The last time I set out on a World trip I took an A-frame rucksack, a sleeping bag and a change of clothes. I travelled without booking transport or hotels, and on a shoestring budget. I worried about nothing and slept anywhere, indoors or outdoors.
Forty six years later, things have changed somewhat…
Now I need a moderately comfortable bed, I have a cabin baggage sized backpack stuffed with the lightest gear I can find to keep the weight down to 10 Kg, and I have spent the best part of twelve months planning.
I started by brainstorming all the places I would like to go. I then did some basic research to find the best times of year to go to each destination. I then tried to put them in a sensible order for travel. Eight major versions of my spreadsheet planner later, I arrived at my final plan. There are some compromises on climate and routing, but overall I think it will work… It has to work – or I shall be up an exotic creek without a paddle!
I do not want to lug a heavy bag around the World, nor do I want to check in baggage at airports and then wait, hopefully, for it at luggage carousels. Airlines have different rules, but by keeping the total weight to 10 Kg most airlines will let me take the bag on as cabin baggage. Others set the limit at 7 Kg but allow a second, smaller bag. A few have a total limit of 7 Kg so my backpack will have to be checked in. To keep the weight down I have worn out the kitchen scales weighing every item that I might possibly take with me. Most things I already had were rejected as too heavy, so I have bought quite a lot of new kit. My final (?) packing list looks like this:
And then there are visas and vaccinations…
After 14 jabs (not to mention a few hundred quid) I should be protected against most nasty bugs that I am at all likely to meet. I have had jabs for:
- Typhoid
- Tetanus/Dipheria/Polio
- Hepatitis A
- Hepatitis B
- Rabies
- Japanese Encephalitis
- Tick-born Encephalitis
- Yellow fever
I am not planning on going to anywhere that has a greater than ‘Low’ risk for malaria, so I am not taking malaria tablets.
Visas for some countries – Egypt and Turkey for example – were straightforward and cost about £20. Visas for Russia, Mongolia and China required hours of form filling, hundreds of £’s and, for Russia and China, visits to their London visa application centres for fingerprinting. What joy! What fun!
Finally, there are flight, train and hotel bookings. With the internet you can explore all the options well in advance, you can pick the best hotels for your budget, and you can check that the transport links work for the route you want. The trouble is it takes hours, days and weeks to research and book everything. And then an airline changes its schedule and throws plans out the window, leaving one out of pocket – I won’t mention names, but the airline in question starts with R and ends in air…
Phase 2 Preparations
I decided to make some changes to my luggage for phase 2 of the travels. I was tired of lugging a backpack around airports and hot, sticky cities and wanted to get a case with wheels. I did not require a backpack for any potential mountain hikes; a day pack would do for anything I was likely to need this time around. But there were two issues: firstly the additional weight would take me over carry-on baggage limits and secondly the possibility that I would end up on a rough surface that would necessitate carrying the bag for an uncomfortable distance.
I settled on a High Sierra case that I found on offer in a Melbourne shop. It held 40 litres, the same as my Osprey Farpoint, had good soft handles as well as a single telescopic handle and, unusually, it also had a slim pair of zip-away shoulder straps, so I could carry it on my back if needed for moderate distances. It weighed 2.3 kg, 1 kg more than my backpack.
I was also fed up with doing everything on my phone, especially updating the blog and working with spreadsheets, so wanted to take my iPad, adding another 650 g, together with a slightly heavier bluetooth keyboard. Clearly some other items would have to go.
The first things to be kicked out were my hiking boots; without the Himalayas in prospect I could wear my waterproof trainers for any hiking I was likely to do, and also wear them on planes. I doubted I would need the silk inner sheet so that went along with binoculars, compass, whistle and head torch. I retained the Steripen but dispensed with spare batteries. The mosquito head net and neck gaiter went, as did the waterproof trousers. I was going to be in hot weather nearly all the time so instead of 3 long and 3 short sleeve shirts I took 1 long and 5 short sleeved ones and left the woolly hat and gloves at home. Magically the weight dropped below 10 kg again.
For phase 1 I had booked almost all my flights and accommodation in advance. I didn’t have time for that on phase 2, so just made sure I had a couple of key things booked: my initial flight and first few days accommodation, together with hotels at Christmas time and during Rio carnival. I still had a fairly detailed proposed itinerary for much of it, but there were some gaps, particularly around the time that Corriene was going to join me. Given that I am a person who likes to plan things, that perturbed me a little, but I trusted that things would fall into place in due course. Which, of course, they did.
Rob's Roads 