Works of Wonder Tour

Travel Guide – Planning and Preparation -Year Long Travels-1

Whatever your circumstances you can go somewhere – the biggest limiting factors will be how far and for how long. To really experience life in another culture you need time, as much time as you can get. All we can suggest at this point is get as long as you can. A round the world trip in 9 months will feel rushed, 9 months in a city and you’ll feel like you know it well. 9 months studying a foreign language and you’ll be pretty good and in some cases fluent. Conversely – some will get itchy feet after a week in one place.

Budget
Your budget and commitments will limit how far you can go and for how long. Find out the typical daily expenses for where you want to go, including flight costs. Also don’t forget to factor in overland transport costs to your calculations. A region will always have expensive hot spots, so you can save money by avoiding these areas and concentrate on other less expensive areas. By stretching your cash you will see more and worry less about things when you get back.

Commitments
Sorry everyone I can’t pay off your mortgage, or lead you to the fountain of perpetual money. It’s human nature to get into situations where we have commitments.
Some ideas to help you travel and keep up the commitments: re-mortgage the house, you only live once. Rent out the house for a year. Take the kids along, or send them to live with their grandparents for a year – both generations will love it.

Take at least a month
It is our considered opinion that a month is the minimum amount of time for a worthwhile travel break. It sometimes takes up to a week to recover from jet lag, so you need this length of time to recoup and enjoy the remaining weeks. So take a month and enjoy it.

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Travel Guide – Planning and Preparation – Getting Inspired

Just having a vague notion to travel and see the world won’t get you far. You need to firm up those ideas and form a plan – if you don’t you’ll never leave! Many people will say that they always wanted to travel but never had the opportunity. In reality many of these people never created that opportunity; there is a subtle difference. Looking into the details, getting a firm plan and then telling people what you are going to do are a good way to begin.

Inspiration.
Where do you want to go? The world is huge, really huge. One life-time would never be enough to see it all, so get an idea of what you want to see and experience. You only have a limited amount of life – and probably a more limited amount of time and finance to travel. So what are you going to do with it? The first step is to decide what kind of journey you want to go on. To do this you need inspiration.

Where to find inspiration? Read, research your ideas, think about where you want to go. You can take inspiration from :

Travel Magazines – usually, glossy high impact brochures on destinations world wide, ranging from The National Geographic to the pullouts from the weekend papers; there is a lot of material around. The problem is that it’s unlikely that your experiences will match those shown in the magazines. Why? In the case of the National Geographic their reporters are often researching one particular aspect of a subject, or a society, spend months getting to know the subject, take thousands of photos, and produce an article just a few thousand of words in length. They know the topic inside out, but have they experienced all the region has to offer ? On the other hand, glossy magazines often provide content supporting the lifestyles and types of holiday for which the magazine can push advertising. Hence the glossy magazines’ emphasis on luxury. An article on backpacking is not going to support the cruise liner advertising on its opposite page.

TV Travel Shows – in my time I have seen some amazing TV shows – BBC TV’s the Rough Guide Series (not to be confused with the travel guides of the same name) – was inspirational; a mix of footage, sensationalism, culture, music and facts blasted at high speed in the now defunct def2 format (I’m showing my age now). Michael Palin has inspired a generation of Round the World Travellers, though most don’t try to do it in 80 days. The holiday shows, “wish you were here” and “holiday 2000′s” are aimed at the short breaks mass market – and the mass market buyers only give themselves two weeks a year to enjoy themselves.

Books – such as travelling around Ireland with a fridge (who would have thought that this book would be a best seller. People do equally crazy things all the time, they just don’t have the flare for humor that Tony Hawks is blessed with, nor do they skateboard as well), or Bill Bryson and his observations on tiny cultural habits and behavior, set in the grand scheme of road trips.

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