About the Trip

What is your planned route?
In early July, I will take the California Zephyr train from Denver to San Francisco in order to meet up with friends and family before flying to Shanghai to visit my brother Bill and sister-in-law Viven. Then, I'll head southwest through China including the Guilin/Yangshuo area and the Yunnan Province, ending my Chinese stay in Tibet. Cutting through Nepal, I'll end up in northern India, where I'll spend most of my time in the northwest state of Rajasthan, visiting Delhi and the Taj Mahal at Agra along the way. In late October, I will fly to Bangkok and spend four to five months circling around Southeast Asia including Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, and Myanmar (Burma).

Heading back north into China, I'll meet up with Bill and Vivien again before making my way farther north to Beijing where I'll get my Mongolian and Russian Visas and start a few weeks traveling a third of the way around the earth on the Trans-Mongolian Railway bound for Moscow. By early April 2007, I will leave Russia and head toward The Baltic countries of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia where I will find a cheap flight to Sicily via London. Are you still following along?!

Once in Sicily, I'll go across to Tunisia in Northern Africa for a few weeks, then jump back over to Sicily, and across by ferry to the Dalmation Coast of Croatia where I'll meet up with my parents for a few weeks of travel through the Balkans and down to Athens by ferry. We'll part ways in Bulgaria, and I'll go southeast into Turkey for a month or so before heading back up into Eastern Europe where I'll spend my last few months of the trip. I'll fly home around August 2007 — 13 months after I left!

So how many countries is that total?
If you don't count the United States, I'll be visiting 33 countries, assuming everything goes to plan. They are: Canada, China (and Tibet), Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, Vietnam, Mongolia, Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Italy, Tunisia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Greece, Bulgaria, Turkey, Albania, Macedonia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Austria, Poland, Ukraine, Czech Republic and Germany.

How did you figure out where to go?
Having a tight budget quickly rules out anywhere expensive: Western Europe, Australia, and North America. I toyed around with the idea of going from South America to Africa to Europe to Asia and back home, but the cost of transportation jumping from one continent to another was enough to make a frugal man cry. Eventually, I was able to string together a relatively inexpensive group of places that really interest me. While my trip plans certainly aren't as extensive as most around-the-world trips because I'm sticking mostly to Europe and Asia, I think I've settled on a really great itinerary.

To research the trip, I've mostly relied on Lonely Planet guidebooks from the Denver Public Library, reading travelogues online, and advice from other travelers on various branches of the Lonely Planet Thorn Tree.

How are you going to afford this?
I've been living with my parents (free rent!) and working full-time for a year, so I've managed to save about 16,000 USD. Subtract pre-trip supplies, travel insurance, and plane tickets, and I am left with about 14,000 dollars spread over the course of a little more than a year — a little over 30 USD per day. Many of the places I am going are developing countries, and are really inexpensive compared to the US or Western Europe. I'll be staying mostly in hostels and guesthouses, which cuts down on accomodation costs. Plus, I'm cheap as hell, which helps.

Traveling can be a lot cheaper than people think. In general, the more long term and the less planned a trip is, the cheaper it will be. Sadly, the "normal" American vacation is generally short-term and highly structured, making them extremely expensive. I think this makes people unnecessarily wary of travel because they think it will break the bank, when it doesn't have to if you have time, patience, and a sense of adventure.

You don't have any reservations or set plans?
Other than one train and one plane ticket, I don't have any reservations or set plans. While many people would find this to be an irritating and difficult way to travel, it has its perks: it's cheaper, more flexible, and more fun. For me, the best parts about travel are the unexpected moments, whether good or bad. There are plenty of each.

What about safety?
After doing a decent amount of traveling, I am pretty confident with my ability to see scams before they happen, to not set myself up as a target for robberies, and to steer away from unsafe situations. On the other hand, there is no way to ensure that I will make it home without incident — I just have to trust my gut. Just in case, I have travel insurance through World Nomads which has good coverage for a lot of things that might happen along the way including emergency medical, dental, evacuation, accident, theft, and more.

Are you worried about terrorism?
The odds of getting caught in a terrorist attack are considerably lower than getting in a car accident, so I'm not particularly worried about terrorism. With that said, I'm not planning on waltzing into Iran or North Korea with an American flag on my backpack or anything.

What about the Bird Flu?
Bird Flu is definitely on my mind — especially because I'm going to 90% of the countries where Bird Flu has been found so far. From everything I've read, an outbreak will happen very rapidly and will be pretty serious cause for alarm. I'll do my best to keep up with Bird Flu news, but if you hear anything you think I ought to know about, by all means let me know.

What are you bringing with you?
The short answer: as little as possible. Check out the What's in my Pack page for the complete list of everything I'm bringing.

How are you going to keep connected while away?
Lucky for me, the Internet has come a long way in the past few years. Between Internet cafes becoming commonplace abroad, to new developments in Web-based services, I'll be able to keep connected pretty easily. All of my finances that I need to take care of (student loan payments, etc.) are set up to pay automatically every month, and my debit and credit cards are all manageable online. I update my journal through Blogger, check my news on the New York Times and Google News, keep my photos archived and viewable online through Flickr, and get travel advice on the Lonely Planet Thorn Tree.

What inspired you to do this?
Travel has always been important in my family. As a kid, we piled in the mini-van every summer for upwards of two months making our way around the US. My brothers Spencer and Bill have been all over the place from South America, Eastern Europe, Russia, rural Mexico, and Asia. I guess a sense of adventure is just something that's in my blood. So, I found myself at 23-years-old, without a wife, kids, a mortgage or car payments, and I decided to go for it.