1. Try to stay in one place for a few months, minimum. If you can stay a year or two, do that. Jumping from city to city every week seems exciting at first, but it quickly makes everywhere feel the same.
2. To quote Lao Tzu, when your work is done, forget it. If you work remotely, actively disconnect at the end of the day. It's too easy to be constantly plugged into the English-speaking media world and ignore what's right in front of you.
3. Try to blend in and adopt local clothing, culture, foods, etc. Read books by local authors, watch local films. A bit obvious, maybe, but I've met many people who insisted on only eating Western food, reading Harry Potter, and watching Netflix while abroad. At that point, why even bother traveling?
1. Go via land. You see everything in between all the places you should see as a tourist. You immerse yourself in how a place actually feels. You meet people who aren’t just trying to extract money from you. I cycled, because I like cycling, but any form of transport works.
2. My algorithm was something like “Go east. Stay somewhere if it’s interesting, until you get bored. Continue going east.” I didn’t have a fixed itinerary, but I did have some framework.
That was the basis of it, I think. I cycled from London to Italy, stopped for a while in Italy, cycled on to Greece, then fell in love (with the place and somebody in particular). I met some of my best friends, worked on side projects, volunteered for charities, and ended up staying there for several months. I skipped forward to India on a plane, cycled across India, then returned back to Greece.
My partner in Greece wanted to visit the Middle East and Central Asia, but she wasn’t quite as excited about cycling through the desert as I was, so we bought a van and drove — to Central Asia, and everything in between.
My framework worked extraordinarily well. If I have one regret, I think it was not making an effort to interact with more people. You do that a lot more naturally when travelling by land, but you still need to put in effort to make it happen.
For example, I was up late in a bar in an Italian village, and met one of the locals. It was a long cycle ride back to the place I was staying so he offered me his spare room. Turns out he lived with his parents and the next day his elderly Italian mother cooked us pasta for lunch. Possibly one of the best meals of my life.
I wish I had done more of that. Just hanging out in bars and making friends. And not tourist bars — real bars. Knowing the local language better would probably help.
Still doing it, but the pandemic forced me to stay in one country for just about a year now.
In that year I put down roots, got long term visas and maybe will spend another few years there while we see how things shape out this and next year.
But ya, 2-3 months minimum in a place is what you need, with just a small backpack.
Make local friends.
Don't hang around or go out with other tourists or expats. This is the kiss of death.
Make it a rule to eat only the food of the city or the country that you find yourself in.
Learn a few words of the language "hello", "thank you", "bathroom", "stop", etc.
Don't think people are less than you. They're not. They want the same things as you.
As an introvert, being forced to make friends with people who speak another language and look the opposite of me (black guy in Asia), was exactly the ticket.
Well recommended to do it.
The main thing I would say - is have a mission when you travel. Seeing the sights and drinking the bars and mingling with other tourists and shtupping the local girls is fun, but not a mission.
You will get bored after some time of doing that.
Have some particular work or meaning to each day to keep you grounded, and you can do the moving around for a super-long time.
You will find that you'll set some schedules for work, play and discoveries - regardless of where you are.
Just don't quit your job. Instead go remote (even if you have savings). Ok?
Granted, I didn't quit my job, but after graduate school I moved to Germany from the US and took a job consulting. For three years I lived in places like Berlin, Madrid, Split...etc for 3-9 months at a time. There were enjoyable things about it, sure, but I really underestimated how difficult it was to discard your entire social circle and start over. A few years ago I moved back to the US, in a city where a lot of my friends had moved to, and it was probably the most positive decision I've ever made in my life.
I also feel like my time abroad didn't "broaden my horizons" all that much, and I find myself skeptical about the claims that international travel makes you a better person. I think what you get out of travel is heavily based on how you decide to relate to places and people, and merely leaving your country does not guarantee this will change.
Maybe it's just me; but the idea of going from one place to another for 2 weeks, to take pictures and get led around by locals tourist industry is the very definition of Western Consumerism. If you want to immersed into a culture, wouldn't you want to commit to learning the language and go to your local city's meetup for that language - instead of going to a foreign country with a phrasebook. If you want to dance, wouldn't you want take a class for salsa, shuffle, tango at your local club instead of a single experience at a beach bar at some exotic locale. If you want to meet new people and break out of your comfort zone, wouldn't you want to make friends locally where you can build up that friendship or relationship consistently by dinners, outings instead of a single chance encounter? Listening to live music at some exotic place vs. going to local musicians jams where you're up on the stage playing, take instagram pictures of Prague vs. urban sketching your local city streetscape… I could keep going.
Maybe I'm wrong. Please tell me know what you've personally gained from traveling the world!
We ended up starting a startup together in Morocco, applied to YC from Luxor in Egypt, got accepted, moved to Mountain View and spent the next three years running a startup before getting acquired.
It kind of ruined the honeymoon!
Natalie wrote up the full story here: https://blog.natbat.net/post/61658401806/lanyrd-from-idea-to...
What worked well for me was quiting mixing backpacker circus with less known destination. It was fun to sleep at hostels, party with fellow travelers and have fun, but it gets old after while. I split my trips into 3 to 6 months chunks after which I just come back to one of my bases, recharge for a bit and then went to somewhere else. I usually mix things us so after 6 months in SE Asia, I went to Balkans, then Japan and then somewhere more popular with backpackers like Argentina.
It is great experience to have, but I would not put much hope in being truly transformative. Now, almost, 10 years later it just feel like it never happen, memories are fading fast as I went with settled life.
People are often scared about their career outlook or other long term consequences, but I didn't experience any of those.
Had a plan to stay at least 1 year (that's how long I hoped my savings would last before I had to either earn a living or go back home). And I'm still abroad (not Asia) until this day. Another goal I set for myself is try to economically sustain myself in the host country without relying on a pay-check from a foreign company. (this is really hard and I often fail in this)
After a decade in APAC, and having gotten married to a Japanese flight-attendant working for Singapore airlines, a child on our way, we returned to Europe. We kept this life style as a young family and lived in various countries over here (which was as much excitement for my wife as Asia was to me).
We found that most countries are a great adventure for us except our very own home countries. We agreed to never return back to our own country as a couple because it took away the adventure for one of us and made things hard during the early phases when going through "reverse culture shock". We eventually split up after 20 years of traveling together and having raised 2 kids. Both of us still feel at home anywhere and neither would ever return to their home country. My kids are at university now, speak 3 languages on a native level + 3 foreign languages they had picked up along the way. Best thing I ever did was pack that rucksack.
with countries opening up again I hope to go either back to Asia (by myself) or continue my exploration of South Eastern Europe. A challenge I had set for myself after the break-up because my wife would never go to there (it's a lot harder to survive there using the above "rules/philosophy")
After studying Software Engineering then working a couple of years I quit to drive a 4x4 from Alaska to Argentina. That took 2 years through 17 countries, and only cost about $27k[1] ALL IN.
Then I went back to Software to save up enough money to do it all over again. I built a 4x4 Jeep into a house on wheels [2], and then drove it 54k miles all the way around Africa through 35 countries over three years. It was absolutely life changing, and I'll never be the same person.
After a couple more years saving money I'm gearing up to go again on an entirely new continent!
I've slowly been transitioning so this is now my "job". I've published a few books, I write for a handful of magazines, have published a photography book and am growing a YouTube channel about my adventures, and teaching other people how to also follow their dreams.
More than anything else, I learned that time is so, so much more important than money.
I continue to structure my life so I have time to actually enjoy my life. Of course I have less money than I used to, and I'll never have a sports car or a big house, but I'm happier than I ever was going to work 40 hours a week.
[1] theroadchoseme.com/the-price-of-adventure
[2] theroadchoseme.com/the-jeep
Later in my life business travel killed my love of travel to the point I dread getting on a plane and now I just go to nature near wherever I’m living at instead.
It was an amazing experience, I spent around 11 months traveling, I attended a few conferences and meetups, met tons of people, faced my fears (I am afraid of heights and deep water, so I did bungee jump and picked up scuba diving), made me deal with a lot of uncertainties.
Eventually I got tired of it (I traveled too fast, it was more of backpacking than nomad-ing) and decided to find a job in one of places I visited - I ended up moving to Singapore for 4 years, where I met my current wife.
Overall if I was about to do it again, I'd do it differently, but still it was one of the best decisions I made in my life. I wouldn't say it really changed the way I see the world or something, but it resulted in so many fantastic memories.
I remember the day when I decided to go back home. I met a German guy, in his mid-fifties, who had been living out of his suitcase most of his live. He was extremely talkative and very friendly. We shared some drinks and talked most of the night. Next day, both of us travelled onwards, each towards our own new destination. That is when I realised that I could not keep doing this, I did not want to be like that guy when I was in my mid-fifties. He was happy, but I wouldn’t have been.
All I can say is that I believe the idea of such a life is romantic, but not for everyone. If you try it, and find that you don’t like it, it’s not a failure to come back home and get back to a “normal” life. With that said, the best way to find out if such a life is for you is to try it out.
I quit my job after working for 2 years as a software engineer and traveled solo for a year and some change through 30ish countries in Europe, Asia and Oceania. It's without a doubt the best decision I ever made in my life.
When you first start out traveling, you end up moving really fast since there is so much to see. I think it's because that's what you do when you're on a fixed-length vacation. After a month or two of this you get tired and you find yourself staying longer and longer in places you like. For me, that ended up being tropical places where I could scuba dive for cheap.
During a long trip you'll grow a lot as a person. It sounds cliche, but you'll be scared and lonely sometimes, but also super-charged with energy and surrounded by great friends at other times. You may even fall in love (a few times). It's important to realize it goes in waves - I found that every 3 to 4 months I would feel depressed or lonely and think about going home, only to meet some incredible people and realize how cool of a life I was living.
I came back when I ran out of money. I traveled on a "shoe-string" with only a carry on backpack for roughly $24,000 USD. For those interested in traveling like this, check out "How to Travel the World for $50 a Day" by Nomadic Matt.
Coming back and joining the workforce was incredibly hard. I didn't have a laptop with me, so a lot of my technical skills had atrophied and it showed in interviews, leading to me failing every interview from big tech companies. Luckily, after having only a few hundred dollars to my name, I got a dev job and my skills came back rather quickly after that.
In general it was great but if I were to do it again I would go way easier and slower on my bike instead of trying to race it plus I would have shortened the trip to last at most 4 months - after 10th National Park or so I stopped appreciating the location as much because I was comparing it to some other that I saw just a couple of weeks before that and the wow factor was no longer there. Seeing too much on the short span of time is a curse of such a trip imho.
All in all it was great and I’d do it again but slightly differently and definitely not as long.
P.S. (Finding job in covid after the tour was really hard despite my data science/ml engineering profile.)
Born and raised in the BA. In my mid 30's I left a FAANG type(specialized, highly compensated) employer, sold my home and bought a sailboat and moved aboard. Over that next year and half I spent it sailing the Pacific then ending up in Southern CA.
I was going through a premature midlife crisis all based on the premise that "humans weren't meant to sit behind a desk all day". I was very well off having an entire career in the BA but my "life" was garbage. I'd work, go home, watch TV or play a video game. Repeat. Not much romantically or no strong friendships.
In that year and half my entire outlook changed. It's been 3-4 years since I've returned and to this day:
* Live a "minimalist" lifestyle. I'm a terrible consumer and love it.
* My mental and physical health has drastically improved.
I didnt realize it but I suffered from anxiety. I was constantly worrying about being the best, having the highest salary, and being able to compete. I intentionally made a career out of seeking tough jobs "moving mountains".
When you're traveling (in my case sailing) the mindset quickly changed from worrying about all the little crap about work, performance, hitting the next goal to "I can do anything today, what do I want that to be?" without worrying about tomorrow. That gave my mind peace, which made me happier, which inspired me to work on myself, which made me even happier.
I'd highly recommend it. For those living in the BA.. its a great place to earn and save money but terrible in every other aspect (and I say that lovingly as someone who still gets very homesick).
If you ever leave, when you come back you'll find there is some stigma around it and especially if its not to the Bay Area.
For example I applied to a local semi-large financial institution asking for Cassandra which I have in-depth experience dealing with at scale. The number of people who have that experience at scale can fit into a large room. I was ghosted after first tech screen after being asked about the gap in resume, I wasn't a model employee. And knowing the area they settled for much less.
Most importantly, you only live once: Travel while you still have your health! Travel becomes a lot harder with health problems.
Anyways, if you are an American, you may want to try Croatia, which offers a digital nomad visa for all remote workers worldwide. Croatia allows third country nationals (non-EU/EEA/Swiss citizens) in extremely easily. In fact, if you stay in Croatia for 14 days (with or without the digital nomad visa) you can travel throughout the EU, as long as you follow the pandemic rules. It is a "loophole" for Americans who want to get into the European Union for travel, as Croatia is part of the EU (but not a part of the Schengen zone, so they are allowed to make their own rules for entry a lot easier and without controversy within the EU), but not part of the Schengen zone ("Freedom of Movement zone").
You are also eligible for Croatian national health insurance, which Croatian/EU/EEA/Swiss citizens are likewise eligible for, if you get the Digital Nomad Visa, which is quite a good deal. Croatia costs about the same as the US, worst case scenario, if not less--which is usually the case. The people are extremely friendly and accommodating, too.
Here is some info on the Croatian Digital Nomad Visa: https://www.total-croatia-news.com/news/digital-nomads-in-cr...
This is the website to consult for getting administrative stuff done in Croatia: http://expatincroatia.com/
My wife and I quit our jobs to travel Europe and work on farms (helpx.net). I set up a personal blog to write about our experience and realized that, given ample free time, my mind gravitated towards writing, coding, and photography for fun.
When we returned home, I eventually went back to work with my old employer, but with a new perspective. I had already quit, knew what the world looked like outside the office, and was no longer afraid to get fired. Paradoxically, this made me more valuable to the company -- I acted bolder and spoke more truth. I took on a new role, coding again after a hiatus, writing personally and professionally, and started speaking at tech conferences. This mix of activities led me to join Twilio as a developer evangelist in 2014.
When we quit our jobs to travel I was making ~$65k/year. When I joined Twilio a few years later, my starting salary was $120k/year.
I share the professional benefit first because the short-term professional/financial costs are the most concerning when considering extended travel. But, in a way that never would have made sense on paper, that trip catalyzed a trajectory shift that significantly increased my earning potential and professional satisfaction.
There were also a bunch personal benefits. We lived for two weeks with a family that had young kids and realized that we'd probably enjoy being parents. We now have two of our own, and we do. We saw how folks in Barcelona, Paris, and Stuttgart raised families in small apartments and rethought the necessity of the suburban homes we grew up in. We now live in Brooklyn. On a thirty-cow organic dairy farm in the mountains of northern Spain, we drank milk still warm from the udder for breakfast and cooked dinner with ingredients we harvested from the field. We eat differently now. During six weeks in Turkey, we accepted spontaneous invitations for tea in people's homes and offers for rides while walking dirt roads during rainstorms -- hospitality extended to us by Muslim strangers unlike anything we'd experienced before. My wife and I were raised in Evangelical churches.
We saw beautiful sights, experienced new cultures, challenged our perspectives, made lifelong friends, etc. All the cliches you think are going to happen when traveling the world. And we also saw tremendous professional growth, precisely because we took a break from our careers to gave our minds and hearts the space and time to explore.
I bought an used RV and did some modifications ourselves to be truly independent (more water storage, 500w of solar panels, ...) As we didn't want to be constrained to campsites.
It was a glorious experience. Very tempted to do it again to be honest. We traveled in Italy and Spain for 5 months during the cold periods and in summer we roamed through Scandinavia.
Generally speaking, we spent 2 weeks in each spot, but in few 1 or 2 months (San Vito lo Capo in Sicily comes to mind). We both climb and generally speaking are outdoor persons so we opted to stay away from big cities and choose to park in remote areas in the countryside. This let us get to know the local lifestyle and made friends along the way in A way that is impossible in cities (we both speak Italian, Spanish and English). Going to the only bar/restaurant in these towns every day made our faces familiar to the locals and we got invited over for dinner several times (in italy and spain, that didn't happen in Scandinavia at all).
I highly recommend traveling this way. It's fun, economic and if you are with a good partner an endless pool of amazing memories. Also, this made me rearrange my life priorities. Before I had career on top of my list, now, instead, I just want to be relaxed. I don't want a job that keeps me worried after work hours and I want to spend more time with my family!
Happy to answer all your questions!
I kept track of every koruna, euro, and forint along the way and the total bill for this extravagant trip was around $2,000. Back in San Jose, that wouldn't even pay rent for my 1BR. It felt like I was missing out on a huge opportunity.
The next year I left my job and moved to a town in the Japanese countryside to decompress. Luckily, there were a number of locals with English proficiency who looked out for me, and I ended up doing things I never imagined -- hosting a cookout, participating in a crazy fire festival, teaching kids about finite state machines (via translator), learning how to make gyoza from old ladies, presenting to entrepreneurs about makerspaces, helping a craftsman export his product, meditating with Buddhist monks. I also learned to ride a bike, better late than never.
I still think of these experiences as highlights of my life -- being carefree, the thrill of traveling, and most of all becoming an illiterate and mute witness, being led around by generous people who want to share their culture.
By the end of the three years I'd lost the travel bug and longed to be more settled in one location. With about a decade of hindsight now, I can say:
- Those years traveling were a highlight of my life. I often reflect on them and reference them, in a probably-very-annoying-to-my-friends way.
- Traveling gave me a ridiculous amount of self-confidence. Having to land in a new city, make a whole new set of friends, learn the rhythms, (in some cases) learn enough of a new language to get by, was challenging but immensely empowering. Obviously there were deep, lonely periods as well, but the good and the bad go together.
- In a roundabout way, it was a boon for my career. Moving every 6 months in 2010 basically meant I had to freelance, which forced me to learn a whole new skillset of selling, which in turn led me down a path of entrepreneurship. It also led me down some unexpected paths, whether it was folks I met at a coworking space or learning about the Microconf community.
I wouldn't do it now, but I'm so glad I did it back then.
This said, I do not claim to be the smartest guy when it comes to business, nor to development…
Opportunities and projects and ventures will always be there. Your youth will not.
1) Absolutely worth it, broadened my horizon
2) Having total freedom (no commitments, bills, job to get back to) was amazing
3) As someone else posted: moving too much / quickly gets boring fast. In travels after i stayed for longer in single places
4) I over planned massively in the beginning
5) After 10 months i was 'done' with travelling and returned home earlier as planned
6) There were some tough times but i grew from them and the potential remorse of not having done the travels would have far outweighed them
But that was before social media, iPhones and plenty of remote work so YMMV
I had a friend in NYC who said "well, naturally if you are doing that you should come to NYC first" which made zero sense, but I did it anyway. I arrived the week after 9/11.
I have been here twenty years and I'd argue I'm still getting to know NYC.
IMHO I'd recommend 20 years per city/country to get a good taste for it.
The most stressful part was the feeling of lost opportunity cost. Even though my living costs were low, I previously earned around $250k/year, and so for each month I travelled it felt like I was really spending $15k or so (after taxes). It took probably 6 months to fully get over this feeling. I unfortunately didn't anticipate it and it made the start of my mini retirement much more stressful than I thought it would be, and I had 5+ years of living costs saved up.
Would be interested in knowing if anyone else experienced this, and how you dealt with it.
Upon our return we both "levelled-up" when we found new jobs.
For me, so much so that I was hired into a position I probably wasn't ready for.
I think the fact we'd had to face so much adversity in Africa, with no way to quit or give up - we were faced with situations which were literally figure out a solution or die - meant that we both developed incredible problem solving skills which our interviewers really valued.
We'd also been faced with an incredible number of corrupt police and border officials who were all trying to extract their pound of flesh. We developed really thick skins and were eventually quite adept at negotiating through the situation with our skins and wallets intact - again, very valuable skills in the workplace.
So the net effect was we had some incredible experiences, saw things we will likely never see again, and after all was said and done, came back into higher grade / better paying jobs than we would have if we'd stayed put!
To cap it all off, it just so happened that a large chunk of our trip coincided with the global financial crisis - so while friends of ours were getting laid off back home, we rolled on in our truck oblivious to the drama back home!
I did a small reddit write up on our trip here: https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/53eqlt/i_quit_my_job_...
Most of the time there is no good working desk and chair.
Also, working on a laptop is bad for your posture.
I have yet to try bringing an external monitor while I travel. Maybe that would be a solution. Or renting one where I stay.
Spent 9 years traveling to every country on earth by land/sea in a single, continuous journey. 6 left to go, and they got stranded in Hong Kong for one year and counting now.
I'll second the advice I've seen here about moving slowly. Never put dates on your calendar where you need to be somewhere. Certainly don't buy an entire Round-The-World ticket that forces you to commit to a bunch of flights in advance. You'll spend your whole year missing out on cool stuff so that you can rush to the next airport and catch the next flight.
I would typically book a one-way flight to an interesting sounding place, then let my trip evolve from there. So I'd start in, say, Cape Town. That's one end of a big continent, and the plan is vaguely "work my way North". At some point in the next year, I would run out of Money, Motivation or Africa, at which point I'd book a flight home or elsewhere.
As it happened, the thing that always failed first was motivation. I'm a software guy, and my brain starts to get annoyed when it's not thinking. After 9 months of dirtbagging around interesting parts of the world, I'd feel the need to work again, so I'd arrange a contract back in the 'States and book another one-way flight home (or round trip home from wherever I was so that I could pick up again a few months later).
Go slow, stick to public transport, avoid touristy areas. There's a lot of good still out there to be discovered.
Good luck!
As someone that's always wanted to travel to my parents home country for a few months but hasn't yet, I wonder about these things. In addition to that what is the tradeoff between being a full time traveler as opposed to working remotely out of another country?
After the fifth night of European hostel living and walking around during the day, I was bored. Meeting new people was fun for a bit but after a while it felt the same. A month later I was complaining to my friend that I was bored out of my mind and she got me a job at her hospital. I started working again a few months after that.
Three months into working I wanted to quit again. But I didn't want a repeat of history, so I decided I was going to settle down in Cluj-Napoca Romania, a city I passed through before. Cost of living, safety, English speaking, friendliness of locals, political stability all were considered. Now I've been living here for over a year and living with a girl I met on day three of arriving. We're both learning web dev together.
Many days I still feel meh, but I can't expect life to be endless excitement. Definitely meaningful and emotionally more stable to be in a long term relationship, though.
Or were you just very lucky, and had tons of money thanks to parents or something?
I strongly agree with other comments about having some structure/mission to your experience. I'm sure the need for it varies from person to person, but I know that I would have gone crazy or felt guilty for wasting my time if we had just been hanging out and drifting from one tourist hotspot to another, as seems to be popular on e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gringo_Trail.
Having a theme or purpose, even if it's totally arbitrary (like "let's go from the top of the Americas to the bottom, by bike!") was definitely important to me to maintaining a positive mindset and achieving a satisfying experience.
Hostels get old pretty fast, and hitchhiking is pretty effective (caveat: only in some places). AirBnBs are usually overpriced. Couchsurfing was hit or miss.
I had good experiences looking for "learn X language" classes in big cities, and/or "learn English classes" where I'd show up and help them practice English. Learning some basic local language helped a lot. Just getting a feel for tonal languages and practicing them a little helped considerably.
It's by far the best decision I've ever made. I had no objective and was completely fulfilled. My subsequent attempts at starting a location-independent business so that I could continue traveling indefinitely failed, or I might still be out there.
Go for it. You only have one life.
If I were to pick one thing, only the most important thing, it would be that self improvement is the only escape from the hedonic treadmill.
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As Secondary pieces of advice:
You will find that wherever you go, there you are. Escapism is not a good reason to travel the world unless you need to learn that lesson first hand.
You will find your experience varies greatly with who you are. If you are super social, you will have a better experience. If you are a pretty person, more adventure will just happen to you and opportunities will just appear. If you've spent time learning a language, that is a gateway to all kinds of adventure. Made a lot of money? You won't have to be frugal/you aren't limited by much. The more you've invested into yourself, the more it pays off, especially with travel. You'll find that the people who have traveled the longest are often attractive, social, and have money.
I don't like Tim Ferris one bit, I think he's a snake oil salesman, but 4 hour work week had an amazing thought experiment. "You win the lotto today and never have to work another day in your life, how are you going to spend your time?" I would strongly encourage brainstorming the answer to that question before you travel and figuring out the answer while you travel.
Tips:
- read the book "vagabonding"
- you *must* set goals and work towards them
- It is easy to not have structure to your days. This *will* harm you.
- You really, really should set up several hours a day to do something "work" like.
- Hostels are great, even 2 nights in a hostel when you first get to a place will pay off huge
- 2 weeks is really the minimum amount of time to spend in a (big) city
- 1 month is the floor minimum amount of time to spend in 1 country (I found 2 optimal).
- The more poor the country, the more privileged and exploitative you will feel
- People are generally friendly and forgiving everywhere
- The world is vastly less dangerous than you might expect, but be on guard
- America is seen pretty positively in Asia
- The more off the path you are/The more risks you take, the better things will be
- Prepare to feel lonely
- prepare to stretch yourself socially
- If you travel long enough, you start to treasure companionship above all other things
- The most beautiful sunset in the world is empty without someone to share it with
- The more uncomfortable you are, the more you are growing
- Stuff is a prison. Pack less than you think you need. Then less than that.However at the beginning of the pandemic, when the company decided to become fully remote, we terminated our lease and started exploring the Pacific Northwest of the USA.
For last year or so we moved every week around 300 miles to a new city to explore it. If we like it, we stay longer. If we don't, we move faster. We work from the hotel rooms and Airbnbs, which proved to be less challenging we initially thought.
I spent last 15 years mostly in California, so this trip opened my eyes to the "rest" of the country which I greatly underestimated before.
I think the best advice for traveling I've come up with is: meet locals. Skip the tourist traps, plenty of pictures online.
Have a drink at a bar and strike up a conversation, ask them what they do for fun. While in London, I did this and the guy said him and his gf were going to do swing dancing at another place on a weeknight. The place was a total dive, but had a live jazz band, cigar smoke, and rare whiskey. It was truly one of the coolest experiences I've had.
The cruise got cancelled and I spent 3/4 of the year stuck at home. I only managed to "escape" to Serbia in summer when the country opened its borders without requiring PCR test.
This year I was waiting to see where I could go. Some balkan countries like Montenegro, North Macedonia and Albania opened their borders, again without requiring the PCR test. I went and spent three weeks in Montenegro as pure vacation and after that moved to Albania where I am now. The situation in Montenegro got worse and the country has many restrictions in place now, while Albania remains open, including restaurants.
I am Czech and the situation in the Czech Republic is bad. The restrictions in place prevent anyone from having a normal life...
Now I only work on the book, nomading in Albania. Here in Durrës the life is not only normal, but fairly cheap and with amazing sea food. I pay 90 EUR/week for an apartment and go to have sea food lunch every day for like 5-8 EUR.
You may be surprised to find that that's a far more common and well rounded way of living :)
People who glorify travel don't seem to grasp that everywhere you go, people are living the life you left behind to go travel. They've got jobs, they've got kids, they've got their pub, their netflix, whatever.
The people who comment on here about how much travel has changed them are mostly young. When you're young, anything changes you. You don't need to go half-way across the world, just go volunteer at a homeless shelter, join a martial arts school, whatever. That'll change you too and you're far more likely to meet your wife/friends in your local community, than half-way across the world and have it work out.
Of course you don't get to share cool Instagram pics and get likes when you volunteer at a homeless shelter vs going to Egypt, but that's a whole nother story.
To walk outside of your native environment is to walk outside yourself. Do that long enough and often enough and you will become a new self. You can carefully bring along a bubble of your comfort zone while traveling and insulate yourself from change. With the internet that's easier than ever and I have done it. On the other hand, the longer I get immersed, the more reverse culture shock I feel when I get home and that's the feeling of having changed more than you realized.
My main takeaway is that even when you change places, you can't change yourself. I finally acknowledged the issues in my life, and began to address them.
My primary interest shifted from the locations to the location's history. Basically, I wanted to learn how a state formed and left its border and society to this day.
With the pandemic nowadays, I live and work in a small room, but have no urge to go faraway outside. There is much knowledge to grasp to help me understand the human condition.
(I hope to reflect further in my travels and extract more novel insights. That will take time writing, but gotta do it soon before I forget.)
I got in a car and drove around Europe. Then I left the car, took one bag with me and got on a flight to Africa. Then South America. Asia. Then I got back to the place I left my car and drove home. After a month, I got in the car again but this time I took my wife with me.
While travelling alone I was moving all the time, rarely staying somewhere longer than a couple of days. I had three stays longer than that (Porto, Buenos Aires, Tokyo).
While travelling with my wife we would stay make longer stays, but never more than a month or two in one place, usually in the countryside. We didn't bother meeting new people.
For personal reasons we had to end the trip and get back home.
I think the most important thing is that the startup waited for me patiently and is doing better than before I left.
UK India Hong Kong Vietnam Cambodia Laos Thailand Russia Mongolia China Tibet Japan Malaysia Indonesia Australia New Zealand Fiji Hawaii North America Chile Bolivia Peru Colombia Brazil
We saw many wonders of the world (from various lists) including Taj Mahal, Angkor Wot, Great Barrier Reef, Machu Picchu and Christ the Redeemer.
We drove coast to coast in the US (LA to New York via the South) over a month.
We took the Trans-Siberian Express train across Russia to Beijing (St Petersburg, Moscow, Kazaan, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, Lake Baikal, Ulaanbaatar, deeper into Mongolia and stayed in a Gerr and Beijing).
We also looped around China by train including going to Tibet via Xinning. Tibet is like nowhere else we have been in the world.
We spent a couple of weeks driving around New Zealand South Island in a campervan.
We did the classic backpacker route around South East Asia, traveling overnight on sleeper buses, visiting the tourist destinations, site seeing, going on a booze cruise party island in the middle of a site of natural beauty (Castaways), visiting temples, full moon party. All in all a bit of everything. We were at the absolute age limit of some activities and accomodation, where although they were willing to show some flexibility, you wouldn't want to be much older as the majority of people were about 20. At times we felt old and past it, but we were happy we went ahead and did it.
Whilst a lot of the trip we just planned and booked ourselves, small parts, like Australia, we went on an organised trip. It wasn't one where we follow a tour leader, instead we were given vouchers for accomodation and activities and transport that went from Cairns down to Melbourne and followed it ourselves. It included dolphin feeding, scuba diving at the great barrier reef, driving around Fraser Island on 4x4s and staying a couple of nights, going on a boat tour of the Whitsundays and seeing White Haven beach with the softest sand I have experienced.
We could have done a fraction of the amount of stuff we did, and seen more or each place. We could have recouperated more rather than end up exhausted. But it was one hell of a trip.
I worried about finding work when it was over, but had several job offers before I returned so that turned out to be a false worry!
He usually spends a few months in each location and films a bunch of stuff about what it's like in various countries. If you skim his videos you can quickly point out where he's at based on the titles. There's hundreds of videos and dozens of locations. It gives you a feel of what like it's really like in the places he visits, although he tends to visit a bit more remote places than you might be interested in going to.
IMO his channel is a perfect blend of being informative and funny. He's been traveling the world for like 15-20 years now.
Things I took away from my trip: Never do it in the summer. It’s way too fucking hot. My cars AC broke midway and it was grueling going through the south in July/August. Secondly, driving to all these cities to get a feel was a good way to condense some of the experience but it wasn’t great. For my life, I would’ve been better served by being an extended weekend warrior and visiting cities during popular dance events. This wouldn’t give a fair representation of the city but at least I’d see what it could be. Lastly, I found out that almost guaranteed no matter where I was going to live - it was going to be really tough because I had no friends in those cities. And I learned not having friends in cities when you visit them and when you visit them solo is lonely and isolating. You’re constantly putting yourself in a very difficult situation where people who see you as a random person on the street have to suddenly go from 0 to best friend in a matter of minutes for anything meaningful to happen. I found this behavior exceedingly rare from the other side. I’m also not very physically attractive, rich, or some status symbol. So, there was no real reason for established people to interact with me. Only transplants would have an interest and that overall trip just confirmed everything I believed about living in the US.
After it, I still judged people who never left where they grew up or where all their friends were but I understood exactly why they did it. Moving to other places every 2-3 years is absolutely devastating to your social life because after 2-3 years you usually start to feel like you’ve finally made some progress. Just to see it reset to zero again.
Now living as a digital nomad for over a year now I'm used to it so it's not really a big deal anymore. I care more about the people I surround myself with than the specific location. Once you've been to major cities around the world, the city/country itself stops mattering as much. I'd love to do some more exotic travel, going to really remote locations, but then you don't have usable Wifi, and even if you did the last thing you'd probably want to be doing is sitting in front of your laptop all day.
I could definitely never go back to an office job. My current employer has a small office so I've gone back every now and then for "fun", but after working remotely I don't see how anyone can go back to office life. It's not just that I don't enjoy offices, I don't think they're time efficient since there's no incentive to complete your work faster since you know you have to be there until 5:30pm or however late everyone stays. When I work out of a coffee shop, I want to be as time efficient as possible and finish my work quickly because I want to get the hell out of there and go live life.
The biggest downside of the digital nomad lifestyle I'd say is that loneliness can be a real problem, all the more compounded by government COVID restrictions (eg. limited social gatherings, curfews, etc). That's still something I don't have a great system for. Of course there are language barriers too - I'm currently in a South American country where most people don't speak any English, so as someone with very bad Spanish it's a lot harder to meet people (obviously I knew this flying here, the tradeoff for the perfect weather was worth it for me). And that being said, I definitely don't consider offices as any cure to loneliness, in fact quite the opposite.
In order to stretch our travel funds, we took local transport, stayed in hostels and campsites, and ate street food. Somewhat proud of the fact that we lived + traveled on $30-$90/day for more than a year.
For me, the best part was taking the same buses and trains as the locals. It gives you a glimpse into their everyday routine and also makes it easier to start a conversation.
Coming back and restarting income took a while though. Mainly because of personal preferences on the kind of work... ultimately just ended up doing the same kind of work that I left (frontend development).
Thinking of doing it again this year, but too scared to abandon income yet again. Might just try remote work this time.
We didn't work at that time, unless you count being an amateur travel agent, which actually a lot of work.
We are actively attempting to design our lives in a way that would allow us to do it again.
Needless to say, it was incredible. I would do it again. It cost us a lot (in both money spent and opportunity costs), but I would easily pay 2x (and we certainly could have done it cheaper).
Then, when I got home, I receive multiple job offers (which I mostly avoided). So, it did not harm long-term earning potential (and given how much people admire the story, may have improved it).
My primary take-away from the the journey is that my wanderlust is finally satisfied. After a year, I stopped moving because, travelling isn't that fun at that point. I want to build large things and have long-term relationships, which is difficult when you are a rolling-stone.
I would certainly encourage my kids to do it when they've got the opportunity. But it's likely that I wouldn't do it myself in at least a decade.
It was amazing!! The toughest part was being alone the whole time, though in solitude I relived my life from the earliest moments, going through each grade in school, unwrapping memories and figuring out the rough bits as I pedaled.
There is a lot of inherent privilege that enables these kind of life opportunities.
Here is what I wrote:
https://breckyunits.com/backpack-the-world-with-zero-plannin...
That post now makes me cringe here and there, but hey I was young. I'd highly recommend doing it, especially when you're young since the value of the experiences will compound. Had a few near death experiences but at least in this universe made it out okay and that has made all the difference.
Overall, I think that it comes down to time management, and expectations. The world is a wonderful place if you are prepared for both its beauty and its uglier sides. You see both while nomading.
[1]: https://medium.com/@_bramses/yes-i-was-a-digital-nomad-no-it...
Also what countries are opening back up? Lol.
I left at the end of July and spent all of August, September, and October in Europe, living off savings and just enjoying the sights, alone.
I have a mixture of extremely good and sad memories. I do not regret it in any way and am extremely glad I did it.
My place in Paris was lovely, right by Les Gobelins in the heart of the city. The weather was beautiful and I would just spend days walking the streets, visiting every museum and cathedral and café and restaurant. The best thing is that under such circumstances you aren't pressed to fit everything into a few days-- you have the freedom to do something every day or every few days, whatever pace you feel like. So you never end up feeling hassled or pressured.
I would pass whole afternoons sitting in the window of the bookshop across from Notre-Dame Cathedral, listening to the churchbells and reading books. I would spend many evenings walking the river. If I felt like it, I would take a train out of the city to a random village in the countryside and visit castle ruins. I did this many times. It's amazing what you can find sitting around in Europe, hundreds or thousands of years old decaying in a field. So much history there.
I rented a car and drove to Normandy, and to the south, and saw many more things. Eventually I flew to Italy, and then to Croatia. Croatia was the best part of the whole trip-- it's an unbelievably gorgeous country. It's not so well known as Italy and Greece and France, but it's as good or better.
A lot of this time was spent playing video games on my laptop in my airbnb room, being a little sad that I was on my own. That's the other side of it. Some friends flew out and spent time with me there, totalling two weeks, but the other eight weeks was just me in a land where I could only speak the language well enough to get by, but not well enough to get to know anyone meaningfully. It was lonely. And all the while I knew I had to go back and figure out what to do next.
I think it depends. You have to know yourself. Money can take away some causes of unhappiness, but it can't give happiness, only freedom, which isn't the same thing. Purpose is happiness, someone said to me recently, and I agree with them. Traveling on my own, I had freedom, but no purpose beyond seeing beautiful and ancient things that I'd never seen before. It was lovely, and I'll do it again soon. But I wasn't as happy as the times when I knew I was where I was meant to be, with people who needed me there and wanted me there.
I don't have a tidy conclusion. It's just food for thought I guess. My personal answer to OP's question. For what it's worth, the whole 3 months cost me <$6000. Staying in one airbnb for an extended block of time and buying groceries instead of eating out 3x a day makes a big difference, plus the trains are cheap in Europe.
I made a small photo blog about it https://andrew-max.github.io/
I'm now in the process of trying to relocate full time to Colombia.
I also now have an anxiety disorder I didn't start the trip with.
I made a few real friends that I'm in touch with years later.
My approach was to stay in AirBnbs, in a private room and with hosts that purport to be outgoing. The premise being that they could act as a conduit to local social behaviors and activities.
Anyway, it was great, well worth the few years I spent. Learning languages, getting experiences, making friends, these things stay with you forever.
For me, while I'm glad I went, I'm shy around strangers so it was extremely lonely. If I did it backpacking and staying in hostels I'm sure I'd have met people in the hostels but in my mid-40s, hostels are no longer in my comfort zone.
Further, it was not remotely the same as taking a vacation. On vacation if you're into shopping you can shop. But, traveling the world means you can't really shop because you have to carry everything you own. That might be a good thing but, at least in my experience, shopping is some not insignificant part of vacations for many people and removing that as an activity lowered some of the enjoyment.
Another issue for me was always having to think about where to be next. In other words I'd arrive at some new place and immediately need to book the next place or else I'm homeless in a week or 2 when this place runs out.
Yet another was basically seeing the same things over and over. Every city in Europe has yet another church, another contemporary art museum with the same 15 artists as the last one, etc... Of course most cities have their unique charm and I'm glad I went to every one of them but, ... I did get tired of certain things as they came one after another (churches and museums).
Another other issue is you're unlikely to have friends (or rather I didn't). Your friends are back at the place you used to live and they have their own lives and you're no longer part of that life as much as you might wish you were. Maybe it's better to say you won't have hangout buddies, at least not if you're doing it alone.
After 3 years I got an apartment again and have been in it for 4.5 years. I still take 3-4 vacations/trips a year though (well except not in the last 12 covid months).
I saw some social scientist claimed it's best to take more short vacations than longer ones because after N days where N was less than 7 or so you get used to it. No idea if their research replicates.
Something I'd suggest is looking up meetups and/or hackathons or certain types of other events where you might make new friends. I made a bunch of friends in Berlin by attending "Talk & Play", a game dev event. I've been back 2 more times since then to see the friends I made their. Of course it might be hard to find an English speaking meetup. You can check out Internations.org (not sure if they are good or bad but went to one meetup which was good)
My suggestion - if you are thinking of it, go ahead and do it.
It was great and we had planned to do it again in 2020 then COVID hit.
Now my kids are of compulsory school age so we need to figure out how we will do it.
Came home and started working with a FAANG, that bit was hard.
Summary: nothing is perfect, but it's wayyyyyy better than having a job.
It was absolutely the best thing I've ever done, and despite being hugely expensive I would do it again in a heartbeat. To be honest I now have an eye on setting up a life where I can travel and work long term, given the increased prevalence of remote working opportunities.
For myself, I found that some of the usual clichés rang true:
- the best thing about the whole experience was (unexpectedly for an introvert) meeting so many different people. I stayed mainly in hostels in Asia, and primarily used AirBnB in South America, and 99% of the people I met were wonderful. As someone who had previously been a bit nervous around new people, this experience was a bit like opening Pandora's box and finding it full of kittens. I learned so much from the people I met, and had so many great and often unexpected experiences as a result, not to mention that fellow backpackers often had great tips for other places to visit. Despite being a clear ten years older than a lot of my fellow travellers, I never felt out of place as the majority were mature (well, either that or I'm immature I guess), unpretentious and easy-going.
- I did grow as a person, perhaps less than I would've done had I travelled when I was much younger, but I nonetheless widened my perspective on the world, and in particular came to realise that people everywhere are basically the same in what they want and need, and mostly just trying to make the best life they can for themselves. It's really nice to get away from the small-minded noise of the news media and vacuous TV, and see people as they really are. It was also great therapy - I had built up some stresses in the preceding ten years or so, and the chance to slow down and just exist without any particular demands on my time was enormously beneficial. Some days I visited places, some days I just relaxed.
- there are some places and experiences that are just magical, that you will never find unless you go away from your home - watching condors rise in the morning sun over the Colca Canyon in Peru, the unspeakable beauty of the Taj Mahal, the weird tension and pageantry at the DMZ between North and South Korea - there is a whole world out there waiting to be discovered and it's worth seeing.
I think any kind of travel is a privilege to be enjoyed as often as possible, but the main difference between a two-week holiday and a six-month travel is the total lack of pressure and the increased opportunities to explore that come with the latter. I have come to prefer one four-week trip over four one-week trips - quality over quantity. I agree with others in this thread recommending staying in one place for a while and getting to know it, rather than flitting between destinations, ticking boxes but taking little away from the experience. I also love revisiting a place I've already travelled - it feels like I have a second home, complete with favourite spots and a way of life that I understand, but retaining all the quirks and charms of a different place and culture.
Some other random thoughts:
- working while travelling is a great way to do it, but if you can afford to, taking some time to forget about work and just 'be' can be extremely good for your mental health, and your enjoyment of a place.
- if you're backpacking - everything you take, you have to carry, and most places have access to most things you need that you didn't bring - carrying 25+ kgs is good exercise but it gets tiring! Don't forget you'll pick up souvenirs along the way.
- going off the beaten track is highly recommended, but then again a lot of popular destinations are popular for good reasons - it's nice to have a mixture.
- I never booked travel tickets more than one country ahead, just enough to satisfy the entry requirements of every country I visited, and I really enjoyed that flexibility.
- I also usually knew almost nothing about a country when I arrived there, and relied on serendipity or else started my research when I arrived. I missed some things but I also enjoyed the experience of exploring with no preconceptions, learned to be more comfortable with uncertainty, and got to do some things that weren't in the guidebooks.
- in Asia, not speaking the local language is not generally much of a barrier to getting around, although it helps to learn at least the fundamentals, not to mention that I personally think it's more respectful; in South America, not having Spanish will make life more difficult but fortunately for English speakers, the basics are comparatively easy to pick up (I did some of the Duolingo course before I travelled, in anticipation, then picked up more while I was there).
- if you're nervous about losing your stuff, get a lockable bag - I travelled with a Pacsafe backpack, never worried I would lose anything, and didn't (no affiliation, just a fan). Hostels often have lockers but not always.
- I took somewhere in the region of 30,000 photos over that time - not just the posed Instagram-worthy shots, but photos of lots of other random things. I will probably never show anyone else, but they will augment my memories in years to come.
- try all the food, even the stuff you don't want to try - some things are unexpectedly delicious, and the odd bad experience makes a great story!
Well that's a lot of rambling, but anyway - I did it, totally loved it, and recommend it to anyone who is inclined that way.
First time around in 2008 I was a bit nervous since I was only one year into my career so wasn’t sure how easy it would be to get a job again. But it was a perfect moment, because I was still living at my parents home (planning to move out once back), had zero debt and few expenses and responsibilities to speak off. I worked at a small company and had a good relationship with my boss so I told him about my plans to go backpacking for 6 months in Latin America over a coffee and to my surprise he was very supportive and offered my to keep the job. If I remember correctly I didn’t actually ended up quitting, we just paused the contract.
Key learnings from that trip:
- After the first month, where I went to language school and stayed with a host family, I travelled way too fast. Barely staying more than 1-2 day in a place before moving on. Which is fun at the beginning but it quickly gets old to have the exact same conversations every day with other backpackers doing all the exact same routes. So towards the end I slowed down and e.g. almost stayed a month in Guanaja, a tiny island in the bay of Honduras which made a huge difference in actually experiencing the place.
- Learn as much of the local language as you can. Sure, if you stay on typical lonely planet routes, plenty people will be able to speak some English and these days with smart phones you can use translators, but it makes a world of a difference when interacting with locals, especially if you get out of the tourist/backpacker areas, if you at least try to speak their language.
- The more touristy the place (this includes “secret” tips from books and websites), the more you unfortunately have to deal with people trying to rip you off, pickpocketing etc. No different than in Europe in that regard.
- Don’t be overly paranoid. Yes, all those countries have a significantly higher crime rate than Switzerland where I’m from, but those tend to be focused on certain areas, so if you act sensibly the probability of something happening to you is actually low. Same for food. If you just go for vacation for 2 weeks you want to minimize risk to not ruin it. But for longer term travels I rather be sick for a bit and try things than acting like everything is going to kill me.
- Don’t plan too much ahead. I met people that had exact travel plans fir the entire trip, booking everything ahead of time, knowing which hostal their going to stay in 6 months from now, etc. But in most cases this either just didn’t work out, it robbed them of flexibility, and also a lot of people only realize after starting traveling that it isn’t really for them. So better to stay flexible.
————
The second time for traveling in 2012/2013 it was a bit more complicated, since I now had an apartment full of stuff, various subscriptions, insurances, etc and I planned to travel while working freelance for an unknown amount of time. I quit my job and started freelancing while still staying in Switzerland to build up contacts and starting to organize departure. I travelled for a bit over year in South America, mostly in Colombia and it ended basically by me deciding to just move here.
Learnings from traveling while working:
- Know what you need for working. There is this cliche of digital nomads working at the beach under palm trees, but to be honest it is way too hot/humid for me there to concentrate, and working in an AC’d hotel room is quite silly. So I prefer staying in more temperate climates while working and go to the beach for short trips.
- There is a lot of alcohol, drug use and partying in hostels. Your are not going to work productively if some teenagers are doing cocaine next to you at 10am on Tuesday morning. There are calm and relaxed hostels to be found everywhere, but you might have to look out for them and do a bit of try and error, but I still prefer them over airbnbs most of the time.
- Ergonomics still matter while traveling. While a well equipped co-working space might be less sexy than a hammock, after a while your back and arms will thank you to work more sensibly.
- Use a laptop that you can do basic repairs yourself. I phased out my MacBook because of this. There are more Apple Stores in Zürich than in all of Latin America. And those that can fix it unofficially might still be easily 10+ hours away from where you are.
- Large time zone differences are a curse and blessing. Make sure to align with your clients/employer up front to avoid them insisting calling you at 3am. Better to arrange something were e.g. you do development during their night so they can do testing, presentations, etc. during the day.
In the first couple months, I spent a lot of money. My habits were shaped by my cushy job and my friend group's hobby of wining and dining whenever possible. Besides looking at my weekly or monthly spending, my best learning was to measure the "jollies per dollar" of each purchase (as my old coworker would say). A 20 dollar meal doesn't necessarily make me twice as happy as a 10 dollar meal. I still keep that practice in "happiness math" with me today.
After London, I flew to the Netherlands where I met my current girlfriend, who was on a weekend trip from a Germany. The next few months were awesome. She was finishing up her grad studies, and I had nothing better to do but to chase her around different German towns she needed to visit. After she turned in her thesis, we drove through Italy together for a month. We got a lot of jollies out of the cannoli and gelato there... Not sure if it was more than the cost though.
After that, I followed my dream to go to southeast Asia. We parted ways, and I stayed in Thailand and Vietnam for another couple months. By that time, I had lost some steam and was much more introverted and reflective than in Europe. As an aside, an important change for me on the trip was that I stopped my regular habit of heavy drinking. I probably got drunk five times on the whole trip. Anyways, I loved it in SE Asia. The food, culture, and nature were amazing. Driving a scooter through the hills of Northern Thailand is one of the highlights of my life. I almost died a couple times driving a scooter though, so I can't wholeheartedly recommend it.
After returning home for a couple months more, I moved to Berlin to live with my girlfriend. We've been here for two years and are quite happy with our lives at the moment. In all, I'm so grateful that I got the chance to do that trip, to learn that I could live out of a backpack, to meet great people and my amazing partner, and to take control of my life for the better.
But that's just a high level overview. There were some tough parts and there wasn't any enlightenment moment where I realized my true destiny. That's said, I learned a lot about myself and what I'm capable of. I'm a much happier and healthier person today than I was when I left. Happy to share any more details or stories if people are curious!
My partner, who I had recently started dating at the time, was unhappy with her job and also decided to take the leap. In 2011, we spent 313 days traveling around the world together. Ten years later, we're still together!
As for trip logistics, very little was planned in advance. We both gave up our apartments and put our belongings in storage with friends and family. We started the trip with one-way tickets from the USA to Asuncion, Paraguay. Not a common first destination on a RTW trip, but we had used miles and the cost was the same price to go to a relatively obscure place rather than a more common one. Paraguay is a fun one if you are vegan/vegetarian, but that's another story.
Prior to the trip I had stockpiled a decent amount of frequent flyer miles. The late 2000's were crazy with respect to mile program promotions, but that's a whole different story! Those miles helped offset most of the long-haul travel costs but on the ground we preferred to travel as cheaply as possible with buses, trains, etc. The main thing the miles enabled was access more remote and uncommon destinations. As an example, one of our travel days took us from Mongolia to Palau. I don't think that's a common origin-destination pair.
I will second what others have posted here about moving slow. The places we have the fondest memories of are the ones where we spent the most time. This cuts both ways though. When you are traveling/living this lifestyle it can take some effort to find that magical mix of affordable housing, good food, and interesting activities. When all those factors align, it's easy to "get stuck" and then later have to cut things from the larger itinerary. Burn out from being on the road is another real factor. We felt it strongly at about the 6 month mark, which, conveniently was timing with a detour back home for my brother's wedding. After that we were eager to get back on the road.
Regarding costs, we found the trip to be quite affordable. Our burn rate over the year averaged out to 1000 USD per month per person, however, we had intentionally avoided the more expensive parts of the world (e.g., Europe, OZ/NZ, etc.). Aside from a few splurges, we chose to stay in budget hotels/guesthouses wherever possible. We had also offset much of our long-haul travel costs with airline points/miles.
I would love to take a trip like this again and I'm glad I didn't save this experience for retirement. I can't speak highly enough of doing something like this if you have the means.
If anyone is interested in more details about the trip, I kept a blog here:
I went to India for 3 months in 2016, then Pakistan for another 3 months, followed by Afghanistan for 1 month.
Afghan and Pakistani people are by far the friendliest among any nationality. I ignorantly thought they are intolerant of all non Muslims, but it turns out they could teach us a thing or two in hospitality and kindness.
I learned some Urdu and Hindi along the way.
Pakistani food is some of the most aromatic and tasty food I’ve ever had. The better it tastes, the more it absolutely burns your mouth and wrecks your stomach (no regrets).
In India I went to a massive wedding in Hyderabad. The curries in Hyderabad were just as spicy as Pakistan, although they used nuts quite a bit more.
Once you’ve had a real chai in India, you’ll never drink what they call “chai” in the US ever again.
The main thing I missed was central air conditioning, although I stayed in some places where at least the bedroom had a working air conditioner.