Preparation

Is there anything as horrible as starting on a trip? Once you're off, that's all right, but the last moments are earthquake and convulsion, and the feeling that you are a snail being pulled off your rock.
-Anne Morrow Lindbergh

In some ways, I completely over-prepared for this trip. For two years, you might say it was an obsession of mine. It got to the point where people I worked with shied away whenever someone new asked me what I was doing. And yet once I was on the road, I realized how unprepared I actually was. No amount of reading, exercise, or training could fully prepare me for the time ahead. Still, there were many things that had to be done before I left...

Money

I was lucky enough that money was not a big issue for me on this trip. Don't get me wrong, I was hardly rich. I didn't come into any great inheritance. I certainly didn't marry into money! But long months of extremely heavy overtime at work, remote contract assignments where the company would pay for my expenses, and (to be honest) a miserly lifestyle, enabled me to accumulate a comfortable sum.

I was going to be completely irresponsible. Savings for the future be damned. I set aside a chunk that I told myself I would not touch, but that was also in the case of coming home broke, to tide me over until I found work again. At the time I left, I had what I thought enough for 1-3 years of budget traveling. I didn't want money to limit me on this trip. I've seen too many travelers who are so obsessed with costs (and I find myself doing this as well) that they don't really enjoy the places they visit just because they are too concerned with money. I wanted to be in the position where I could spend an extra dollar or two to get a nicer place rather than live dirt-poor all the time. If a little extra money could make me that much more happy, then I would spend it.

The way I ended up handling my money was a combination of credit card, travelers cheques, and cash. I set up an account with Charles Schwab that gave me:

A Visa card with PIN that could directly draw from the account (US$1 per transaction)
A checking account that would draw directly from the account
A relatively high interest on the savings, about 6%.

In addition to the Schwab Visa card, I had an American Express card that I exclusively used in order to cash personal checks to buy more travelers checks. In retrospect, I think I could have even done without this, but it was still nice to have in the case of emergency.

I also left home with approximately US$2500 in travelers checks. I didn't get my Visa card until just before I left Oz (2 months into the trip), but after that, I used my Visa card most of the time. The original checks I bought lasted me 4.5 months, so you can figure for yourself how often I had to rely on them. I found I needed them only rarely.

Some of the time, cash was my only means. Iran would lovingly take US$, but try to use a Visa card from an American bank, or gasp, American Express travelers checks? Not a chance! The black market, even when it would change travelers checks, almost always gave better rates for cash. Ethical problems aside, sometimes it was the only reasonable way to avoid government gouging on the "official" exchange rate. I usually carried around US$250 in cash with me at any time. Scattered around my person, of course. I had US$20 in each shoe (sealed in plastic under the insoles), a US$100 bill in my medical kit (hidden in a bandage wrapper), a US$50 in the leather case for my journal, and the rest in US$50 and US$1 bills in my money belt. Of course this depended on the country I was in. In most of South-East Asia, I carried the minimum. In Iran, where I was unsure of prices and needed only US$, I carried much more.

Mind

I knew I was entering into strange and unusual areas. To prepare for this, I did some reading... For example, I read almost every single Lonely Planet guidebook I could find in the library for most of Asia, Africa, the Middle-East, and Oz-NZ. I created computer programs to chart out my possible routes around the world. I downloaded every single travelogue I could find on the internet. (Remember, this was before browsers, etc., so I had to depend on Archie, rec.travel, and ftp.) And last, I spent many long hours sending email to people all over the world asking for help.

I didn't even try to learn any languages, as there would be too many to even attempt. I knew I would learn much faster once I was in each country. When I left, I could already get by in some west-European languages, and I thought it would be relatively simple to learn more.

Body

Of course, just like everything else, I went overboard training for this trip. In the months before I left, I was spending close to 5 hours a day at the gym. At my best, I could swim 2.5 miles, jog 10 miles, weight-lift for 1.5 hours, and then do additional aerobic stuff. The main emphasis of my training was fitness. I never bulked up, I simply lost most body fat and got nice and fit. I was up to 6 large meals a day at one point. Sound incredible? Well, it was. Shortly before I left, my body absolutely burned out, shut down, all systems turned off. I've never learned moderation before, my body itself taught me a good lesson this time.

In the end, all this training went for naught. A couple months traveling through New Zealand and Australia with people who continually drank, ate fast food, and rarely exercised reduced me back to my former level. But it still helped later in the trip when it was needed, such as in Nepal and Africa.

In other matters, I was a little worried about health matters. Ouch. I procrastinated up until the last possible moment for my vaccinations. You should start your vaccinations months in advance. I did it weeks in advance. The ones I did get were:

Yellow Fever
Typhoid
Polio
Tetanus
Rabies
Meningococcal Meningitis
Hepatitus B
Havrix (for Hepatitus A) - At the time, Havrix was unavailable in the U.S., so I got it in Melbourne, Australia and Dublin, Ireland. I believe it is now available for Americans as well.

I had my eyes checked, went in for my teeth, nothing but the usual health checks everyone should do regularly, yet I always miss...

Gear

Backpack

I looked at almost every single backpack in existence before finally giving up and settling for my old Eagle Creek travel pack. Dana Design, Mountansmith, Arc Ter'x, none of them were "perfect" at that time. (Since then, many backpack makers have come out with some lovely small pack designs.) I even considered having one custom made for me. The day before I left, I returned the Dana Bombpack I had thought to bring back to the store because I had dificulty getting all my gear plus a sleeping bag in it. My old pack, ugly and heavy as it was, did the trick.

In addition to the big pack, I also brought along (inside) a much smaller, cheap "daypack" from EMS that I had previously used on various hiking trips. I wanted this to be my main backpack, but until I could get rid of the sleeping bag and some gear, it just wasn't possible. Later on, when I did finally get rid of the big pack, this one worked brilliantly.

Shoes

This was a relatively simple matter. All I needed was something that would be comfortable for walking around cities all over the world and would be as adequete for the Himalaya as they would be for Paris. Not a problem! I had been wearing Tevas (sport sandals) for years traveling around Europe, so this was an obvious choice. For the other, more intense hiking I would need something more sturdy. I settled for a pair of Nike Air Madas, an off trail-running shoe. I think a good pair of normal running shoes would have been just as good. I almost never wore the Nikes, because my Tevas were just so comfortable.

Sleeping Bag

This was something else I thought I would need, and yet ended up not using for most of my trip. I bought a Marmot 0°C bag. It could compress down to the size of your head, and yet was warm enough (for me) for subzero temperatures. I sent it home two months into my trip (from Oz) and never needed it again until I got to Africa, over 8 months later. There were a few times I could have used it, Nepal for an example, but it was always possible to either rent one or use blankets provided in each case, so I never missed it.

Airfare

This was a problem for me. More than anything else, I did not want to be locked into an itinerary. I knew I would change my route as I went, and I didn't want some cold unfeeling airline company to tell me where I could visit. Around-the-world tickets sound like a good idea, and they can be from the money side of things, but once you look carefully at all the restrictions, limitations, and forbidding language, they just are a bad idea.

In the end, I bought my tickets from New York to Auckland, Christchurch to Melbourne, Cairns to Denpassar, Jakarta to Singapore, and Bangkok to Madras. I thought at least that much of my trip would remain constant. Even this was wrong to some degree. I only returned the ticket to India of my original bunch. But my route after Thailand bore absolutely no resemblence to my original itinerary, so I was glad I had bought no further tickets.

I bought a ticket from Bangkok to Kathmandu while I was in Singapore. From there, I traveled overland all the way to Europe. The next time I bought an air ticket was from Athens to Nairobi. And lastly, a ticket from Dublin to New York.

All told, my airfare came to around US$3000. I don't have the tickets handy now, but I believe fares came to about:
New York-Auckland, Christchurch-Melbourne US$1100
Cairnes-Denpassar US$700
Jakarta-Singapore US$75
Bangkok-Kathmandu US$250
Athens-Nairobi-Athens US$800
Dublin-New York US$225

Documents

The papers I brought on this trip were the following:

Passports

Visas

Vaccination Card

Diving Card

Job

"But what about your job, how did you get all this time off?" you ask? Easy. I was lucky, simple as that. The conversation went as follows:

Me to manager: "I want to take some time off to travel."
Manager: "Oh? Where do you want to go?"
Me: "Around the world!"
Manager(joking): "40 days around the world?"
Me: "No, I was thinking more like 730 days around the world."
Manager: "So... You want to take 2 years off?!"
Me: "Yes"
Manager: "OK!"
Much jubilation follows.

Others I have spoken with have needed to quit their jobs to get the necessary time. This was rarely a problem when they returned, and most seemed to get their original jobs back (if they wanted them) or found something more interesting.

Resources

If you want better information on how to prepare for a long-term trip, check out Marc Brosius' Round-The-World Travel Guide. He wrote it while preparing for his own walkabout. (Look for comments from me in the Languages and Financial Strategies sections!)