planning a 3 and a half month trip (month one)
Over the past few months I have been planning a trip around the world. Over the course of 10 weeks 2 of my closest friend, Chimera, and Kyler, will be backpacking across 6 countries. A trip of this immensity cannot be taken like a spontaneous weekend trip. We are broke young people and cannot spend loads of money, so it must be carefully planned and budgeted. Throughout the next few months I will detail our planning and go over what it takes to plan a trip like this.
First things first… I'm the realist!
Okay all joking aside this is pretty accurate, not in the sense that I am the top of the social food chain, but I am a realist. I am a realist in the sense that I know the reality of traveling, and while spontaneous trips have a certain time and place, I believe that “proper planning prevents poor performance.” I am a visual thinker so I think of it like this: If I was a painter (which I am not) I could impromptu grab a canvas and begin painting away and the product could be pretty good, or I could carefully plan out the scene I am going to paint and the paint I’m going to use. If I did the latter then I wouldn't run the risk of running out of paint or any other variable, and the finished product would be well thought out and turn out to be a magnificent piece of art.
Planning the painting.
A landscape painter knows the weather he needs in order to paint (he wouldn't want to go out when its pouring rain), he also knows the scene he wants to paint. Likewise a traveler should know, primarily where but also what time of year is best suited for the type of travel he wants. Therefore the first thing we researched was where and when we want to travel.
1. Know your path. (The where)
You gotta know where you want to travel in order to travel there… I mean that seams obvious, but its very important. Originally we really wanted to just stay in Asia, none of us had been to the continent, and it was a culture we really wanted to visit. We researched a little about that and while we did that we found that Iceland was also really High on our list.Obviously, Iceland is no where near Asia. So, our horizons being broadened, we decided that we also wanted to go to Russia- (Moscow specifically). If we wanted to go to these places then why not just make it a trip around the world? India was one of the top on our list so we made that our next stop. While researching we discussed going to Nepal because it was so close to New Delhi. We wanted many other places but unfortunately this is about all we can afford at the moment, and who knows, maybe we will extend our trip once were out there.
2. Decide when to go. (The when)
With the knowledge of what countries we wanted to go to we had to decide when we wanted to know. There are 3 criteria, in my opinion, to plan when you should go on a long distance trip: weather, price, and season. First we had to look at the weather. Iceland, and Russia can be extremely cold during the winter; Now we don't mind the cold but with the winter comes rain, snow, and over all mucky weather, not to mention poor lighting for photography (an important excuse for this trip). And I'm not talking about a light snow fall that brings fond memories to every clichè Hallmark Christmas film. No, I'm talking about blizzard-like, bitterly cold, ice age level snowfall (okay maybe not that bad, but you get my meaning). Now others may have some inate ability to see through a blizzard but I don't so I don't really want to go somewhere that I can't see. So winter is definitely a no go. Summer is a great time to travel, but with summer comes a few problems, first off the heat and humidity. I grew up in southern California, so I am accustomed to heat, but in no way do I like it. Add humidity in the mix… nope, no thank you. Summer is also the time when everyone travels. I consider myself a pretty social person, but I don't like long lines, huge crowds, and tourists… tourists everywhere!!! Summer is tourist season, so we’d be spending most our time navigating crowds and lines. Along with all this the prices go up during the summer immensely. Airlines know everyone travels during summer so they bump up the prices, likewise the merchants know people are coming and similarly raise their prices. I don't really like spending my hard earned money on things I can get cheaper another time. Obviously summer was a no go. With both summer and winter out of the water, we were left with two options: Autumn and Spring. I mean that's pretty obvious, if you don't know that you might want to get your brain checked. We searched a few websites for flights and found that Autumn is the cheapest time to go. Side note, flight prices are going down recently, I don't know if its because of gas prices, or if its from all the wars going on, all I know is that they're going down which makes me happy, although I hope its not because of anyone else misfortune. With that we decided to go in autumn (September through December)