{"id":21186,"date":"2019-06-19T22:24:15","date_gmt":"2019-06-19T21:24:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pourquoi-pas-nous.com\/planning-a-round-the-world-itinerary-our-technique\/"},"modified":"2025-12-15T16:58:43","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T14:58:43","slug":"planning-round-the-world-itinerary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pourquoi-pas-nous.com\/en\/planning-round-the-world-itinerary\/","title":{"rendered":"Planning a round-the-world itinerary: our technique"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We love to travel, and whenever we can, we go on vacation or on weekends, extended thanks to the many French public holidays. <\/p>\n\n

J’ai (Floriane) v\u00e9cu un an au pays bas, \u00e0 c\u00f4t\u00e9 d’Amsterdam<\/a>, gr\u00e2ce au projet Eramus.<\/strong> Avec Matthieu, nous parlions depuis longtemps de partir travailler \u00e0 l’\u00e9tranger.<\/p>\n\n

One day, a colleague <\/strong> quit his job<\/strong> to go on a round-the-world trip<\/strong>. At first, I thought this project was completely crazy. How is it possible to leave for a year without working?<\/p>\n\n

Then, after several exchanges with Matthieu and research on the Internet, reading numerous blogs and travel reports, we said to ourselves “why not us<\/strong>? A year and a half after our first discussions on the subject, we took off, tears in our eyes of happiness, for the S\u00e3o Paulo Carnival<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n

To date, it’s the project we’re most proud of. We got to know each other better and never regretted our choice. <\/p>\n\n

Through this blog, we hope to inspire other travelers in need of adventure<\/strong>! In this article, we explain in detail our year of preparation<\/strong>, we answer all the questions we asked ourselves, when to leave<\/strong>, what insurance<\/strong> to take… we detail our budget<\/strong> and our itinerary<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n

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When to go and for how long? <\/h2>\n\n

When should you leave? <\/h3>\n\n

It’s obviously a very personal decision<\/strong>. Matthieu, 28, was a contractor <\/strong>before we left. He was therefore able to close his business before leaving. <\/p>\n\n

For my part, after 27 years as an employee, I decided to resign<\/strong> so that I could leave at a time that suited us. I even turned down a long-awaited promotion for this project. Today, I have absolutely no regrets about that choice. <\/p>\n\n

G\u00e9n\u00e9ralement, les voyageurs au long cours<\/strong> que nous avons rencontr\u00e9s avaient entre 25 et 30 ans<\/strong> et une exp\u00e9rience professionnelle derri\u00e8re eux qui leur a permis de r\u00e9aliser quelques \u00e9conomies.<\/p>\n\n

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What is the average length of a round-the-world trip? <\/h3>\n\n

D’apr\u00e8s l\u2019enqu\u00eate du site tourdumondiste, les trois quarts des tours du monde durent entre 5 et 13 mois<\/strong>. Pour notre part, nous sommes partis 12 mois<\/strong>, car nous avons achet\u00e9 notre billet d’avion par une agence, nous devions rentrer au maximum un an apr\u00e8s notre d\u00e9part. <\/p>\n\n

Nous avons \u00e9videmment choisi la dur\u00e9e maximum autoris\u00e9e<\/strong> !<\/p>\n\n

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What’s the budget? <\/h2>\n\n

The average budget for a one-year round-the-world trip<\/h3>\n\n

The average budget for a one-year round-the-world trip is \u20ac15,000<\/strong>. This is what we’ve found from talking to other travelers we’ve met along the way, and from browsing numerous blogs.<\/p>\n\n

Obviously, this budget can vary enormously from one project to another. For example, if you don’t want to fly, you’ ll save between \u20ac3,000 and \u20ac4,000<\/strong> on your overall budget. If you’re traveling for a year in Asia,<\/strong> your budget will also be considerably lower.<\/p>\n\n

Conversely, if you want to visit every continent<\/strong>, this will increase your air travel budget. If you stay in the most expensive countries, such as the USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada or the islands, your budget will increase considerably.<\/p>\n\n

We explain below how to obtain the average budget by country.<\/p>\n\n

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How to save money (without depriving yourself)? <\/h3>\n\n

This is the question<\/strong> on everyone’s mind: without a minimum amount of money set aside, this project becomes more complicated to carry out. Don’t panic, as explained below, we’ve met travelers on tight budgets, so we’ll also explain where to go depending on your budget. <\/p>\n\n

Here are our tips for putting money<\/strong> aside quickly<\/strong> and, above all, without depriving yourself<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n

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  1. Take stock of your expenses:<\/strong> we manually listed all our expenses<\/strong> for the last 3 months<\/strong> on Excel and then categorized them: rent, taxes, subscriptions (internet, telephone, Netflix…), supermarket food, clothing, leisure food (restaurants\/bars), and travel\/weekends.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n

    I quickly realized that I was spending almost 15% of my budget on clothing<\/strong>. I had only been working for a few years, and had become a real shopping addict<\/strong>… I never thought I’d spend that kind of money on a few shopping sprees. <\/p>\n\n

    About a year and a half before our departure, I completely changed my habits to save this amount for our trip. <\/p>\n\n

    If you don’t want the hassle of processing your banking data by hand (on Excel), you can download a budget management application such as Nestor, Linxo<\/strong>… <\/p>\n\n

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    2. Reduce leisure expenses:<\/strong> we went away for a long weekend in France or abroad<\/strong> about once a month<\/strong>, then we also spent 3 weeks abroad<\/strong> a year. Knowing that we had a year-long trip ahead of us, we naturally decided to reduce our pace.<\/p>\n\n

    For example, we spent time with our families<\/strong>, during our vacations, the year before we left. We have also given priority to more economical carpooling. <\/p>\n\n

    We saved the money<\/strong> for a trip and several weekends! <\/p>\n\n

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    3. Sell your stuff:<\/strong> we lived in a 40 m2 Parisian apartment full of stuff we didn’t use (electronics, clothes, books…). <\/p>\n\n

    As you might guess, the bon coin<\/strong> has become our best friend! About 6 months before our departure, we sorted our belongings and placed our ads on the site. As the trip approached, we had at least 1 appointment a day to sell something!<\/p>\n\n

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    4. Focus on purchases for the trip: <\/strong>don ‘t renew your wardrobe <\/strong>before you leave. If you want a new pair of shoes some time before your planned departure date, try to reason with yourself! You’re leaving in a few months, so if you’re not planning to take it with you, wait until you get back to change it. <\/p>\n\n

    Your belongings will be stored during your trip, so they may deteriorate. We found some clothes with moth holes, even though we had taken great care to store them in a dry, healthy place. <\/p>\n\n

    5. Rent out your apartment on a platform like Airbnb:<\/strong> for this, of course, you need to be a homeowner. Unfortunately, we were unable to do so. We’ve met travelers who were able to earn a few hundred euros for their trip. <\/p>\n

    <\/i>Your best friends: where to sell your stuff?<\/span>\n


    Le bon coin <\/strong>, which we don’t even introduce anymore, is ideal. We sold many goods (clothes, electronics, books…)
    Momox<\/a> for books: by scanning the barcode on your books, the site will tell you their redemption price. You can drop off your parcel at a relay point. The site bears the shipping costs. The advantage is that you can sell several books at the same time.

    Vinted <\/a>, which specializes in clothing, didn’t exist at the time. Today, I use it to sell business. If you’d like to take a look, my username is morissetfloriane.

    – Use a cashback site: <\/strong>
    Igraal: we love this site, which lets you earn money from the purchases you make. As soon as you make a purchase from one of our partner sites (around 1,400 sites), you earn a commission (money). For example, we used it to buy our washing machine from Darty. By following     this link, you’ll earn a \u20ac3 welcome bonus and we’ll earn \u20ac3 too!<\/a><\/p>


    – Accommodation :<\/strong>
    Airbnb: <\/strong> If you are an owner, you can offer your accommodation on \n     Airbnb<\/a>\n<\/strong>the site will tell you how much you can earn!<\/a> <\/p><\/p><\/div><\/div>\n

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    Main expense items<\/h2>\n\n

    For our part, we spent \u20ac15,000 per person.<\/strong> You’ll find our main expenses below. <\/p>\n\n

    We don’t have a vaccine<\/strong> budget, as<\/strong> our mutual insurance company covers them. We were delighted to discover this pleasant surprise, as the bill came to \u20ac500\/person<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n

    Nor do we have an equipment \n equipment<\/b>\n<\/span>nts, as<\/strong> we managed to get almost all our equipment for our birthday and Christmas before the trip. We also had a good portion already in our possession since we had invested on previous trips. You can easily count on around \u20ac1,000<\/strong> per person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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    Our detailed budget for our one-year round-the-world trip<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/colgroup>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
    Local expenses (accommodation, transport, food…)<\/td>\n10 571 \u20ac<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    Visas<\/td>\n194 \u20ac<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    LOCAL BUDGET<\/strong><\/td>\n10 765 \u20ac<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    Airline tickets<\/td>\n3 702 \u20ac<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    Cap Aventure Health Insurance<\/a><\/td>\n516 \u20ac<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    OVERALL BUDGET<\/strong><\/td>\n14 983 \u20ac<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n
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    Our method for planning an itinerary <\/h2>\n\n

    Building a travel itinerary is no easy task. In any case, you won’t be able to do or see everything. And do you know what? Well, it doesn’t matter, you’re going to see a lot during your trip, whether you visit 1 or 15 countries. <\/p>\n\n

    How to create your itinerary <\/h3>\n\n

    1\/<\/strong> You need to decide on a list of countries<\/strong> or places you’d like to visit. We made a list<\/strong> on our own, drawing inspiration from the internet and travel books such as “Terre secr\u00e8te – Merveilles insolites de la plan\u00e8te”<\/a> and “1000 id\u00e9es de voyages du Lonely Planet”<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n

    It’s important to respect each person’s wishes<\/strong> and desires<\/strong>, so that the two of you can build this trip together from the outset. This is our favorite<\/strong> part of the planning process. You can let your imagination run free for the time being without constraint. <\/p>\n\n

    Then we printed out a world map and colored in all the countries we’d noted, in green for Matthieu and pink for Floriane. We couldn’t wait to see the results and each other’s choices – phew, we had countries in common<\/strong>!<\/p>\n\n

    2\/<\/strong> You have to limit yourself…! This really isn’t the easiest part. We’ve chosen to travel to 1 country per month<\/strong>. We followed the advice given on the travel blogs. <\/p>\n\n

    That’s good, but often too little. For example, Argentina is almost the size of Europe, so imagine going around Europe in 1 month… <\/p>\n\n

    It’s a very personal choice<\/strong>. Don’t panic, you can also adapt your itinerary to suit your local needs. During our trip to Asia, we withdrew from<\/strong> Vietnam to spend more time in Cambodia and Sri Lanka. <\/p>\n\n

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    Where can I find information on the different countries?<\/h3>\n\n

    This is where the long and interesting part comes in… reading the thousands of travel blogs!<\/strong> It’s a gold mine for planning and imagining what you can do in the country, and how much time you can spend there. <\/p>\n\n

    Try to choose between 2 and 3<\/strong> to avoid spreading yourself too thin. You’ll also get a lot of local information from your hosts<\/strong> and other travelers<\/strong>. <\/p>\n

    <\/i>Our favorite blogs<\/span>\n

    – A2pasdumonde<\/a> from Anais and Julien, our friends we met onEaster<\/strong> Island (classy)! They came from Asia, we came from South America. We were inspired by their experiences during our 7 months in Asia! You’ll find useful, detailed information on the different countries they’ve visited.

    –     Novo-monde<\/a> is a reference in the world of round-the-world blogs and backpacking. Fabienne and Benoit offer very comprehensive articles.

    – We also consulted the blog of     Marion and Renaud<\/a>, who left on their round-the-world trip a year before us, and the information they provided was recent and reliable! <\/p><\/p><\/div><\/div>\n

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    Plan your route <\/h3>\n\n

    Now you have to adapt your wishes to the weather and your budget and budget. For this part, the travel planner on the “\u00c0 contre-sens ” blog helped us enormously. This is not the most pleasant part of planning. We regretfully had to pull out of New Zealand as it was the middle of winter. <\/p>\n\n

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    Planner of the a-contresens blog <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

    This is an important <\/strong>step that will help you avoid climate<\/strong> and budget<\/strong> setbacks. By taking a month off in New Zealand, we could live another month in Asia. <\/p>\n\n

    We entered our draft itinerary, then the software showed us the estimated budget<\/strong> and the most favorable climate by country\/region<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n

    Now you’ve got your list of countries and the order in which it’s best to do them. Now all you have to do is buy your plane tickets<\/strong>! <\/p>\n\n

    A word of advice: in the beginning, you’ll have plenty of energy and drive, so 1 country a month is fine. Beyond 6 months, however, you’ll probably start to get tired, and it’s better to plan fewer countries and choose to stay longer in each selected country. <\/p>\n\n

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    Choosing your plane tickets <\/h3>\n\n