You don’t know how difficult it was to pick out a proper and flexibly changeable itinerary. Seriously. Even if you know those two or three sweet spots that you want to see, you’ll always be scratching your head and reconsidering if this is the best possible way to go. This is too much of the beaten track – this I don’t really want to see – this I need to see, but there’s nothing much I could do there – this is too expensive and will break me in – this is too far away from my initial outline – I went insane before this whole deal even started.

Eventually I ditched all my strategic steps of planning because I’m lazy and don’t want to go crazy over this and did something else: I picked out the cheapest Round-The-World ticket and looked where it would get me. The only initial condition was that I wanted to travel one year of summer and that’s that. This is what it turned out to be:

• Frankfurt – Bangkok
• Phuket – Denpasar (Bali, Indonesia)
• Denpasar – Sydney
• Brisbane – Nadi (Fiji)
• Nadi – Los Angeles
• New York – Reykjavik
• Reykjavik – London
• London – Frankfurt

That’s eight flights to get me around the globe for a pretty decent price. Most importantly, they get me back home, an issue my mother likes to discuss with a fierce passion. Yes, mom, I’m coming back. I don’t know from where and when. I’m sure because you would come and drag me back home even if I didn’t have the means to pay. Hi Mom, by the way, if you’re reading this I’m totally mocking someone elses mother.

View Itinerary in a larger map

A word to the people who’re going to tell me that this seems to be a pretty lame itinerary for a world trip: I know. Most of these are expensive countries and I’ll probably get wasted with white rich kids just like I do here (maybe with exceptions of South East Asia, but I doubt it anyway). But this is not supposed to be the last trip I ever take on earth. This is supposed to be my first trip. I’ve never been backpacking. Fuck, I’ve never even went camping before! I’m a spoiled girl! I’ll probably break down in Australia because people are trying to force feed me Vegemite! I’ll cry rape in the USA just because someone was trying to hump me on the dancefloor! Here, I’m already breaking down. This is going to be fun for everyone who’s watching the epic miserable backpacking life of me. I’m a pro at failing, really, so it doesn’t matter where I am.

"Lonley Monks" by Matt Murf

Besides that- I’m intending to go over more than twenty countries, most of them being in South East Asia and some of them being in South America. People might wonder why I haven’t included neither Africa nor most parts of Asia and there’s a simple answer to that: ten months is not enough time (and let’s not even talk about the money). I wish I could see everything, but I stuck to those parts of the world the furthest away from me, and which I’ll most likely not visit in the coming years. I know the Middle East, my parents drag me there every year – from Syria to Jordan to Lebanon to everywhere. I left out India because it seems a trip worth on it’s own. As for Africa… I’m a lone single female. Again, I’ve never backpacked before. I’m currently watching what Benny and Mitch are going through on their sweet little hike. Uh, no, I’m seriously not going there on my own.

Which all doesn’t mean I won’t try to go off the beaten track. Screw the Lonely Planet! Let’s ride elephants and dolphins! … Ok, that’s it so far. In my next posting I’ll get into which places I actually want to cross on my trip, not only the aforementioned airport hubs, but the sun is shining right now (and THAT doesn’t happen a lot lately, thanks to Iceland and it’s volcanic cry for attention) so I have to go and enjoy the shit out of it.

flights, itinerary, route, ticket Planning