Traveling Around the World for Couples

One of the most important decisions one has to make when planning a trip around the world is how to go about actually getting around the world. The decision of whether to buy a traditional round the world plane ticket vs. buying one-way tickets as you go is an important one that will have a major impact on your trip.

When Megan and I took our trip in 2008-2009, we went with one-ways, primarily because we wanted the freedom to do what we want, when we wanted. Hindsight is always 20/20, but the next time we take a long-term trip, we will certainly dig deeper into our options.

A new option

One new tool that has come along since our trip is BootsnAll’s Indie, a multi-country flight tool that allows you to search, price, and book multi-stop tickets up to 25 legs, completely online! With the instant pricing and buying options, it makes it easier to break your trip up into multiple legs if you want the best of both worlds – combining freedom with having a plan.

There are several issues that travelers have had with booking a traditional round the world ticket.

• Rules: So many rules, including, but not limited to: traveling in one direction only (east to west or vice versa), having a mileage or stops limit, a continent limit, no backtracking, etc.
• Having to go through an agent for everything, including getting a price.
• Making a decision on your entire itinerary up front before leaving.

With Indie, the only rule is that the trip has to be less than 25 legs, which takes care of 99% of the round the world trips that people take. Getting an instant price makes planning and budgeting so much easier. Plus they have experts at the ready should you need assistance. If you’re a planner, you can plan everything out in advance with indie like you would with a traditional RTW ticket, but if you want to have more spontaneity for your trip, it’s easy to split the trip up into sections, having the best of both worlds.

Why we won’t buy one-ways again

Traveling as a couple offers a different dynamic than solo travel or traveling as a backpacker in your early 20′s. While spontaneity certainly is nice, and there’s a lot to be said about taking advantage of opportunities that pop up while on the road, sometimes too much freedom can be a bad thing, especially when there is another person involved.

Megan and I are notorious for our lack of decision-making skills. Something as simple as what to have for dinner can evolve into an hour-long process.
“I don’t really care, what do you want?”
“Whatever, I’m not in the mood for anything in particular, what about you?”
“Doesn’t really matter to me, what sounds good?”
“What about Vietnamese?”
“Eh, I just had that for lunch earlier in the week. How about pizza?”
“You always want pizza – let’s get something different.”
“I don’t always want pizza. Fine, any other suggestions?”
“I don’t know, you always shoot down my suggestions.”
“No I don’t!”

And so it continues along those lines for a while before the conversation turns back to the decision we were trying to make in the first place.

Now try to picture that scenario over the course of a year-long trip around the world. A few times a week we had to make the decision of what to do next. If we had that much trouble deciding on dinner on a Tuesday night, how the hell were we supposed to decide and agree on our next destination for our trip?

While we obviously did make those decisions, I don’t want to know how many hours, or days, or weeks we spent over the course of a year having a variation of the conversation – “Where do you want to go next?”

So next time, it’s going to be that much easier while on the road if we make some important decisions before leaving. Using Indie, we can break our trip down better and have at the very least a broad outline of where we are going to go.

What we could have done

The map at the top of the article is from our trip and is the flight path we took, except that we booked most flights one at a time. We knew going into the trip that we were starting in S. America and would end up in SE Asia. We contemplated the Galapagos, and if we would have went there, we would not have added in New Zealand. Ultimately we decided on New Zealand instead, and if we would have just made that decision before we left, we could have booked the following before leaving:

Looking back, it would have been very nice to have those decisions made before leaving. And even had we booked the above trip before departing, we had plenty of room for spontaneity. After our first flight into Lima, we had over 3 months until we left Buenos Aires for El Calafate and Patagonia. 3 months gives you a lot of opportunities to take advantage of any opportunity that arises.

During our trip, we spent an inordinate amount of time searching for that next flight instead of actually traveling. I can’t tell you how many hours we spent in our little apartment in Buenos Aires trying to figure out the best and cheapest way to get up to Colombia before moving on to New Zealand. If we had only just made the decision before leaving, we could have had SO much more time to actually travel.

Had we gone this direction, we then could have turned our sights to the second leg of the trip. We already knew where we wanted to go, and even with the freedom of buying one-ways, our plans didn’t change. We stuck to largely the same route we envisioned. So at some point at the end of time in S. America or during our 5 weeks in New Zealand, we could have booked our second leg, which would have looked like this:

Spontaneity is nice. I agree with that. But there’s also something to be said about being able to actually travel on your trip and not constantly be thinking and having to make decisions about what to do and where to go next, especially when your significant other is involved.

I’m not sure exactly what we’ll do the next time around (especially since this couple has since turned into a family), but I can assure you we’ll be looking into all options a lot more seriously, and we’ll do most of decision making prior to leaving.

Do you love to travel?  Have you always dreamed of traveling for an extended period of time?  Are you sick of waking up for a job you don’t like day in and day out?  Did you know that there is another way to live?  That taking a career break, a sabbatical, and heading out on the road indefinitely is a possibility, no matter who you are and what your situation?

Are you ready to be inspired?  Are you ready to hear from other like minded people who have made the dream of long term travel a reality?  Do you live in or around the St. Louis area or any of the other 17 locations around North America that Meet, Plan, Go! is taking place on October 18, 2011?

Then now is the time!  What are you waiting for!?!?

Tickets are on sale NOW, so don’t miss out on the opportunity to hear from our awesome panelists of long term travelers, including my wife Megan, and I, who took a break from our careers to travel the world for a year, Stephanie, who traveled the world for a year with her family, including her two teenage daughters, and Scott, who is currently planning a RTW trip which he will embark early 2012.

I am extremely excited to move forward on this event that I feel so passionate about.  I am pumped up and ready to share my experiences of traveling the world with my wife.

We are not trust fund kids, we aren’t rich, we didn’t win the lottery.  We are just two regular old people who decided to make long term travel a priority in our lives, and our other panel members have done the same.  So sign up for Meet, Plan, Go! to be inspired to do something remarkable!

Be sure to become a fan of Meet, Plan, Go! on Facebook and sign up for their Career Break Newsletter to stay up to date on all the announcements leading up to the big event in October!

India.  For those who have been, just the name of the country is going to bring back a flood of memories.  Some are going to be great memories, some terrible, some just downright hilarious.  India is a country like no other that we’ve been to.  Absolute chaos at nearly every turn and punishing on all five senses, sometimes all at once.

We started off by doing a few “easy” things (at least “easy“ as far as traveling in India goes).  Trekking and yoga.  They were both great, and they were a fantastic introduction to this chaotic country.  Before we came to India, everyone we talked to who had been here before agreed on a few things, whether they loved or hated India or felt a little of both (which is most people’s reactions to the country).

“It’s crazy.”

“It’s mad.”

“It’s intense.”

“It’s unlike anywhere you have ever been.”

Crazy?  Check.  Mad?  Uh-huh.  Intense?  Yep.  Unlike anywhere we have ever been?  You betcha.

Flights to India can be expensive, but we found a great deal.  After a few days in Delhi, we quickly left for Rishikesh, where Megan stayed at an ashram, and I took off for a Himalayan trek.  After leaving Rishikesh, we headed back down to Delhi, the capital and probably most upside down crazy place we’ve been in India.  It’s the most intense of all India when taking into account all the wacky things about this country (all of the following wacky things occur in every city we‘ve been in, to varying degrees

It’s really dirty.  Seriously, there’s just trash everywhere, which I frankly just haven’t gotten used to.  There’s lots of cows everywhere.  I’m talking in the middle of major roads in a city of, according to Megan, 375 jillion people (actually it’s about 14 million, but it sure seems like 375 jillion sometimes).  They like their cows here, and I truly believe, no, I don’t just believe, I know, that if a cow and I were walking down  the same street (which happens often), and a car was coming towards us, he or she would most definitely hit me before the cow.  Kinda sucks.  There are some “interesting” smells everywhere (I’m going to let you use your imagination here).  And the people, well, yeah, there’s lots of them.  And they like vying for the attention of western tourists.    All the time.

“Yes!!!  Sir, come look my shop!!”

“Sir, where you from?”

“What you looking for?”

“You need sarong?”

“You need cushions?”

“You need hash?”

“You need bedspread?”

“You need t-shirt?”

“You need water?”

“You need chai?”

“You have good Indian hair.”

I know it sounds kinda bad, and a lot of the times, it can get pretty tiresome, but sometimes it can lead to awesome experiences.  And yes, the last one is absolutely true.  In fact, I have been told, several times, by men, straight Indian men, that I have great hair or that they like my hair, which is well…..kinda weird…..and, well……honestly…..kinda cool?

We didn’t stay in Delhi long, and we headed south to Agra, home of the Taj Mahal, one of the coolest man made monuments we have seen, and home to the Red Fort, which was stunning in it’s own right but overshadowed by the Taj.  Unfortunately both are in one of the most wretched and horrible cities we have seen (all of which will be the topic of another post).  After Agra was Rajasthan, a state in India where we initially planned on spending most of the rest of our time.  Rajasthan draws the most tourists in India, both Indian and western.  Which has its upsides and downsides.  While we really liked one of the places (Jodhpur–where one of the coolest experiences we’ve had on the trip occurred–another topic for its own post), we also really disliked one (Jaipur, just ugh, not a good  place), and we were a bit ambivalent towards another (Udaipur–we liked it, it was nice, the people were fine, we took an awesome cooking class there, but it was just kind of “meh”).

Looking back on many of our experiences here can actually be quite funny because it’s just so weird here.  We have both said, on many occasions, that it seems like it’s always “Backwards Day” here in India.  And logic, as we know it, forget about it.  India makes the DMV a worry free, smooth running machine.  Take this encounter at the Jodhpur bus station for example:

Megan and I, going up to the “Enquiries” counter at the bus station:  “Hello, we want tickets to Udaipur.”

Attendant:  “Yes.”

Us:  “We want to go tomorrow.”

Him:  “Yes.”

Us:  “What time do buses go.”

Him:  “5:30”

Us:  “5:30?”

Him:  “Yes.”

Us:  “Any other times?”

Him:  “Yes,  7, and 8, and 9, and 10:30, and 1, and 2, and 3.”

Us:  “Great, can we get tickets for the 8 o’clock bus.”

Him:  “Yes.”

Us:  “Here?”

Him: At this point he points over to a building across the parking lot and says,“Advance booking over there.”

Us:  “Over there, in that building over there”  We point.  He nods.

We walk over there and go to the one window that someone is standing behind.  He’s counting money, with two glasses of chai on his desk in front of him.  We walk up and stand there, and he completely ignores us and continues counting his money.  I walk to a different window and finally Megan gets his attention after saying “Hello” a few times.

Megan:  “Hello, we need tickets to Udaipur at 8 tomorrow morning.”

Him:  “Chai?”

Megan (bewildered):  “No, no, I couldn’t possibly.”

Him:  “Chai?”

Megan (guessing that she wouldn’t get an answer to her question until she accepted his chai, accepts his chai):  “Thank you.  We’re trying to get to Udaipur tomorrow morning at 8.  Can we buy tickets here?”

Him:  “No, over there.”  He points back across the parking lot in the vicinity of three buildings, one of which is the building we came from  “New building.”

Us, to each other:  “None of those three buildings look new.”

Us, to him:  “Thanks”We take the chai and walk back across to the first building we were at.  We go to another window, not the “Enquiries” window.

Us:  “Hello, we’re trying to get to Udaipur tomorrow morning.”

Attendant:  “You need to go to the window down there.”  He points to a window at the other end of the building, right next to the very first window, “Enquiries”.  So we go there.

Us:  “Hello, we’re trying to go to Udaipur tomorrow at 8.”

Attendant:  “You need to go next door, to that window.”  He points at the “Enquiries” window, of course.

We knew that was going to be the case, so we go next door, to the very first guy we talked to.

Us:  “Hello, we want to go to Udaipur tomorrow at 8, and the guy next door said we need to talk to you about purchasing tickets.”

Him (mind you, the first guy we talked to, only about 10 minutes prior to this):  You can only buy advance tickets to the 5:30 bus.  If you want to go on the 8 bus, come here at 7:30 tomorrow morning.  You can buy tickets then.”

Us (shaking our heads in disbelief, muttering):  “Thanks.”

We walk away, me throwing out a few choice words while just shaking my head back and forth, Megan just kind of chuckling.  And that’s the best description of this crazy ass country that I can give.  As I said, it can be quite maddening here.  And while I wasn’t exactly having the time of my life during the above ordeal, I was laughing at it shortly afterwards as we were recounting to each other and then shaking our heads while saying, India.  That one word has been our explanation for many things over the course of this past month.  Or it’s variation, “It’s India.”

As you probably know by now, I am hosting Meet, Plan, Go! in St. Louis on October 18, 2011.  As part of this whole event, we will also be hosting several informal meet-ups leading up to the big one in October.

These informal meet-ups will be a chance for fellow travel lovers to get together and talk about what we love, TRAVEL!  These are free and open to anyone interested.  So if you are on the fence about Meet, Plan, Go! this is a great opportunity to meet me and the other people coming in October.

Our next meet-up will be this Wednesday, July 20 at 7pm at the Schlafly Bottleworks in Maplewood, which will also be the site of Meet, Plan, Go! in October.  I will get a table or area in the bar area and have a clipboard with the Meet, Plan, Go! logo. The Bottleworks also has a Farmer’s Market on Wednesday afternoons from 4pm-7pm, so be sure to get there early to check it out.

If you hope to come, please go ahead and register here.  As stated, the informal meet-ups are completely free and open to anyone who wants to get together to talk about travel.  Feel free to spread the word to anyone you think may be interested!  I look forward to meeting everyone!

Again, the next meet-up will be this Wednesday, July 20 at 7pm at:

Schlafly Bottleworks
7260 Southwest Ave.
@ Manchester
Maplewood, MO 63143

There’s a story in my family that my parents really enjoy telling when it’s time to demonstrate how adorably nerdy I was as a child. I was eight or ten, we were on summer vacation in Michigan visiting the Great Lakes. The beaches were very rocky, but all of the rocks were round and smooth, sparkling with quartz and polished from being tossed by the waves. When we arrived back home, my dad was unloading the bags and nearly fell over when he tried to lift mine. My parents promptly discovered that I had filled my bag with stones from the beach, the ones I had deemed the prettiest, some as big as grapefruits, the smallest the size of golf balls. Some kids collect seashells, I had gathered heaps of rocks.

My fascination with all things geology related didn’t exactly fade with time. When Adam and I visited Cafayate, Argentina, I enjoyed visiting the wineries, pedaling our bicycles through the vineyards, but I was really fascinated by the strange layered rock formations and canyons outside the city. When we climbed Volcan Villarica in Chile, I had a wonderful time climbing and sliding back down the volcano, but after the fact, I had one regret–that we didn’t manage to get any pictures of the solidified lava floes at the peak of the volcano. When we went ice climbing in Franz Joseph glacier here New Zealand, Adam could only laugh when he reached into our daypack after the hike and found a small rock (pumice on one side, shiny metallic rock on the other–very cool). Yes, I’m still at it.

Hi, I’m Megan and I’m a nerd.

Knowing all this, it should come as no surprise that our visit to Rotorua, a town in the heart of New Zealand’s geothermal activity, was a real highlight for me. Wandering through the strange landscapes created in these geothermal zones, I really felt like I had been transported to the far distant past, when the earth was still forming. Steaming waterfalls; pools of bubbling mud, spurting and tossing globs of soupy clay in all directions; steam vents escaping from the ground everywhere you look, reeking with the acrid smell of sulfur from the volcanic gases in the steam; huge silica terraces formed by mineral-rich water pouring out of the ground–all of this set amongst gigantic fern trees and thick native bush left me wondering what prehistoric creature I might meet around the corner.

Happily for budget travelers, my favorite geothermal experience was free. Outside of the Wai-o-Tapu geothermal park, there are mud pools on Department of Conservation land. They don’t show up in the guidebooks, but are well signposted. They were the largest mud pools we saw in New Zealand, and certainly the most active. The still photos above of the pools are cool for capturing the flying mud, but video can’t be beat for listening to the sounds of the constantly bubbling pools. Luckily for us, Adam was on the job.

Overall, New Zealand was a great place to visit and a nice respite from the chaos we sometime experienced on the first part of the trip.   Despite our love of it and its beauty, New Zealand sometimes gets the short end of the stick when reminiscing about the trip.  It’s almost like we don’t consider it part of the trip, as it was so much different than the other regions we visited.  It was almost like a vacation from our trip.  We had our own ride, we worried much less about how much we were spending (despite it being the most expensive country by far), and we just really enjoyed the ease of travel comparatively.

The geothermal parks of New Zealand were unlike anything I have seen anywhere, and they were a major highlight of an incredibly diverse and beautiful country.

*When we arrived in New Zealand, we were surprised to be met with recognition when we mentioned that we were from St. Louis. Turns out that Kiwis are aware of our fair city, thanks to none other than Nelly. We even got a “St. Louis? Do you know Nelly?” I couldn’t resist the opportunity to give a little hat tip to Nelly for getting St. Louis on the map with the Kiwis. I’m sure he’ll be thrilled.