Our plan to travel the world over a three year period and move alternatively between northern summers and southern summers meant we had allocated six months to each of the six continents. This means we would have, in effect, more or less, give or take, six summers in a row.
Some would say that doing an entire continent in only six months is way too fast, others might say its way too slow. We said we’ll make it work for us, one way or another, and love every second of it.
Here’s a rough map of what we thought our journey could look like.
Our journey could have looked something like this as we go from northern summer to southern summer and back again for three successive years
The little red squiggle is just an example of where we could go but what we did know is that there would be maybe six ocean ferries or cargo ships that our vehicle and camper would have to travel. These would include a short transit around from Panama to Colombia around the Darien Gap, the longest cargo trip from South America to England, the short ferry from Spain to Morocco, a cross-Mediterranean trip from probably Egypt to perhaps Greece or Turkey, maybe a cargo ship from Vladivostok to somewhere in South East Asia and a final crossing from SE Asia to Australia.
We had purposely not planned our journey in too much detail and have been known to make a second cup of coffee in the morning and pull out the maps to decide where we are going that day. Spontaneity and flexibility is the key.
Julie and I love maps, partly because they show all the places we could go.
Two areas of our plan were a bit fuzzy at that time – first, will it be safe to travel through western Africa, and second, what route will we take across the Middle East and Central Asia. Our preferred choice is through Turkey, Iran and the ‘Stan’ countries but circumstances are changing in that part of the world all the time and we don’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves.
Who doesn’t like pages of a passport filled with stamps from far-away places
Most importantly, we want to be as flexible as possible, planning each day as it comes and taking into account local conditions, the weather, our moods and budget. We’ll make it up as we go, and that’s a good thing, and we’ll always keep our health and safety as our primary goal.
Sure, it all sounds a bit mad, we admit that. But that’s our big plan, subject to a thousand interrelated details, circumstances, incidences, situations, challenges, distractions and problems that will change our actual route on a daily basis. Should be great!