Round The World

At first place you struggle with a problem – where to begin with?
The idea of the trip has been created, but how and where you go to???
I think I started from… Google! (of course!) I totally didn’t know which of all these beautiful places in the world I should go to…cause I cannot visit all of them :( And I have to choose only these which I can afford. So first criteria of searching the web looked like this:

– wonders of the world
– seven wonders of the world
– seven wonders of … (name of a country)
– 10 the best hikes/treks
– 10 the most beautiful places in he world
– must go places in the world

A lot of digging, grubbing around and even more reading. After a time I realized that the best source of information are www.tripadvisor.com, www.lonelyplanet.com, www.virtualtourist.com and www.bootsnall.com. Less useful but still:
http://www.worldtravelguide.net/
http://www.iexplore.com/
http://www.backpacker.com/
http://www.gobackpacking.com
http://www.budgettravel.com/
http://www.backpackgeartest.org/

When finally the rout was more less planned I started to drag myself into reading travel blogs written by people who already did RTW trip or haven’t finished yet. I quickly noticed that this is the best way to find out about the most important things. Starting from recommend by these people places worth visiting, through the best and the cheapest ways of getting there, ending on the most reliable accommodation. You can really learn about many very interesting places, not those the most commercial, which you can google typing “10 the most beautiful places in he world”. You can e-mail these people and get even better help. They have been there, they’ve seen, they’ve experienced – they know the best.

Money, money
Planning this type trip is connected with some kind of sacrifice and scrupulous saving. I have to admit that it wasn’t that bad experience to me. For sure my body is grateful for this break in partying every weekend. The fact is that this almost a year long asceticism will be recompensed to us in a beautiful style :)
I started my saving in January ’09. 10 months is not that long, but a rise in my job helped a lot. Cannot say that I’m rich right now so the character of this trip is going to be in a backpacker style. The most important thing about traveling cheap is being hosted by other people. Personally, I have never liked this way of interfering with people, but we have no choice :] We will have to manage our saved money to prevent a situation that in Thailand we wake up with no money and it’s time to go back home.