I have chosen the why-how-what model to explain the process that has led to our decision to travel world for 9 months. It was a long process, we had to consider many things, but we are glad that we made this decision, and we are now counting down to the departure day, the 25 of August.

Why you ask?

As some of you know, Kasper and I have always been fond of traveling. Kasper have been to many places before we met, but for me the world really first opened up when I moved to Denmark in 2009. Since then we have been traveling a lot, so far we have visited 15 countries on 3 continents together. Therefore, for the people around us it seems that we are always on the road and there are always new places on our to-do-list.

Things really went south when a thoughtful friend of mine gave us a Lonely Planet book, called The World, as a wedding present last year. By reading this book our places-to-visit-list got so long that we have realized that we need about 20 years to see it all if we only dedicate 2-3 weeks each year to travel. It seems like an awful lot of time, especially that by then we will be in our 50s. Whew, not a fun thought!

So we have decided that we do not want to wait, we rather see and do the things we want now while we are young and wild. Speaking of wild, we have also chosen our theme song for this adventure - Korbee: Hey child - you can listen to the song here:

But joking aside there are many young people (also among our friends) who feel the need to take a year off to get all the traveling out of their system. If it really works, or they only get more addicted to traveling is a completely different issue. For us the longest period of traveling was 6 weeks, when we were backpacking in Australia. It was absolutely amazing; we did lots of exciting things and loved every minute of it. For example, we took this picture of Uluru at sunrise after sleeping on the ground in Australian swags in the Outback. Sleeping though is a bit of a stretch, as I was awake all night - you know, snakes, spiders and other funny creatures, but luckily, nothing wanted to take a bite of me. :)

This is how the dream of traveling for a longer period of time was born. The next step was to figure out how we can live our dream.

How we will do it?

I have read many travel blogs to get some idea and inspiration on how to start such a project. These bloggers had very different approaches and ideas, but they seemed to agree on one thing, you cannot just daydream and be envy of others who dare to take the leap, you just have do it, everything else will work out.

And as sure as it is, if you work out the time and money issue, the rest of it is not that difficult. Starting with the money, the last couple of years we have put aside most of our earnings. At that time, we did not know that we want to use it all on traveling, we are just not fond of spending so much and like to have some savings for rainy days. So we had a certain amount at our disposal when we made the decision to travel. On the other hand we have decided to travel on a budget, so our money can last longer, it means that we will stay at hostels, travel by public transport, eat street food and do the sights DIY style. According to our calculations, we have enough money to travel on budget for 9 months.

The other issue we had to consider was time. The things with time is that it is limited and if you use it on one thing, you need to give up all other things. And despite it was a hard to say farewell to Compliance, I needed to do it in order to be able to follow my dreams and have the most exciting time of my life. I am very sorry for leaving you, my dear colleagues! For Kasper it was easier, he has applied for and received sabbatical, so his workplace only has to do without him for 9 months.

The timing of our trip was also well thought through. We have no children, no pets, nothing that would keep us at the same place. So it was now or never.

What we want to see?

Well, we want to see the whole world, which of course we cannot do in just 9 months, therefore we needed to narrow it down just a little bit. We had many places on our list to start with, but slowly we managed to pick 11 countries and plan a route that is both doable in 9 months and takes a whole cirlce around the globe.

We have always been keen on nature, wildlife and outdoors experiences, so it was clear from the start that these are the things we want to go after. Furthermore, we love architecture, both ancient and modern, thus ancient ruins and temples, and cities with cool skyscrapers had to be on our list. The last criterion was good food; we love to try local cuisine just as much as we enjoy learning about how their raw materials are produced.

The next step was to eliminate the destinations that were not realistic for us. Some places we needed to give up because it was too expensive or difficult to visit (e.g. Galapagos, Hawaii, Tibet), others will have rain season by the time we could reach it (e.g. Bali, Costa Rica, Vanuatu), and some were simply not high enough priority (e.g. Mexico, Vietnam, Myanmar).

At last, we ended up with the following countries (listed in order of visiting): USA, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, New Zealand, Australia, Malaysia, Philippines, China and Japan. In my next post, I will explain our route in more details.