10 Most Common RTW Planning Mistakes

1: Booking a RTW Ticket
If you’re following a fixed route through expensive cities and your time is very limited, RTW tickets can work out cost-effective. In general, most longterm or budget travellers are better off piecing together a route using cheap airlines, last minute deals, online specials and local travel agents.

RTW (round-the-world) tickets expire after a year, often cost extortionate fees to change, and are, generally, much, much more of a commercial proposition for agent and airline than the bargain they at first appear. Doubt me? Check out AirAsia’s advance fares on the big transcontinental routes.

2: Ignoring Travel Time
Hmmm…. You want three days in Chiang Mai. Then three days in Phuket. They’re in the same country, right? It’ll be just like hopping on the bus. Err… No. If you believe in itineraries (and that’s a whole other story), at least allow for the travelling time between destinations. And in some parts of the world, that’s a WHOLE lot of time. Research it online, if you’re thorough. If not allow at least a day, more often two. Most of us don’t want to get straight off a plane and hit the sights. And after an 18 hour bus journey? Fuggedaboutit.

3: Getting the Seasons Wrong
Finland in January? Sure. Provided you know it can get to thirty below quite easily. Cambodia during the rainy season? Well, the Mekong looks great and the weather’s dramatic, but the roads will be like soup. Egypt in high summer? Only for the brave, or those travelling in fleets of A/C vehicles. When you’re planning where you’ll be when, use a site like BBC World Weather Country Guides to check temperatures, rainfall and more.

4: Leaving No Free Time
You might be able to plan a two-week holiday like a cultural route march through must-see sites. Try that for more than a month and you’ll be miserable and exhausted. You lose the opportunity to take spontaneous trips to places you’ve never heard of, hook up with people you meet along the way — and you have no leeway when transport connections take longer than expected.

5: Hitting the High Season
One of the great bonuses of longterm travel is being able to avoid, to a large degree, the hordes of tourists and fellow travellers who descend on wherever you want to see during high season. Aim to be in popular spots when other people, in general, aren’t. That means missing the Western summer, Easter and winter holidays, and researching local holidays too: religious, national and, importantly, school.

6: Missing the Natural Big Event
Whale sharks in Honduras? Nesting turtles off Borneo? The great surf breaks of Bali? The ski runs of Chamonix? They all have their natural high points. Go at the wrong time of year and they, quite simply, won’t be there. Whoops.

7: Same Old, Same Old
After a few weeks of desert island bliss or hilltop heavens, most of us are gagging for the city. When you think about where you’re going, mix it up a little. Go from mountains to jungle, from glaciers to cities, from deserted islands to cultural sights, and you’ll get the balance that’s right for you.

8: Racing through Cities
From the transport to the street life, big cities take time to get a handle on. They just, well, do. And there’s much more to cities than the sights. Allow yourself a day for a city and you’ll spend most of your time blundering around or sitting in taxis. Give yourself long enough to appreciate the heartbeat of a city and experience its rhythms. A lot of the time that means, well, not doing very much at all.

9: Prebooking Tours
Many things are cheaper online. Organised tours of countries or regions are not among them. When you get to where you’re going, you’ll most likely feel perfectly competent to arrange your activities yourself. And, if not, there’ll be tours on offer there. And if you’ve just paid five times the rate of your new friends in town for a boat trip up the river, or weeks in a minibus with a bunch of folk you’ve never met, you’ll regret it. Bigtime.

10: Doing Too Much
Six months or a year might feel like a long time. When you’re on the road, it flies by. Try and cover five continents in a year and your experience will be superficial at best, and you’ll most likely be exhausted within months. Almost everyone who abandons their longterm travel plans and comes home early — which happens more often than you’d think — has tried to do too much. Slow travel is cheaper and better than speeding round the sights.

And… finally. The single biggest mistake anyone can make when planning a RTW is not buying travel insurance. World Nomads travel insurance policies offer coverage for more than 150 activities, and I’m an affiliate.