Planning Your Route
- Are seasons important to consider?
- Which direction should I go in?
- Is it possible to over-plan?
- Will I need visas?
- Can I get by speaking only English?
- Should I buy guidebooks?
Are seasons important to consider?
Yes, and in some ways that may surprise you.
The first part of this is obvious, hopefully. Mixing warm and hot destinations as you skip around the globe is ideal from a packing standpoint. Since you'll be carrying as little as possible from the very beginning and it's no fun having to buy a heavy jacket to use one week and then leave behind, you should do your best to avoid extreme cold. Extreme heat can also be a drag, but at least sunscreen and a sunhat won't double the size and weight of your pack. Again, this part is obvious and something you've probably already considered.
But there are more subtle considerations. Everyone knows that summers and winters are reversed from the northern to southern hemispheres, but what goes on in the middle isn't as straightforward as you might expect. If you've lived most of your life in, say, Toronto or Melbourne, it would be perfectly understandable to think that the seasons all just switch and the closer you get to the equator the more constant it becomes. And for the most part, it does work like that, but it's not always so simple.
If you've previously visited a tropical region (everything within about 23° either side of the equator) you are probably aware that instead of four seasons there tends to be two - the dry season and the wet season. But part of the dry season is usually warmer than the other part. The tricky part is that you can't just look at a map and figure it out for yourself. Things get a bit mixed up, even in places that are relatively close to each other.
For example, the hottest month of the year in Bangkok is April and just a bit south of the equator in Jakarta the hottest month is October. Yes, both places have pretty consistent year-round averages, but when you multiply them by their respective wet and dry seasons there can be glorious months and miserable months that take a bit of research to uncover. Dry seasons are almost always best, as some places suffer not only from stifling humidity but also near-constant downpours. Other wet seasons might consist only of some extra mugginess punctuated by a half hour of rain each afternoon.
The point of all this is that it is a good idea to research these things before you're committed to your timetable. Most guidebooks have helpful charts in them and the Lonely Planet website is another good source for which seasons are better or worse.
The other thing that makes this even a bit more complicated is that busy (and expensive) seasons in many tropical places often correspond more to the seasons where most visitors are coming from rather than going to.
For example, the beach resorts of Goa, India are packed with Western Europeans and Israelis from December through March because they are escaping their winter, but there are great weather months in Goa before and after that. Prices and crowd levels go down outside of that period, but if you are looking for a party you might want to be there in high season anyway.
Bali has a pretty consistent climate, but it gets packed around Christmas and from June through August as Americans and Europeans take advantage of their breaks, and Australians also do in the opposite way. Yet Bali has great weather and lower prices in between these times so for a RTW traveler those might be the best times to visit.
Again, the point is that some of these things aren't as obvious as they might seem, so thirty minutes doing research at an internet café before you confirm your route might be the difference between a perfectly timed visit and a disastrously timed one.
Which direction should I go in?
We know, this is sort of a silly question, but there are a couple of things to consider here. The first has to do with your budget. The expensive countries tend to be in a few bunches around the globe so you want to consider when you'll be running these gauntlets in terms of your overall budget. If you go over-budget in one region you might have to really cut back in a region you were actually looking forward to even more.
Some people might want to save their expensive countries for last and other people might want to get them out of the way early to take the pressure off. There is no right or wrong way, but before you lock in which direction you'll be going in you should give this a bit of thought.
The other consideration is a minor one, but it will affect your trip. If you go west to east you'll be losing hours all the way around the globe, but getting them all back in the form of an extra day when you cross the International Dateline. So if you are jumping three time zones on a flight you'll be in the new city at midnight but your body will think it's 9 p.m. And some variation of this will happen over and over again.
If you go east to west obviously the opposite will occur. You'll be getting tired early every time you change time zones, but you'll be rewarded with extra hours to adjust each time. And you won't ever miss that full day you lose crossing the International Dateline. Are you a morning person or a night person? It's all up to you, but crossing at least 24 time zones will have an affect on many of your mornings and evenings.
Is it possible to over-plan?
Well, yes and no. There is a famous quote from a 19th Century German field marshall that says, "No battle plan survives contact with the enemy." Fortunately this isn't quite that bad, but the point is basically the same. You'll never be able to plan for all the possibilities and you will very likely make plans for things you'll later change your mind about. And if you did manage to plan every detail of a long-term trip you'd likely suck almost all the fun out of it.
But at the same time, the planning, researching, discussing and rearranging is one of the most enjoyable aspects of the trip for many of us and there is nothing wrong with that. You'll meet people who literally figure out a first stop, buy a ticket to get there, and then just wing it letting the wind carry them in whichever direction it chooses. That might be the right approach for some people, but for many that will rob us of the pleasures involved in research and planning. How can you daydream about your trip if you only have the first stop picked out?
The fact that you are reading this probably means you are someone who enjoys the planning and researching part. The important thing to realize is you'll be far better off if you remain flexible throughout your trip. Plan all you want, but be prepared to change the plan at a moments' notice. For example, you might think you want to travel all the way down Central America by bus, but after a week or so you have decided it sucks. Just because you imagined you'd spend 3 weeks on this part of your trip and you told everyone you were going to do it, doesn't mean it's a good idea to keep going.
There will be places you like more than you thought you would and places you like much less than you thought you would. Some places will be more expensive than you realized and some other places might actually really seem like bargains when you get there. Weather is always unpredictable, so flights might be grounded due to snow and another area might be on the verge of a blistering heat wave.
If you map out your every move in advance and rigidly try to keep to it you'll be putting yourself through some needless hardship. For many of us, half the fun of a trip like this is the planning part, but the other half is just being out there slipping through the world and making things up as you go.
Some things you should definitely research before you get to the airport are: general costs, visa requirements, and holiday schedules. All of these can lead to nasty surprises if you take them too lightly.
Will I need visas to enter many countries?
Of course you'll need a valid passport to enter pretty much every country on earth, and in quite a few you'll also need a separate visa. In case you've never needed to go through this before, a visa is permission from a foreign government to enter their country, usually in the form of a paper stamp or sticker in your passport.
And it gets even more complicated. In some cases you might have to apply in person at their consulate office in another country long in advance, go through an application process, pay a fee that could range from small to surprisingly large, provide two passport-size photos, and then wait for an answer. In other cases you can literally walk off a plane in that country, hand them your passport and a very small fee, and instantly be on your way with a new visa sticker in your passport as a souvenir.
The point is you should take a bit of time to research each country you might consider entering and then make some notes. Of course, if you are from the US, Canada, EU, or Australia, you can move about pretty freely in these areas, but some of the places you'll need a visa can be surprising.
For example, if you are a US resident you can enter Argentina and Peru with just a passport and a smile, but for Brazil and Chile you'll also need a visa and there is a bizarrely high price tag attached to each. You can enter Thailand with just a passport, but India requires a pricey visa as well.
In some cases you can apply for a visa from your home country long before you leave, but in other cases you have to enter within a certain window of time after it's been issued or it becomes invalid. These rules do have a tendency to change, and this is not something to be taken lightly. You might even choose to cross some countries off your list due to strict requirements or expensive visas.
We know of many people who didn't find out about a visa requirement until they were ready to enter that country and sometimes at the airport itself. Believe us, you don't want to have to wait an extra week in a place you were ready to leave just because you forgot to check some website before you began.
Here are some sites that will cover pretty much everything you'll need to know.
For Australian passport holders
Can I get by speaking only English?
Yes, you can, but in some cases this will hinder your enjoyment. Without a doubt, English is the lingua franca of the traveling world and it's getting a bit more widespread all the time. But if you haven't been to many exotic places yet some of this isn't quite so obvious. As a rule of thumb, the more useless a country's language is outside of its borders the more motivated they are to speak English. Does that sound confusing? Yeah, you are right, it does.
Just consider that Icelandic is basically useless everywhere off their island so they almost all speak virtually flawless English. But for native Spanish speakers there are about 20 other countries they'll be understood in outside of their own. So as a result, surprisingly few native Spanish speakers master English.
So really, the tricky parts are Spanish and former Russian-speaking countries and to a lesser degree French-speaking countries. People in Kuala Lumpur, particularly those you are most likely to encounter, speak better English than those in Guatemala City. Most people in the former French colonies are bilingual, but neither of those languages is English, although many do speak English as well.
Some people really have an aptitude for learning foreign languages (or at least key phrases) in a short period of time, and they really enjoy it. But most of us really struggle with this. Even learning enough of a local language to be able to ask how late a place stays open doesn't guarantee you'll be able to understand the answer.
This is common advice, but it's good advice - Try to learn at least things like: hello, goodbye, thank you, excuse me, and how much does this cost, in the local language. People from all over the world will instantly recognize you as an English speaker and will do their best to answer you right back in English. You'll get an appreciative smile and much more cooperation than you would if you just assume they speak English.
If you are planning on touring much of Latin America, and particularly if you have some background with the Spanish language, you might consider taking a short language course in your first country. These courses can be cheap and interesting and will make the rest of your time in the region far more enriching.
Should I buy many guidebooks before I leave?
Some people love buying, studying, and even collecting guidebooks. Other people feel most guidebooks offer little more than a direct path to the most cliché and worn-out places. If you are closer to the former group than the latter group you might be wondering how you'll pull this off. And you've probably already realized that these books are damn heavy so the idea of carrying two or three of them, much less ten or more of them, won't make your pack any easier to manage.
Another complication you may or may not be aware of, is that Lonely Planets, Rough Guides, Let's Gos etc. are strangely expensive outside of the US and Canada. In both Europe and Australia these books can be 50% more than the already-high US cover price. Used bookstores are common in most of the world, but that usually doesn't help since newer versions of these books are always in high demand and therefore don't sit on shelves long.
To get started you might consider getting a regional guidebook instead of individual country ones. A South America, Southeast Asia, or Western Europe book won't cover nearly as much as the individual country books, but it will save you a lot of room and money while still giving you all the basics. Once on the road you can think about getting books to cover future destinations and trading in your now-superfluous ones in the process.
Many people will read guidebooks at home before they leave and then tear out only the pages they might need while there and bring only those. You can bring 30 pages each from quite a few books before they start to really add up to much space or weight. Other people will do research primarily on the internet and then print out those necessary pages to bring with them. Both of these methods leave something to be desired for true guidebook fanatics, but will work well for the majority.
If you are the type who likes to read about the history and culture of each country as well as detailed information about the sights in the time directly leading up to your visit you still have options, but they aren't as cheap or easy as they could be.
Where to get guidebooks on the road
Every large city and nearly every large airport has new bookstores. The problems are price and selection. In Europe a Lonely Planet guide that was $20 in the US might sell for up to €28 or so. And in the English language there really are no local alternatives for guidebooks. All the major book series are pretty much global so you aren't likely to find new domestic ones that are cheaper than ones you already know about.
Books about the country you are in are always easy to find, and books for large countries next door are also usually available, but if you are in, say, Germany and you want to find an Egypt book you might have to go to the largest bookstore in town and then cross your fingers. By the way, even though most bookstores are almost completely filled with books in the local language, nearly all of them will have a small section of popular English-language books as well as guidebooks in English as well. And quite a few large cities have a bookstore completely dedicated to English language books, so if you find one of those you usually hit the jackpot guidebooks-wise.
As we mentioned above, used book stores usually aren't too tough to find, but finding the particular title you are looking for is often a needle in a haystack proposition. If you find a large used book store it's likely to have a few stacks of guidebooks, but they'll usually be several years out of date and rarely for the country you are entering next. Still, it's worth a shot if you pass one because you usually have your answer in a minute or so, but you may not want to make a special trip across town for such a gamble.
One method that sounds like it should work really well is a travelers' book exchange. Many hostels (and even some pubs) have a bookcase where travelers can leave behind their no-longer-needed guidebooks and pick up someone else's that was going in the opposite direction. The problem is the takers outnumber the leavers by a huge margin, and guidebooks from countries next door are very prized for all the reasons mentioned above. Again, it's worth a look, but if you are a guidebook person don't plan your budget by assuming you'll buy your first one or two books and then trade your way around the world.
We wish we had a great ending to this section that had an easy and cheap method for acquiring guidebooks on the road, but we don't. The future is probably in downloadable guides that can be kept on a laptop, PDA, or some other handheld device. Lonely Planet has started selling individual chapters out of their guidebooks in a downloadable format, but they aren't cheap. Still, for guidebook fans this option can really save a lot of time, money, and room in your pack.
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