Book your flights early, it gives you something to aim for

It always seems like a daunting task, organising a long trip or a trip around the world.

In many ways it can be but usually only in your own head. The fear of the unknown often leads people to over prepare (Which is not a bad thing) but often it can be simply a case of booking some tickets and jumping on a plane.

In June 2005 I made the decision in my head that I was going to go traveling for at least a year and I gave myself a rough date of “in a years time”. No doubt many friends and family who I mentioned it to at the time probably thought it was just another one of my strange ideas which would fade away after a couple of months.

A friend of mine also proclaimed he was off round the world to various destinations, in fact he bought all the Lonely Planet books for each and every country he would set foot in. Sadly, his trip never got past the planning stage as he drifted back into his daily routine. For this reason I often suggest that booking flights is the way to go, simply booking your flights gives you a specific date to aim for and gives yourself motivation to get organised.

Planning The Basics

At first I really didn’t know where to start and thought the task was much more complicated than it actually was. I had so many questions, “how much money to take?”, “what to take?”, “what about visa’s?”, “insurance?”, “bank accounts and credit cards?”. The hardest tasks I found were simply getting a new bank account and one visa, the rest was a breeze.

1. Book your flights

By booking your flights you have a defined date to aim for which helps to get yourself motivated as well as excited about your trip ahead. Warning: Do make sure you leave enough time to raise enough funds before you set a leaving date. Usually the earliest you can book a Round The World set of flights is 11 months before you leave.

2. Check Visa Requirements

Make sure you are aware of the visa situations for the countries that you’ll be visiting. Many countries will give you a visa on entry, but many won’t so it is best to be aware of what you need a while before you go. – I only needed to obtain a year working holiday visa for Australia before I left, so it is not as complicated as it often sounds.

3. Get Your Vaccines

You may need various vaccines for your trip depending on the countries you are visiting. In the UK you can usually book an appointment at your doctors eight weeks before you leave. If you do leave it late you could find yourself having various injections in different limbs as some vaccines require more than one injection. Also remember to look into whether your are traveling to a malaria and if you are that you have malaria tablets – I had about 12 injections before I left (including Hep A and B, Japanese Encephalitis, Rabies and Typhoid), surprisingly most were painless as I soon got used to being a pin cushion. The Rabies and Japanese Encephalitis cost about 200 UK Pounds the other vaccines cost little or nothing at all.

4. Sort Out Your Finances

Also see the article Secret Of Successful Saving For Your Trip .

There are two points here:

Personal Finances – Pay off your debts, sort out any direct debits and save some money. Basically get to know your bank statement in detail, know exactly what money is coming in and where it is going out. Most of us hide from our bank statements and bills from time to time, but now is the time to get a grip. Doing this will enable you to control your financial situation so that you can save money for the trip ahead. The last thing you would want is your gym membership direct debit going out when you’re camping in the middle of Inner Mongolia. – When I did exactly this, for the first time in my life I knew exactly what was coming in and what was going out without even looking at a bank statement. It was a good lesson for me.

Budgeting – You need to find out how much money you are going to need for your trip. This varies greatly depending on what type of traveller you are. Obviously if you are a budget traveller you’ll require a lot less cash than someone staying in posh hotels. It’s a good idea to find out the rough cost of living per day in each country and go from there. There is a lot of information on the web about the various costs of different countries. The Thorn Tree- http://thorntree.lonelyplanet.com/ and Gapyear.com – http://www.gapyear.com/ are just two such sites.

5. Buy the Gear

It is often the mistake of the rookie traveler to take far to much stuff along with them for the ride, often things that they’ll never use. One good way of avoiding this is to buy a smallish rucksack, so that when it’s full, it’s full, meaning you’ll have to leave behind what you can’t fit in. A 50L rucksack should do the job for most people, but it is really personal preference although I wouldn’t want to lug around a huge 70L + rucksack especially when running for a bus! Unless you are going somewhere very remote you should be able to buy most items you’ll need along the way. – I bought a brand new t-shirt at home before I left for 40 UK pounds, only to find similar quality ones in China for 2-3 UK pounds each.

6. Travel Insurance

Don’t forget your travel insurance. Make sure it covers you for the activities that you wish to do, for example sky diving, river rapids etc. Many insurance policies don’t cover these more extreme sports. Travel insurance isn’t an interesting thing to research but it is essential if you do get into a bad situation.

These are the basic areas I covered before I left on my trip. Once they were covered I felt happy that the main areas of worry had been covered before treading into the unknown. Planning a trip around the world isn’t as hard as it may seem, the hardest aspect I found was planing the little details of the trip itself. I decided to leave the route planning as open as possible and basically not to plan much at all.

This technique worked for me but I know many other travellers who like to plan in as much detail as possible.