Plan the itinerary

Define an itinerary which makes sense has been one the trickiest steps of our adventure.

We have got to juggle between our desires and .....everything else all the time! Meaning: freaks of nature (monsoon, cyclones), distances, cost of living in the visited countries, ease of access...

Moreover you need to set yourself a realistic goal. Travelling all around the world in 12 months is just impossible. So we chose to visit about one country each month to enjoy it fully and avoid having to constantly rush from one airport to the other. As a consequence we had to leave Australia and New Zealand aside...

Read about other backpackers' experiences on the internet helped us a lot to set up our itinerary. After giving it careful consideration, we finally made the decision that we would wear our shoes out in South America and Asia.

The first part of our trip is quite well prepared. We will spend the first four months of our journey in South America. Regarding Asia, even though the itinerary is also planned out, the management reserves the right to change it at any time without notice! This is one of the reasons why we chose not to go for a ‘round the world' ticket offered by air alliances like StarAlliance, Oneworld or Skyteam.

Even if at first sight their offers look pretty interesting, they are quite restrictive. We went for more flexibility. We will be able to spend more or less time than initially planned in one country or add new destinations if we feel like heading for other challenges! So we will get our plane tickets one day at a time. Don't worry, we have at least the first one :-) We will let you know if that choice turns out to be smart or not.

Despite the fact that we didn't go for a ‘round the world' ticket, we strongly recommend that you take a look at these alliances offers if you plan on travelling. It's always good to know what's out there.

We are more likely to travel by foot, train, bike, bus, boat or anything that will be useful in time! We mostly want to take our time and we already accepted the fact that we will have to spend 24h in a bus sometimes... well we will probably get the opportunity to talk about that again later... when we are so stiff that we can't walk anymore!

Departure end of February heading off to Buenos Aires!

So on the menu!.... discovery of Argentina, Chile, Easter Island, Peru and Bolivia. We will also visit Brazil briefly before flying to Asia at the end of June or beginning of July. Once there, we plan on visiting Indonesia, Vietnam, Nepal, Tibet, China, Japan, Laos and Thailand. However, as mentioned earlier, we might review that part of the trip.

Useful links to prepare your itinerary well:

General info : Rough Guides, Go backpacking

Cheap flights: Momondo

Weather conditions : Worldreviewer

This site is just great... of course we didn't find it until our itinerary was planned. It would have come handy before. We wouldn't have wasted a huge amount of time saving data country by country on an unreliable spreadsheet :-)

Any of your question is answered somewhere on the Internet! People share their experiences all over the place. If you search properly you will get what you are looking for. In the meantime, do not hesitate to contact us if you need some help.