Hello all,
I haven’t posted for quite some time, being desk-bound with one-week-at-a-time vacations has kept real travel a bit of a distant dream, but that’s all about to change, my friends:
My girlfriend and I will be getting married this July, and then taking ourselves on a bit of a honeymoon, taking a year to visit Europe, Asia and Australia. Life is rough, isn’t it? We’ll be quitting our jobs in Canada, and we plan to look for work elsewhere when we’re done – hopefully Europe – but that’s a topic for another post.
Quick background, we’re 27 and 25, I’ve done a two month trip to Spain, Portugal and Morocco, but as a couple we’ve only done one-week Caribbean trips and North American city trips…staying in hostels, couchsurfing, camping, beach huts and the like…had to make sure the missus would be OK with that style of travel before sealing the deal~
We’ll travel in a similar budget style for this trip, with some expensive activities thrown in of course. I won’t ask for budget opinions as it is so variable between people, but we’ve managed to save well more than my rough expectations of what we’ll need. We aren’t planning to continue travelling until the money runs out – we’ll have a recession-time job search to look forward to!
Itinerary
So, what I’m looking for is a general critique of the itinerary, primarily as regards to weather, festivals, and travel practicalities. I know there’s no way for it all to be ideal, but I’d like to do as best we can. The dates listed aren’t meant to be exact; it’s just how I got a spreadsheet to organize me properly into weeks and seasons.
I believe we’re not walking into any major monsoons, though I do expect it will be starting to get toasty in India in March, and August in Japan may be steamy. It seems that we’re getting mostly shoulder and high seasons though.
Some notes to explain things that may seem odd:
- Heading to Asia, then back out to Australia: obviously not the shortest distance, puts us in Australia in spring, and summer for hiking the Milford track in NZ. It also will be a nice change of pace in the middle of the Asia section of the trip.
- Christmas in Vietnam with my girlfriend’s extended family
- The Europe section is not thoroughly planned, nor will it be. We may look to move out the flight home, and use up our whole max Schengen time, depending on how we feel at that point. Also, not certain if we’ll start that leg in Turkey or Greece. Mmmm Turkey Greece, now I’m hungry.
- China duration would be visa-dependant, possibly adding a small taste of Indonesia if we need to leave earlier.
- We are frequent hikers/back-country campers, living near the Canadian Rockies has built this into us. This is why the hikes figure prominently in determining when we visit certain places.
18-Jul-10 Hawaii
25-Jul-10 Japan
1-Aug-10 Japan
8-Aug-10 Japan
15-Aug-10 China
22-Aug-10 China
29-Aug-10 China
5-Sep-10 China
12-Sep-10 China
19-Sep-10 China
26-Sep-10 Oz (scuba GBR)
3-Oct-10 Oz
10-Oct-10 Oz
17-Oct-10 Oz
24-Oct-10 Nz (Milford,Routeburn Tracks)
31-Oct-10 Nz
7-Nov-10 Nz
14-Nov-10 Nz
21-Nov-10 Thailand
28-Nov-10 Cambodia
5-Dec-10 Cambodia
12-Dec-10 Vietnam
19-Dec-10 Vietnam
26-Dec-10 Vietnam
2-Jan-11 Vietnam
9-Jan-11 Laos
16-Jan-11 Laos
23-Jan-11 Thailand
30-Jan-11 Thailand
6-Feb-11 Thailand
13-Feb-11 India
20-Feb-11 India
27-Feb-11 India
6-Mar-11 India
13-Mar-11 India
20-Mar-11 Nepal (EBC Trek)
27-Mar-11 Nepal (EBC Trek)
3-Apr-11 Nepal
10-Apr-11 Turkey
17-Apr-11 Turkey
24-Apr-11 Turkey
1-May-11 Greece
8-May-11 Greece
15-May-11 Italy
22-May-11 Italy
29-May-11 Italy
5-Jun-11 Switz
12-Jun-11 Germany
19-Jun-11 Germany
26-Jun-11 Czech
3-Jul-11 Germany
10-Jul-11 Netherlands
17-Jul-11 France
24-Jul-11 UK
31-Jul-11 UK
I’ve got an alternate version which swaps the OZ/NZ section with the India/Nepal section by heading through Tibet into Nepal…the upsides being that we see Tibet and hit the EBC Trek in the season of clearest visibility (though also at its busiest), the downside is that we go through all of what I perceive to be the more difficult countries to travel through all at once, and near the beginning of the trip – (China-Nepal-India). Still mulling this one over.
Flights (put them mostly on Wednesdays as I’d expect they are the cheapest)
Calgary-Honolulu July 20 2010
Honolulu-Tokyo July 28 2010
Tokyo-Beijing Aug 18 2010
Hong Kong - Singapore Sep 20 2010
Singapore - Cairns Sep 23 2010
Melbourne - Queenstown Nov 3 2010
Auckland-Bangkok Nov 24 2010
Bangkok-Calcutta Feb 16 2011
Kathmandu-Athens April 13 2011
London-Calgary Jul 20 2011
Flight quote from Airtreks came out at $4852USD, my quick Kayak searching turned up $4961USD –though with some different dates for the flights that are still a year out. Both numbers are taxes in.
I had pretty much decided on buying a RTW ticket ahead of time vs one-way tickets as we go, thinking of it as a cost/flexibility trade-off. We’re both engineers, so by nature we don’t mind a bit of structure~. Also, after putting this much thought into the seasons we’d like to hit certain places in, we’d need to want to detour pretty badly to go off course. That said, I was expecting to find a much heavier discount purchasing through a broker compared to putting it together myself. Granted, the fares you see on sites like Kayak sometimes have the habit of disappearing a few clicks into trying to purchase them, so that Kayak number may end up climbing up a bit in reality. I guess I was just really surprised at how close they were. Has anyone else found their own one-way fare searching line up so closely with a RTW quote?
Extra note: I quickly ruled out the alliance program RTW tickets, their trip builders were putting me into the 10k range, even with some flights stripped out to keep within maximum # of flight segments. Things like counting overland travel to your total miles and the fact that most flights are actually 2 or 3 “flight segments” (as a flight is rarely direct with restricted airlines), quickly make those programs not even close to competitive in price to the consolidator RTW tickets, at least for a trip like ours where only relatively major flight hubs are used.
The end result is that we’ll likely end up buying our first pile of one-way tickets on our own, and then buying one step ahead to handle proof of onward travel requirements, or at least having a refundable ticket in hand. So while I’ve more or less decided on the flight strategy, I decided to include this in the post in case someone sees something worth pointing out for discussion, or someone else is in a similar situation and would find it interesting.
One final little question:
My girlfriend intends to take my name when we get married, but we’re planning to depart a week after the wedding, which wouldn’t leave enough time to manage changing the passport and other documents, not to mention dealing with travel visas. The easiest, and most commonly advised solution is to do the name change after the trip, which is likely what she’ll do. What we’re wondering is if anyone has any experience (Canada specific) of a way to get the new passport ahead of the wedding, that wouldn’t involve courts or paying for the full legal name change. We’re common-law (living in sin! gasp!) for about three years now.
So please, let me know your thoughts on this itinerary, any problems I may not have seen, any suggestions for a change that will bring us somewhere at a better time. I’ve tried to avoid rushing too much, though like many an enthusiastic rtw planner, I imagine I could do better on that front. So tell me about that as well. Heck, after reading all of this, tell me anything you’d like, you’ve earned it.
Not to betray travelpunk.com, but I've posted this as well on bootsnall, they seem to have a big resident rtw'er population. But travelpunk is the forum that got me interested in travel in the first place, and here my heart remains, so expect to hear more from me now that I've got something interesting to talk about!
Time will bear this, I promise, as my longest post! Thanks,
Colin
RTW Honeymoon Itinerary!
Looks like it's going to be an epic honeymoon.
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