Round the World with Anders o, I have, against all odds, become the proprietor of a blog. I got to admit that I have been one of those outsiders that have refrained from getting into Twitter and blogs and the likes. To be honest this has not been the case of me taking a stance of so

Preparing my route and setting up the flight schedules has been one of the more enjoyous parts of the planning process. The process started in a local pub (where great ideas often are conceived) in Oslo with a work colleague who had taken a career break himself at my age to do a similar trip. The initial, loose discussions quickly evolved and after a few sessions the idea of going round the world for a year was no longer a distant wish, but rather a MUST do.The result of my goal setting and the initial discussions (apart from the intense consumption of pints) was a rough sketch which draws up ideal timings for the various countries I wanted to visit (the concrete result is on display un pic section for now, Louvre next). When assessing where and when to go I had some clear objectives for the journey: - See as many new countries that I have not yet been to, but leaving aside enough time to get under the skin at each place that I visit (which proves to be quite a balancing act even with a year to spare) - Learning Spanish - Getting to go snowboarding, scuba diving, (kite-)surfing, hiking, skydiving etc, basically trying to hit the various seasons where I am at in order to get in both summer and winter activities - Must be within budget constraints - Must turn into a once in a life time experience This route would give me a good 3-4 months in Central America to study Spanish, endorse in summer activities and see a part of the world new to me. I would then go snowboarding in New Zealand until the summer season kicks off in Australia granting me the opportunity to go surfing, scuba diving and skydiving. Next is a slight pit stop in Philippines for further summer activities, before snowboarding in Sapporo and finally ending up for some time exploring South East Asia which ought to be nicer on my budget then some of the previous stops. Next thing to do after sobering up was to see if this high level plan would actually be possible to execute on. I have been in contact with various specialist companies, browsed airline comparison sites (skyscanner, kayak) and airline alliances sites. I have included the links to some of the better ones in the beneath. I was a bit set back initially in that it was hard to get the dream trip into actual tickets without killing the before mentioned budget. Airtreks came very close in giving me exactly everything I wanted. However, what put me off was that I would have to operate with fixed dates and any changes to these would come with extra fees. Those who know me well would probably not describe me as a person obsessively caught up on planning and structure. Consequently I was fearful that such restrictions could kill of the spontaneous feel of the trip. If I wanted a charter trip to Mallorca then I would do just that! Conversely, I felt an immediate attraction to Star alliance RTW offerings. Not only do they offer free of charge alterations of dates after reserving flights (within a year), but they also had a very elegant tool for plotting in my route online. The various restrictions make the process a little cumbersome, but I wouldn’t say that was a real problem. More importantly the price was beneficial at 32 kNOK (for flights: Oslo-Cancun-Auckland-Brisbane-Manila-Tokyo-Ho Chi Minh-New Delhi-Oslo) and the ticket does secure me bonus points on all the travels. I will have to arrange for some ad hoc flights in order to achieve a 100% of my initial list, but the prices found through skyscanner for those have not been intimidating (South East Asia flights seem very cheap!). From my searches the total airline costs come on par with the offer from Airtreks. Again, with no fixed dates and assured bonus points incurred. Overall I am quite pleased with my choice of travel partner at this stage. It does remain to be seen how this works out, but I will definitely update this post if there are any changes to my initial enthusiasm. Now that the tickets are secured I have swiftly had to move on to planning everything else needing to be organized before putting my life on halt for a year. www.staralliance.com www.airtreks.com www.statravel.co.uk www.skyscanner.no www.kayak.com