The Voss Dufour World Tour

Do you buy stuff or experiences?

Believe it or not, traveling around the world is cheaper than being unemployed back home and existing day to day, even if you don’t live in a big city and have a huge social life.. That being said, it’s clearly something that you have to plan ahead for. Being unemployed doesn’t just mean you can take off and live cheaper elsewhere (although maybe you can…?) The length and path of your trip is determined by two things (which determine a lot in life): time and money.

When James and I started plotting this trip, we had to figure out how much dinero we had, since we both have all the time in the world.  While that may seem like an overwhelming task, there are a couple things you have to factor in to tackle this question, making it much more manageable.

What’s your daily budget going to be? Ie how much will you spend while traveling on food, lodging, transport, fun and miscellaneous? We decided on a 30 USD/day/pp daily allowance.

How much money do you have? Luckily that doesn’t take much figuring out, rather a glance at your bank account!

Do you plan on working while traveling? We decided that we weren’t going to work, at least not on this world tour. Who knows what will happen next time?

What sort of sacrifices will you be willing to make while traveling? Let’s be honest, if you are traveling on a tight budget, aiming to get the most out of your money, you can’t sign up for every zip line and adventure trek. You will need to prioritize. Part of the focus of our trip is rock climbing. It tends to work out well because as we have all the necessary gear and it doesn’t cost us anything, just transport to and from the rocks. We usually end up meeting locals, We ALWAYS end up in amazing, beautiful spots, off the beaten track, giving us memories and experiences that will stay with us forever. It gets us out and about, being active, engaged in our environment and away from souvenir shops. I wouldn’t recommend picking up rock climbing for those reasons alone, but think about things you like to do back home and see if you can’t do them while on the road. There are many free and/or low cost activities that are one of a kind.

How can you cut down on fixed costs like food and lodging? You gotta eat and sleep, no two ways about that. But there are ways to do it cheaper than you think. The longer you stay in one place, the cheaper it works out to be in the long run. A number of hostels will negotiate cheaper prices for longer term (1 week, 1 month+) stays. And finding a hostel that has a kitchen is key. Not only will cooking help the budget, everyone always gathers in the kitchen so it’s a great way to meet people (and try new food!)  Even better than that, try couchsurfing. There are people all around the world who open up their home and offer a couch, floor spare or if you are lucky, a spare bed to travelers. Yes, it’s free, but that is not why you do it.

We are couchsurfing for myriad reasons; we meet locals..really interesting, amazing, fascinating locals who can tell you all the best things about their city/town/village/country. We get to use their kitchen to make yummy homemade, at times comfort,  food. Since James can’t seem to cook for just 2, our dinners always include our host and many hours have passed with us all sitting around the table. It’s an easy way to say thanks for hosting us. You can watch local tv which, in other countries, is super interesting  There is usually a hot shower involved. And for people who have been on the road for awhile, it’s nice to be in a home, even if it’s not yours.

I estimate that we have spent close to 100 nights couchsurfing, either with friends and family, or “official” couchsurfing hosts. At a guesstimate of $10USD/night for a hostel, that’s almost $1000 USD! Enough for another month of travel.

But do know that couchsurfing is about karma. People host because they have been hosted or plan on traveling and hope to get hosted in the future. James and I have a LOT of couchsurfing karma to repay which we look forward to doing one day.

This approach works to budget travel. It take some work, but it totally pays off. Almost 6 months on the road and we are averaging about $30/day/pp!(*) Granted some places were more expensive (Australia and NZ) but in Asia we can survive on less than that—and we aren’t couchsurfing.  As I take a look at our budget spreadsheet a majority of our money (40%) goes to food costs. 25% has been spent on transport, both locally and on longer bus and train rides. Lodging is the next biggest expense at 12% of the budget (Just $577/pp so far!) with entertainment (museum entrance fees etc.) coming in a close 4th, accounting for 10% of the budget. The remaining amount of money has been spent on internet, gifts and “other” which usually means laundry and sending things back home.

Keeping tabs on our money situation as we travel in and out of countries constantly reminds me how lucky I am in so many ways. Saving for travel  has always been a priority for both of us and we are blessed to be in a situation where we can check out the 4 corners of the Earth for such an extended period of time.

We buy experiences and there is no column for that in the spreadsheet.

(*) The budget doesn’t include 2 big ticket items: Our 4 day Inca Trek and a 2 day hike up Mt Chachani in Peru.

Congratulations! You are one of the thousands of people who have decided to take a break from life as you know it and take a trip round the world. Believe me, after making that decision (and clicking on the “purchase” option to buy your plane ticket) all the rest will be easy-peasy; it will just fall into place.

But first that plane ticket. Let’s talk about that.

Which type of plane ticket will you buy? Assuming you are planning on buying a Round the World Ticket (to which there are pros and cons), you have a couple options. I don’t know much about other companies (besides  <a href="www.oneworld.com" the One World Alliance</a>) or options, but can definitely talk about our experiences and the research we did.  James and I are traveling on a 4 continent  (Europe, South America, Oceania and Asia) One World Alliance ticket. This ticket allows you 16 legs over the course of your 4 continent travel. There are some things to know about this type of ticket:

Once you cross an ocean, you can’t go back over that same ocean. Once we flew from South America to Oceania, we couldn’t fly back to South America….at least not on this trip!

Our travel also has to be completed in about 11 months, or roughly 330 days.

The dates are changeable. You do need to book the ticket with set flights to assure that there are flights from point A to point B. But if and when you get to Point B and decide you want to stay longer than you originally planned, you can change your flight for a later date. We were told there was no fee for this and there wasn’t until we arrived in Oceania and Qantas told us that any changes done in Australia had a fee. Luckily we were calling from NZ and so reassessed some upcoming flights thru Asia.  Hmm…we hope we don’t run into this problem again. Touch wood.

Once you fly into a city, you can’t fly back into that city ie you can’t fly into Sydney, then fly to Melbourne and then back to Sydney. Each city on your itinerary has to be different.

One World is an alliance of some great airlines: Qantas, LAN, Iberia, Cathay Pacific, JAL, British Airways to name a few. They offer 3, 4, 5 and 6 continent ticket options. Before you buy one of these tickets, consider purchasing the ticket OUTSIDE of the USA. Depending on the country/continent, these ticket prices vary. There is a chart on the One World Alliance webpage outlining the prices based on purchasing location. Our ticket was about 1600 GBP/pp, at the time around $3000 USD. As we didn’t include North America in our 4 continents, our trip officially began in London but with family over there this worked out well for us.  While a round-trip ticket to London in August wasn’t cheap (about $900USD/pp), when all the math was done, we ended up saving ourselves about $1000 USD had we bought that same ticket within the USA.

I was lucky that James did most of the leg work when figuring out our itinerary. To say it took a lot time would be an understatement. There was lots of constant rearranging due to where and when particular flights went vs where we wanted to go. A lot of attention has to be paid to the flight path of the flights you are selecting. We had originally planned to fly Europe, South America, Asia and then Oceania, but all flights out of South America to Asia touched down somewhere in North America, thus making our 4 continent ticket a 5 continent ticket, even if it was just a lay over. So we (let’s be honest, it was James) had to spend some time figuring out  our route.

The upside of this ticket, in my opinion, is that it’s a nice balance between wanting to plan a bit vs figuring it all out while on the road. We have an itinerary and a sense of where we are going. But in between airports, the world is our oyster. Perhaps for some, that’s too much planning and they would rather buy tickets on the go, while on the road. That’s cool too. We have bought in-country flights to visit other places that aren’t official stops on our One World Alliance itinerary. Do whatever works for you. With the internet and a credit card, anything is more or less possible. .

The other Round The World Tickets options (no doubt there are many out there) that  I know about is with <a href="www.staralliance.com" Star Alliance</a>.  I am not 100% sure which airlines are in their alliance, but I do recall that their ticket pricing is based on desired miles traveled. So instead of purchasing a ticket by number of continents, you do it based on your flight path and how many miles that adds up to. Again, we went with One World Alliance so I can’t speak much to other choice, but I remember that our similar fllight with Star was over $5000 USD.

Considering the price of a round-trip ticket to Thailand from Boston is no less than $1000 USD and flights to Australia and some of our other further away destinations are $1500 USD +,  I would say with conviction that our $3300 USD 4 continent ticket is a bargain. It works out to about $200 USD/per leg of our trip. And no matter what price you put on the ticket, clearly the experience is priceless. Thank you Mastercard!