Planning this trip took a good amount of time, to say the least. Lauren had pretty much charted a course during the 5 years she spent dreaming of the adventure. But plotting points on the map was only the beginning of it.

Here are the basics of what we did to prepare:

Saving Money

Many people ask us how we saved the money.  Lauren had been saving since she graduated from school (five years ago).  Beth gave up her apartment to herself and moved in with Lauren (and two other roommates), saving $600/month.  We started taking meals to work and flasks to bars.  We cut corners everywhere we could from not eating out to not buying new clothes for over a year (Beth stopped getting those $85 hair cuts). It took some time and sacrifice (and giving up dreams of putting down a down payment on an apartment), but it’s been worth it. 

“Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel”, by Rolf Potts is a great book to help you get in the traveling mood, and it includes more tips on saving money, budgeting and gear. He´s got a website, too: http://www.vagabonding.net/ 

Creating the Budget

We figured out exactly how much money we’d need to bring along by creating a detailed budget.  (Yay, spreadsheets!)

Cost per day - First we figured out all the countries we’d be going to and approximately how long we’d stay in each one. After looking through our Lonely Planets and doing a bit of research, we determined a high, low, and average cost per day for budget travellers. We multiplied those amounts by the number of days we determined we’d be in each place.

Flights - We figured out how much we would need to spend on flights by searching out a few around the world ticket options, getting quotes from travel agents, and using search engines like Kayak.com. We decided that with our itinerary, it would cost us more (and be too restricting) to book an around the world ticket. We were doing too much zig-zagging north and south, which would quickly burn up our mileage allowance with those types of tickets.

For budgetary purposes, we decided to figure out roughly how much we’d need for each of our flights, but book them along the way. It’s worked out well because we have not been locked into dates, which has allowed us to decide how long or short we’d stay in a region once we were there and had checked out the scene. Another benefit to booking along the way is that several flights have ended up been cheaper than what we had originally priced out. Once we were in the country we’d be flying out of, the flights would often be less expensive if we went through a travel agent there instead of booking in the U.S. A few times, we found domestic airlines that Kayak wasn’t pulling up on its searches that had better deals.

Other travel - After figuring out how much we’d need for basic necessities each day, we added a separate travel budget for over-land travel. That was just an estimate. No real science involved there.

Other line items - We also added allocations for visas, medical needs (such as travel insurance, Rx’s we’d need, and shots that were required), departure costs and gear we’d be buying before we left. We added chunks of cash for things we knew we’d want to do that fell outside the parameters of our daily budget, like Spanish classes or an African safari.

All Our Stuff

Both of us had lived in NYC for quite some time, so we had accumulated quite a lot of “stuff”. We had settled on subletting the apartment (furniture, cats, and 7-foot loft bed included) to friends of ours. The “what do we do with all our crap” question became more of an emergency when we found out that we were getting evicted from our apartment a month and a half before we were set to leave. Apparently our landlord had decided to sell the building and thought that his occupants of over four years only needed a month’s notice. Ah, New York. 

We ended up leaving a bunch of stuff with friends around the city and taking a ton of stuff up to Lauren’s mom’s in Massachusetts (this included building massive shelves in the basement so that there wouldn’t be disarray). Beth’s parents offered to store Lauren’s precious 1989 Camry in their barn. Figuring out what to do with the cats was the most agonizing decision of all. But they are currently safe and sound, living in South Carolina with way more space than they ever had in NYC with Beth’s parents.  (We’re worried they won’t want to go back.)

(PS Thanks, parents!)

Medical

Insurance: We ended up going with Atlas Travel (MultiNational Underwriters) insurance company, for $541 for the year. We ended up adding a special sports rider so that we’d be covered oh, for anything like, say, a motorbike accident. The verdict is still out on them, though, since they have yet to reimburse us for our accident or subsequent doctor’s visits. 

Medicines: My cousin Suzanne helped us figure out what prescriptions we’d need for any and all medical snafus. Our list:

• Keflex: for skin infections
• Cipro: for bacterial stomach infections
• Zithromax: for sinus infections
• Compazine: for severe nausea and vomiting (both pills and suppositories)
• Fluconazole: for yeast infections caused by all the antibiotics

We started buying them four months out so that we could stock up on everything we needed for the year. Insurance would only give us a month’s supply at a time for some things. 

We also brought a medical pack that, unfortunately, has come in handy. We threw in some rehydration packs for those really fun days and a bunch of over the counter drugs, which we’ve used a lot more than prescription ones. Advil, Dramamine, Immodium, Pepto, and Tums supplies have been particularly hard hit. We also have a daily vitamin for when we’re in developing countries where we don’t think we’re getting our daily nutrition.

Malaria: Anti-malarial drugs were particularly fun to figure out. Some areas were Lariam resistant (like SE Asia), and some doctors advise that you not take Malarone for more than 3 months at a time (plus, it’s really expensive). We had to do some research on how long we’d be in malaria areas and which drugs we needed to take while there. We’ve tried to take breaks from Lariam as much as possible, since it definitely has its side effects. See “I Dream of Larium” in the Uganda section for more info on that…

Vaccinations: Our wonderful NYC doctor (Dr. Rein!) helped us prepare by getting us all our annual tests, setting us up with a specialist in travel medicine, and writing endless prescriptions for everything we’d need.  She gave us half of our shots, and the specialist gave us the others. A word of advice - don’t get your yellow fever, polio, tetanus-diptheria, and meningitis shots all in the same day. Beth was as sick as a dog for a week, and Lauren followed soon after with the worst flu she’d ever had. So much for the “specialist.”

Check-ups:  While we still had U.S.-based health insurance, we made sure to go get all the annual exams we needed: we saw our ob-gyns, dentist, and dermatologists.  Lauren got her overdue eye exam (and new glasses).  The week before we left, Lauren ended up going back to our amazing dentist (Dr. Litwin!) for a last-minute tooth-ache.  Dr. Litwin examined it thoroughly and decided Lauren was good to go (just still a hypochondriac, as usual).

Gear and Packing

Tons of travel sites have long lists of items one should bring on a long trek (which varies based on region), so we won’t belabor the point. A few items we have found particularly helpful have been:

• Camping soap (an all-purpose, environmentally friendly soap)
• Sharpies
• Duct tape (which is currently holding our laptop together, among other things)
• A hankerchief (for those bad colds, Kleenex in some countries is unheard of)
• Storage bags (especially the vacuum-pack ones for clothes that squish down)
• A small pocket size notepad for keeping notes and tracking finances
• A thin sheet (for covering those nasty hostel sheets that we’re not sure have ever been washed). The only ones we could find were expensive light-weight silk from camping stores. Lauren’s mom improvised, and we bought very light silk curtains for $5 they have worked great (at a quarter of the size of cotton!).
• A small, highly compact sleeping bag (for extra warmth when we didn’t want to use the nasty hostel blankets).  We recommend getting the rectangle (not mummy) sleeping bags.  Even though ours weighed a little more (2lbs vs. 1.1lbs for the mummy), it’s more versatile and can be used as a comforter or blanket when unzipped.

We also brought some specialty clothes, since we’d be traveling in very hot regions and very cold regions and wanted to keep the weight down:

• Silk longjohns
• A slim fleece
• A stuffable shell

These three things together can keep you warm down to freezing (or possibly colder), and they’re pretty light.  And the stuffable shell makes a good pillow in other regions.