That red line you see zigzagging around the globe is a not very accurate representation of the flight path as it currently stands for our RTW. The dark blue line represents overland sections which we will take on ourselves.

To cover our flights, we went with a One World Explorer ticket because it seemed one of the more flexible options on offer; having an alliance of 8 major airlines including Quantas, British Airways, American Airlines and Lan Chile. Also, because it is not mileage based we felt that it should be able to take us to all of our dream destinations without too much comprimises. Date/time changes can be made for free and if we want to rewrite our itinerary, that'll set us back about 75 bucks. Only time will tell if this was the correct choice.

The two main focal points to the trip are South America and South East Asia (in each of which we want to spend at least 3 or 4 months). This was then padded out with numerous stopovers and whirlwind tours to give something along the lines of the following:

Manchester - New York - Cancun // Mexico City - Miami - Rio de Janeiro - Lima // Punta Arenas - Santiago - Auckland // Christchurch - Sydney - Ayers Rock - Cairns // Brisbane - Singapore - Bangkok // Hong Kong - Tokyo - Amsterdam - Barcelona - London

// denotes overland sections
- denotes flight sections

As already stated we plan on spending over three months in South America and around the same again in SE Asia. The duration of other stops will probably vary from a week (for NY, Florida, Singapore, Tokyo) to a month (for Mexico + Central America, NZ, Oz). Now that we're one month into the trip, we can say that our week in New York felt about right but the amount of ground we covered in Central America (given the time we allowed for it) could have been shortened. Whether we're able to (or really want to) stick to our original guestimates in future remains to be seen.