World tour: itinerary and flights

How did we came to decide on a world tour?

This is it, we are going on a world tour! This was a dream we wouldn’t dare to considerate. However, while we were living as expats in London, we started to prepare for a year long trip to Australia. While we were doing research, we realised we could easily add on stops on the way. Then one day, we ended up saving over our minimum budget. After this, one of us (Clémentine!) asked: why not going all the way around the world?! After all, a return ticket from Europe to Australia is more or less the same price as an entry level world tour ticket…

We are going on a year or year and a half (if we can afford it) to visit 5 continents: North and Central America, Oceania, Asia and Africa (departing and returning to Europe). Even tough we want to go everywhere, we had to make choices. For example, we choose not to travel to South America, as we would like to spend a few months there. It would have to be another trip!

Our world tour destinations

We organized our trip and our plane tickets in two parts: first from Paris to Australia, then once in Australia our return to France. We were not sure how much time we would want to spend in Australia. Thanks to this break, we were able to re-evaluate our budget and desires. Indeed, our travel style has certainly changed after our first 6 months on the road. We also changed some plans on the way. For example, we made a detour in Central America because of the political situation in Nicaragua. To ensure our security, we regularly check the French government travel safety tips.

The multi-stop ticket versus world tour ticket

Consequently, we opted for a multi-stop ticket rather than a world tour ticket. Here are the reasons for our choice:

• We were not sure of the second part of our trip and wanted to give us the opportunity to re-evaluate mid-term.
• The round-the-world ticket is limited to one year. We are greedy and we suspected that we would want to extend.
• Our first destinations were not part of the possibilities on round the world tickets.

The only drawback on our multi-stop ticket, compared to the world tour ticket, is we do not have the flexibility of changing the flight dates. However, it is also a good thing, otherwise we would still be in Alaska or Mexico … We just love all the countries we are visiting!

To build our itinerary and get the best deals we wrote a brief and worked on quotes with dozens of travel agencies in France and in the UK (as we were living in London at the time).

We are using other long distant transports (see the logos on the graph). We will be traveling by boat, bus, train, car and campervan.