So, you have decided you want to travel the world. The world is a pretty big place and I know that planning a trip can be a super daunting experience. After backpacking through Europe for just about 3 months this past summer, a lot of you guys asked me to do a video on the details about the journey how I planned it, how I could afford it, where to begin, etc.
Since there's just so much ground to cover about traveling the world and since I could literally talk about this subject forever I've decided to start a little travel series that will hopefully get you on that plane to see the beautiful planet.
We're going to discuss step number one planning the adventure. Well, first off, there's no wrong way to travel Correction: if you're that tourist who decides to carve his or her name into the Colosseum then you're wrong, and you should feel bad.
But, as long as you are respectful to the culture you've just stepped foot in there's no wrong way to travel. What I mean by this is that you have the freedom to choose what is most valuable to you in life, including travel experiences. If your perfect vacation consists of five-star meals and lounging on a beach in an all-inclusive cabana, that's fantastic if your perfect vacation includes couch surfing, ramen noodles, and art galleries, that's awesome. If your perfect vacation is based on hostels, pub crawls and nightlife, that's great we all value different things in life including what makes a holiday "fantastic" so as long as you are not harming the culture, the monuments or nature of your desired place, you're in the clear.
Now that we've gotten that straightened out how do you decide where you wanna go? Well, like I said, we all value different things and unfortunately, I can't directly help you figure out what's important to you in life, or in a vacation. But I can give you some awesome resources that will help you figure it out my two all-time favorite travel resources are wikitravel.org and wikivoyage.org.
The two sites are extremely similar in pretty much all aspects and I tend to flip between the two of them, to be honest, both have world map that you can click on and read about what makes a particular continent unique and then you can read about individual countries from there both of them also have extremely detailed information pertaining specifically to tourists or travelers like visa requirements, currency information, common language phrases domestic and international travel information and so on and so forth.
Wikivoyage also has a super helpful virtual "tourist office" where you can search for specific words or phrases and pages with those words or phrases will be pulled up on the site. For example, if I was really interested in nightlife I could search wikivoyage for "nightlife" and be linked to Seoul the capital of South Korea which apparently has a very vibrant nightlife.
I would have never known Two other resources for planning travels are reddit.com/r/solotravel and reddit.com/r/travel both communities are full of travel inspiration experiences, and like-minded people who are eager to see the world as well this is a great place to start if you have absolutely zero idea where you'd like to travel first as there are many threads dedicated to helping people find a destination that they'd love to be there are also a few factors to keep in mind when deciding where you want to go.
Specifically time of year you'd like to travel, and transportation in your destination in addition to the typical calendar seasons summer, winter, fall and spring some destinations also have a wet and dry season summer is usually referred to as the "high season" when it comes to tourism, as this is when most people get their traveling in for the year traveling during this time of year, on one hand will usually ensure pretty decent weather for the duration of your travels but, on the other hand, this usually means a lot more crowds and heightened prices in everything from meals to lodging the opposite is true for traveling in the winter, so it's just something to keep in mind some places also have more widely available public transportation than others and some places are accessible only really by private vehicle or even booking tours in advance all of the information about weather and transportation in your specific destination can be found pretty easily by the wiki links, so check them out for more information and as always, links are included in the description bar so definitely check that out So now that you've figured out where you want to go and when to let's talk about probably the most obvious struggle when it comes to travel: money.
Where do you find the money to travel the world? Well, unfortunately, I don't have a magic answer for you guys. I wish I did. Truth is, in most cases, you simply have to save up and make traveling a priority in your budget. Depending on your income and desired travel style coming up with the money could take a long time or not very long at all.
If you plan to stay at an all-inclusive resort with a beach view obviously that's going to cost a little bit more than a hostel in most places if you plan to eat out at expensive restaurants for every meal that's going to cost a lot more than cooking your own food from the grocery store. Your dollar will stretch further in southeast Asian countries than in Scandinavian countries. Differences like this make your travel budget extremely subjective so it's difficult to give blanket advice simply because every person and every budget is so drastically different I could make an entire content on traveling frugally so if that's something you'd be interested.
Let me give you the basics of what I personally did to travel for nearly 3 months, financially speaking. First, I picked my destination and bought my plane tickets. In this particular case, it was actually cheaper for me to buy a one-way ticket to New York City and then a one-way ticket from New York to Berlin with a stopover in Oslo than it was for me to buy a one-way ticket directly from Las Vegas to Berlin with any stopovers. So, although it added a little bit of time to my itinerary, I saved a couple hundred dollars. My favorite website for buying tickets is google.com/flights because it shows you both on a map and in calendar format the specific days as well as the airports it would be cheapest to fly into.
If you're somebody who always goes for the cheapest flights this is the best tool that I have personally found and if you're the more adventurous type with no specific destination in mind skyscanner.com is a fantastic option simply because they literally have the option to search for anywhere on the globe so, for example, let's say that you are available at some point during the month of March, but you don't know when yet and you're available to go anywhere, but you don't know where you want to go on Skyscanner, you can literally select an entire month that you'd want to travel.
At some point during and you can actually select the "everywhere" option when you're searching for a destination so doing it this way will show you the cheapest place to fly on the planet during the entire month of MARCH. So if you're the adventurous type, I highly recommend, it's fantastic. Once I bought my plane tickets, I researched a little bit of what I wanted to do in the specific countries I was going to for me, I personally love museums, learning about history and the occasional nice meal I also knew that I would be traveling by train in between countries and I would be staying primarily in hostels So I pretty much just googled a little bit of what I wanted to do in each country got a price range for those specific activities added it up and multiplied it by the number of days I would be traveling this was my basic budget.
Due to the fact that I would be traveling through Europe during the high season it can get expensive so just to be safe, I upped my daily budget to $100 per day. Yes, this is a lot of money. No, you don't need to do this. I ended up spending, on average, way under $100/day. But it was comforting knowing that I had a little bit of wiggle room in my budget in case anything came up I highly recommend giving yourself a daily budget no matter what it is during the entire time that you're traveling. A daily budget, in my personal opinion, is a lot easier to keep in the back of your head than an overarching budget that spans for weeks and weeks and weeks on end once you have your overall budget and daily budget figured out it's time for the hardest part: saving your money.
It took me about six months to save up for my trip, and I was determined to save every penny I could I didn't buy any new clothes or makeup I didn't drive anywhere I didn't have to So I could avoid putting gas in my car as much as possible I didn't go out to the movies I didn't really do much of anything fun, honestly and it was all specifically so I could save up as much as possible before I left the country.
It can be really brutal, but with a bit of restraint, it can be done and it is so worth it. So that is pretty much all it comes down to when planning a trip at least the very basics of it.
Honestly, once I figured out where I wanted to travel the only planning I really did as well, saving money I plan to do entirely separate videos on packing, lodging, solo travel.
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| How To Travel The Worl |
Since there's just so much ground to cover about traveling the world and since I could literally talk about this subject forever I've decided to start a little travel series that will hopefully get you on that plane to see the beautiful planet.
We're going to discuss step number one planning the adventure. Well, first off, there's no wrong way to travel Correction: if you're that tourist who decides to carve his or her name into the Colosseum then you're wrong, and you should feel bad.
But, as long as you are respectful to the culture you've just stepped foot in there's no wrong way to travel. What I mean by this is that you have the freedom to choose what is most valuable to you in life, including travel experiences. If your perfect vacation consists of five-star meals and lounging on a beach in an all-inclusive cabana, that's fantastic if your perfect vacation includes couch surfing, ramen noodles, and art galleries, that's awesome. If your perfect vacation is based on hostels, pub crawls and nightlife, that's great we all value different things in life including what makes a holiday "fantastic" so as long as you are not harming the culture, the monuments or nature of your desired place, you're in the clear.
Now that we've gotten that straightened out how do you decide where you wanna go? Well, like I said, we all value different things and unfortunately, I can't directly help you figure out what's important to you in life, or in a vacation. But I can give you some awesome resources that will help you figure it out my two all-time favorite travel resources are wikitravel.org and wikivoyage.org.
The two sites are extremely similar in pretty much all aspects and I tend to flip between the two of them, to be honest, both have world map that you can click on and read about what makes a particular continent unique and then you can read about individual countries from there both of them also have extremely detailed information pertaining specifically to tourists or travelers like visa requirements, currency information, common language phrases domestic and international travel information and so on and so forth.
Wikivoyage also has a super helpful virtual "tourist office" where you can search for specific words or phrases and pages with those words or phrases will be pulled up on the site. For example, if I was really interested in nightlife I could search wikivoyage for "nightlife" and be linked to Seoul the capital of South Korea which apparently has a very vibrant nightlife.
I would have never known Two other resources for planning travels are reddit.com/r/solotravel and reddit.com/r/travel both communities are full of travel inspiration experiences, and like-minded people who are eager to see the world as well this is a great place to start if you have absolutely zero idea where you'd like to travel first as there are many threads dedicated to helping people find a destination that they'd love to be there are also a few factors to keep in mind when deciding where you want to go.
Specifically time of year you'd like to travel, and transportation in your destination in addition to the typical calendar seasons summer, winter, fall and spring some destinations also have a wet and dry season summer is usually referred to as the "high season" when it comes to tourism, as this is when most people get their traveling in for the year traveling during this time of year, on one hand will usually ensure pretty decent weather for the duration of your travels but, on the other hand, this usually means a lot more crowds and heightened prices in everything from meals to lodging the opposite is true for traveling in the winter, so it's just something to keep in mind some places also have more widely available public transportation than others and some places are accessible only really by private vehicle or even booking tours in advance all of the information about weather and transportation in your specific destination can be found pretty easily by the wiki links, so check them out for more information and as always, links are included in the description bar so definitely check that out So now that you've figured out where you want to go and when to let's talk about probably the most obvious struggle when it comes to travel: money.
Where do you find the money to travel the world? Well, unfortunately, I don't have a magic answer for you guys. I wish I did. Truth is, in most cases, you simply have to save up and make traveling a priority in your budget. Depending on your income and desired travel style coming up with the money could take a long time or not very long at all.
If you plan to stay at an all-inclusive resort with a beach view obviously that's going to cost a little bit more than a hostel in most places if you plan to eat out at expensive restaurants for every meal that's going to cost a lot more than cooking your own food from the grocery store. Your dollar will stretch further in southeast Asian countries than in Scandinavian countries. Differences like this make your travel budget extremely subjective so it's difficult to give blanket advice simply because every person and every budget is so drastically different I could make an entire content on traveling frugally so if that's something you'd be interested.
Let me give you the basics of what I personally did to travel for nearly 3 months, financially speaking. First, I picked my destination and bought my plane tickets. In this particular case, it was actually cheaper for me to buy a one-way ticket to New York City and then a one-way ticket from New York to Berlin with a stopover in Oslo than it was for me to buy a one-way ticket directly from Las Vegas to Berlin with any stopovers. So, although it added a little bit of time to my itinerary, I saved a couple hundred dollars. My favorite website for buying tickets is google.com/flights because it shows you both on a map and in calendar format the specific days as well as the airports it would be cheapest to fly into.
If you're somebody who always goes for the cheapest flights this is the best tool that I have personally found and if you're the more adventurous type with no specific destination in mind skyscanner.com is a fantastic option simply because they literally have the option to search for anywhere on the globe so, for example, let's say that you are available at some point during the month of March, but you don't know when yet and you're available to go anywhere, but you don't know where you want to go on Skyscanner, you can literally select an entire month that you'd want to travel.
At some point during and you can actually select the "everywhere" option when you're searching for a destination so doing it this way will show you the cheapest place to fly on the planet during the entire month of MARCH. So if you're the adventurous type, I highly recommend, it's fantastic. Once I bought my plane tickets, I researched a little bit of what I wanted to do in the specific countries I was going to for me, I personally love museums, learning about history and the occasional nice meal I also knew that I would be traveling by train in between countries and I would be staying primarily in hostels So I pretty much just googled a little bit of what I wanted to do in each country got a price range for those specific activities added it up and multiplied it by the number of days I would be traveling this was my basic budget.
Due to the fact that I would be traveling through Europe during the high season it can get expensive so just to be safe, I upped my daily budget to $100 per day. Yes, this is a lot of money. No, you don't need to do this. I ended up spending, on average, way under $100/day. But it was comforting knowing that I had a little bit of wiggle room in my budget in case anything came up I highly recommend giving yourself a daily budget no matter what it is during the entire time that you're traveling. A daily budget, in my personal opinion, is a lot easier to keep in the back of your head than an overarching budget that spans for weeks and weeks and weeks on end once you have your overall budget and daily budget figured out it's time for the hardest part: saving your money.
It took me about six months to save up for my trip, and I was determined to save every penny I could I didn't buy any new clothes or makeup I didn't drive anywhere I didn't have to So I could avoid putting gas in my car as much as possible I didn't go out to the movies I didn't really do much of anything fun, honestly and it was all specifically so I could save up as much as possible before I left the country.
It can be really brutal, but with a bit of restraint, it can be done and it is so worth it. So that is pretty much all it comes down to when planning a trip at least the very basics of it.
Honestly, once I figured out where I wanted to travel the only planning I really did as well, saving money I plan to do entirely separate videos on packing, lodging, solo travel.
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