The world is round!

Deciding on how you want to travel is a tough. Do you want to plan your trip ahead, save money and know what is going to happen? Or do you want to keep the freedom to plan as you go, perhaps pay more for your fights and maybe have some visa issues. This is the question is was most confronted with when deciding on how to plan my world trip.At the start, it seemed very nice and safe to book a Round the World ticket (RTW). It would allow us to plan the trip, prepare ourselves with applying for visas where it would be necessary get the required vaccinations upfront and have a clear budget set aside for the flights. It was easy to plan a trip online with any alliance and they would give you a very good estimate on what the costs of your flights would be. However, there were a few restrictions:

• When you plan your trip it is necessary to know where you are going even if this is more than a year away;
• You can only fly with this alliance. This makes it sometimes necessary to have extra stops, and fly longer distances;
• The flights that you’d like to book might not be available yet because an airline hasn’t published its schedule yet;
• Any change to the itinerary will cost a considerable amount of money (with star alliance for example $125 per change);
• You have to complete your trip within one year.

These restrictions made me think about what would be the right choice. Do I initially want to save money on flights and commit to this route, or do I want to get a bit more freedom and go with the flow? I mean, how can I know at this moment that in 1.5 years I’d like to be in a specific country. Maybe my plans change and then I can’t change my route anymore (or it’ll cost me a lot of money).

Another thing to consider when planning your trip is that political situations might change in the countries you’d like to visit. This might make you want to postpone your trip until the situation has calmed down. Lets be honest, nobody can predict the future and therefor it is impossible to know what is going to happen in a year.

I’ve chosen for the freedom to go with the flow. Let the trip happen and let the events on the road shape the it. What if you meet amazing people and you have to part ways because you have planned it before you even knew anything about the trip. Yes, it will be more expensive if you actually chose to go to all the destinations you’d like to go to now. But what if you don’t want to go to them all anymore and take it easier when you are on the way? Then you’ll have paid for the flights and you will not be able to change your plans anymore. What I can also really imagine is to be in a wonderful place where it would be nice to relax but you also want to see all the attractions. You will make your trip stressful and full with obligations to yourself to see it all. Slowing down your trip will make sure you don’t miss out!