The real calling is working for the Mines Advisory Group to clear land in Laos.
- Permanent employment. Why work in the US when you can work in Hong Kong or London or Rome? Do you realize how much money you would save on airfare?
- Start Your Own Business. Why work for someone else when you could work for yourself?
Return
There may come a point in your travels when, like Forest Gump running along Route 163 just north of Monument Valley, a thought crosses your mind: I think I’ll head home now. Then you return, update your resume, begin dealing with government bureaucracy, nearly faint when you receive a car insurance quote, and you’ll think: I should have kept traveling. When it’s time to come home, you’ll know. And you won’t have any regrets. And if you did it right, you’ll reminisce on the great times, rather than wonder if you should have kept traveling. In the four years since I’ve returned, I haven’t had a single thought about restarting life on the road.
There may come a point in your travels when, like Forest Gump running along Route 163 just north of Monument Valley, a thought crosses your mind: I think I’ll head home now. Then you return, update your resume, begin dealing with government bureaucracy, nearly faint when you receive a car insurance quote, and you’ll think: I should have kept traveling. When it’s time to come home, you’ll know. And you won’t have any regrets. And if you did it right, you’ll reminisce on the great times, rather than wonder if you should have kept traveling. In the four years since I’ve returned, I haven’t had a single thought about restarting life on the road.