Buying an Around the World Ticket

Believe it or not, you can buy yourself a ticket to fly around the world. The basic advantage of buying a  world ‘single’ ticket versus 20 or 22 tickets is price; theoretically the worldwide ticket price is cheaper.  But with this ‘cheaper’ ticket comes rules. For example,  you have one year to do the travelling, you always have to keep going in one direction (including hopping up and down the globe) and you are restricted by the total number of miles you can fly and the number of stops (called ‘hops’). With Star Alliance and One World, you can buy a maximum 39,000 miles. Depending where you're flying to, it might be cheaper to buy a world ticket but you will need to add up all individual tickets and compare the pricing.

There are also advantages for One World and different ones for Star Alliance. With the worldwide merger/ alliance of airlines over the past ten years, One World now has members including British Airways, Cathay Pacific, American Airlines and Qatar Airways. With Star Alliance the partners include Air Canada, United, U.S. Airways, Lufthansa and Air India. You really need to know where in the world you’re travelling to take advantage of either of these partner programs. It’s not rocket science to understand that if you’re not going near India that Star Alliance may not be your preferable choice.

For us, it boiled down to total miles and the specific countries we were going in to and Star Alliance seemed the best. When I first started planning, it would take me 2 hours to plan out a trip and compare. Now I can do various scenarios anywhere on the planet in less than a minute. (When we get back, I'd be pleased to help anyone with this).

The big conclusion out of this is that the world is a very large place and with our 22 country visits, we seem to be touching a small part!! That said, we are using 38,190 miles with the round the world ticket and then some!

Preparation is Key

How much do you take around the world? Try one suitcase measuring 26 inches high, 15 inches wide and 10 inches deep. Add one back-pack and that’s it. Want to bring 5 pairs of shoes? Be my guest as long as it fits into the suitcase or you can cram them in your knapsack. Want to take along the kitchen sink? Go for it… but you’ll be tripping the world with just the clothes on your back!

I could add that you need to carry a years’ worth of pills like vitamin, calcium, fish pills, etc. but this is boring. More reality is the added necessity of sanity wipes when encountering some of the ugly toilet facilities (or lack thereof) when travelling around the world.

When you think about it, you’re carrying ‘a home away from home’ with you along a 39,000+ journey. We’re talking about carrying these belongings on airplanes, up and down subway stairs, riding with it (or sitting on it) for hours on a train or bus (or elephant)- or just wheeling it behind you in foreign streets until you reach your destination. You have to carry clothes in good weather, rainy weather, hot weather, cold weather. You have to pack for a lot of weather in a very little space for coats, tops and footwear. 

For a trip around the world, preparation is key and we’ve been in planning mode for the last several months. This is one reason why we’re travelling to countries in their nice, warm weather. We’ve planned to travel when there is summer in most of these 22 countries. The only bad part is that this will also involve rain but hopefully not monsoons. Take India for example- people who have been there in their summer say you can’t describe the heat of 44 degrees Celsius with no wind and 90 percent humidity other than visiting hell when it’s humid! So we’ve planned India after their summer and we’ve also planned not to visit places when it’s that hot. The tricky part is Asia where this also involves monsoons, hurricanes and tropical storms.

We'll see how it goes. As I am the definition of a true 'shopoholic', it's going to be interesting how I can NOT buy things along the way (although someone at work told me to carry a platinum American Express Card and you can ship everything back?).

Hello World!

Here it is- a chance in a lifetime, to literally go around the world! In our wildest dreams- when we first met many decades ago- we never thought we could someday take off and go around the world. How long would it take? Where would we go? How much would it cost? Would we get sick of each other?  Then the next set of questions- would we get physically sick? Would we get robbed? Would we get mugged?

Although we haven’t necessarily thrown ‘caution to the wind', we have decided to take off and let history unfold. This was not an easy decision. First- family is very, very important to us and we thought seriously about all the ‘what if’ that could happen and maybe we shouldn’t go. But in reality, we could easily be hit by a bus when we go out next as there are no guarantees in life. Then we thought about our friends- dear friends who we love being around. Will they embrace us when we return? For that matter, will our family still be talking to us on our return? 

Next, what would happen to our home if a pipe breaks or the heat pump goes or we forget to pay the electric bill or someone takes our parking spaces we get robbed while we’re away? These questions went on and on and on. This may not be the best adult decision we’ll ever  make and financially it's probably going to be more expensive than our simple budget allows- but we have good health and we’re (relatively) young- so why not take off while we can!

So dear readers, prepare for the unknown, because that’s exactly what this blog is going to be. Hopefully you’ll see gorgeous pictures of some wonderful scenery or festive occasion or even strange wildlife. We’ll try and explain how the impact of visiting far-away places feels like, what it's like because we’re a minority, how we get by as we don’t speak the language or we get lost... stuff will happen when you travel the world in one year!

As for where we're going, we’re ‘only’ visiting 22 major countries. To put this into perspective, this is 11% of total countries in the world. To get there, it's way in excess of the maximum 39,000 miles a world airline ticket gives you. So we'll be travelling by bus, train, even elephants! The world might look small when looking at earth from space, but it's actually very big and we’ll be only hitting a small part. We’re also not going to some of the places we’ve already been to (so no Europe, no Caribbean, no shopping in New York City).  

But one thing is for sure and that is we’ll be telling you about places and things and people that in our wildest dreams we never thought we’d ever experience. So hang on to your heart monitors folks, as we make our windy way up and down the globe going right around the world!