Our gear, Part 1

I love making gear lists for trips, it’s one of my favorite research and relaxation hobbies. Usually it’s trying to get a suitable set of camping gear under very tight budget constraints, and not terribly worried about weight. This works great for a few days in the woods, but one year around the world living out of a pair of backpacks? How do you even begin to plan what gear to take? This is what I thought about during the month it took me to pull together a final sheet of gear, most of which we wound up carrying around the world, and some of which we left and lost along the way.

Step 1 : The requirements.

First I laid out what I thought the most important criteria were, sort of ordered by strictness.

1. Volume and weight limits – I didn’t want our gear to take up too much space. None of that jangling gear hanging off the pack stuff if it could be helped. I also wanted everything we took to not cross thirty pounds per person. This was a rough limit and we went above and below at different times, but we kept it at 20-30 lbs most of the time. The biggest effect this had was restricting the amount of specialized gear we carried, making sure that everything served as many purposes as possible, including being useful in the wilderness and in a city.
2. The min and max temperatures we’d hit – Clearly we weren’t going to Antarctica (probably) but I knew we’d be climbing at least a few mountains in South America, and we’d be in Siberia during some part of the trip. This meant that we had to be able to layer on enough clothing to carry us through at least the freezing point, but probably not much lower. I found this out by looking up average temperatures and highs/lows for a few peaks in various S.A countries, and Siberian summertime temps. Max temperature was important since we’d be chasing summer, and hitting at least a few deserts and hot, muggy, rainforests. We had to be able to strip down to thin enough clothes to be comfortable while still being decent.
3. Being somewhat inconspicuous – this was basically moot from the get go since I’m very tall and pale, but I wanted our total package to look respectable but not particularly expensive. While we never encountered real trouble along the way, we kept meeting other travelers who had had their stuff taken, in part or in whole. For me this meant simple mono-colored clothes and nothing that looked too technical. Camping gear really couldn’t fit into this, but it was inside our packs anytime we were around people, and once the bags had a patch or two and some dirt on them, they looked pretty ordinary.
4. Carrying us through an entire year – I didn’t have any real thoughts on this one. Clearly we’d be living out of our packs for the whole year, so all of our basics needed to be there, but also we’d have chances to resupply. This ultimately resulted in picking out things like wool socks and carrying a small but comprehensive baggy of repair supplies. Of all the repairs we had to do, the vast majority were clothing rips and tears, and some some backpack damage.
5. Budget – everything takes money, and we weren’t sure how much this trip of ours would wind up costing. A small but present thought was to not blow a tone of cash on our gear. Not only would we be saving some amount, but we’d also be in less of a bind if something broke or went missing. There’s a balance of course – getting down to the weight and size I was aiming for would not be possible with the cheapest gear, and an investment up front meant that that item would be likely to last much longer. I set a budget of $1000 for upfront gear purchases, and missed it slightly. We wound up spending about $1200 up front for all of the gear we were missing, with the big ticket items being in the camping department.

Step 2 : What did we actually need?

For this step I made a big list of generic items. For example, I wanted to have two pants and three shirts, so I added 2 spots for pants and 3 spots for shirts in my spreadsheet. I racked my brain for every last item I thought we’d need or want to carry, and this is what I came up with for one person.

Shirt	Columbia dry	6	0.375
Shirt	SmartWool micro 150	5.15	0.321875
Longsleeve	UNIQLO heattech medium	5.75	0.359375
Shirt	UNIQLO heattech medium	4.52	0.2825
Leggings	REI lightweight	5.72	0.3575
Socks	SmartWool PhD long	2.51	0.156875
Socks	SmartWool PhD medium	1.91	0.119375
Socks	SmartWool PhD short	1.73	0.108125
Leggings	REI mediumwieght	8.08	0.505
Longsleeve	Stoic lightweight	8.5	0.53125
Pillow	SeaToSummit aeros	3.14	0.19625
Pants	REI Sahara cutoff cargo	13.41	0.838125
Longsleeve	Columbia Sunshade	9.92	0.62
Compression	SeaToSummit drybag	2.19	0.136875
Longsleeve	REI Sahara	8.93	0.558125
Sandals	Custom	9.25	0.578125
Underwear	ExOfficio Boxers
Hat	OutdoorResearch WindStopper	2.68	0.1675
Compass + bag	REI	1.45	0.090625
Gloves	BlackDiamond city	1.62	0.10125
Ground pad	NeoAir Xlite	13.76	0.86
Light	BlackDiamond 2 light	1.98	0.12375
Watch	G-Shock	2.15	0.134375

Step 3 : Pick out actual items.

With my spots ready, I went and read reviews, checked prices, weights, read about durability and gathered just as much data as I could on a wide variety for each spot. I eventually narrowed most of everything down to a few items and we went to try on a small selection of pants and shirts and everything else. I wanted to try on everything before buying it, so I limited us to what REI had in stock. For the tents and other camping gear, we went to the store and tried pretty much everything they had until we were satisfied with our collection.

Let’s talk about camping gear and traveling. First, we were super thankful we had our tent in all sorts of places, not just on the mountain or out in the wilderness. The gear we carried let us do things like : rent a much cheaper car in New Zealand, because we could sleep outside; walk along the edge of lake Baikal for a few days and not have to worry about reaching a town to find a place to sleep; be comfortable in any hostel and many busses, because we had our own blankets and pillows; cook a meal anywhere because we had our mess kit with us. That said, I would not bring much of the same camping gear if we were not specifically planning on at least a few through-hikes. I might also take the option of renting or buying very cheap gear on the spot for outdoors adventures – plenty of other travelers did just that.

After deciding for sure that we wanted a tent and the associated gear, I set about finding a budget and weight conscious kit. Our final gear choices :

The general category, our choice, and the weight in oz and lbs.

Tent	Big Agnes copper spur  ul2	51.13	3.195625
Footprint	BA cs ul2 footprint	7.45	0.465625
Cooking	G.S.I Halulite micro dualist + msr pcketrocket	20.57	1.285625
Purifier	First-need xle	16	1

Sleeping bag	REI Flash	28	1.75
Ground pad	NeoAir Xlite	13.76	0.86
Compression	SeaToSummit drybag	2.19	0.136875
Pillow	SeaToSummit aeros	3.14	0.19625

Sleeping bag	REI Flash	27	1.6875
Ground pad	NeoAir Xlite	11.5	0.71875
Compression	SeaToSummit drybag	2.19	0.136875
Pillow	SeaToSummit Aeros	2.96	0.185

About 12 lbs total, and pretty much the majority of the volume of our packs. The biggest outlay was in the tent – almost $500 for the toughness, size, and light weight. It’s not ultralight by any means, but this list makes for a solid foundation that, with a few lucky sales, didn’t break the bank. We purchased these in August and September and caught a big REI sale. I would definitely recommend making a list in advance and purchasing as things come into discount.

Of the items on this list, the only one I cannot recommend is the First-Need XLE water filter. We were in Peru, in a tiny mountainside town waiting for our first long hike to begin. On a whim I decided to test the filter with their provided blue-dye test. It failed, then failed again, and again. I don’t know when the filter first broke, but it definitely was not working when we needed it, and the company did not respond to any of my emails about it. We went on the hike anyway, and met with a pair that had a Steri-pen. At our first opportunity (Australia) we bought one and have been super happy with it ever since.

The rest of our gear performed flawlessly. The REI sleeping bags were great 20 degree bags that stuffed down to the size of a melon, and with layers they could readily make us toasty in the coldest weather we encountered. The NeoAir Xlites were loud but rolled up small and never gave us any trouble with punctures, though they did start growing a bit of mold at one point. The SeaToSummit pillows worked great, we still use them – I opted for the slightly heavier and more expensive version made out of soft and quiet fabric instead of polyester. The Halulite cooking kit served us great, tucking itself away into the pot and having just enough space inside for the stove, a small towel, and some misc cooking items. The cup bottoms on one set did crack eventually, but they leaked only slowly and were still fine, even for tea. The tent performed admirably under a ton of rain. In some intense conditions it did eventually let moisture through, but never enough to really get us wet. I can’t say it’s the best I’ve seen, but it was light and relatively large on the inside while packing down quite small. During hot, clear nights, the canopy came off and the view was great.

Next time I’ll cover some of the stand-out items and a few lessons learned on the road.

The Cost of a Year Around the World, Part 3: Country Comparison

Last time we covered how we spent the $25,286.50 per person for our travel around the world. In this post, I’ve put together a comparison by country of travel costs that is based on our spend in the country. Our weekly budget bought vastly different quality and quantity depending on which country we were in, so below I’ve assembled a map of the 28 countries we’ve visited by cost. Darker red = more expensive.

A cost comparison of the countries we visited, where darker is more expensive. Gray means we didn’t visit that country. Attribution for original map vector in Wikimedia Commons: Lokal_Profil.

This cost map doesn’t track exactly with our expenses because there’s a second variable beyond dollars spent: what quality/quantity those dollars bought. For example, a $15 meal in Mexico was at a sit-down restaurant with tons of food, while a $15 meal in Austria was at the standing-only counter of a local fried-food shack and usually left us hungry. I dub this variable “quality of life” (QoL), with higher numbers meaning better QoL. I then adjusted our spend in each country by dividing the actual dollar spend by the QoL value.

So let’s dive into spend by continent and I’ll give you a tip for keeping costs down in each country.

The Americas

The general wisdom here is that the further south you go, the more expensive it gets. This applies to both Central and South America, with Mexico being pretty-darn-cheap (though Mexico is huge, and depends on where you are) down to Costa Rica and Panama, which are the most expensive of the Central American countries. In Colombia travel costs plummet again and slowly rise as you travel south to end up in Chile, where the cost of living easily rivals parts of the central U.S. A notable exception to this dynamic is the Galapagos, where costs skyrocket due to tourism; even with QoL adjustments (we splurged for an amazing cruise), the Galapagos remains the most expensive leg of our journey.

Cost comparison of countries in Latin America. Attribution for original map vector in Wikimedia commons: Lokal_profil.

By country, here is the advice I can offer:

Mexico

If you want beaches, skip Cancun and instead camp at Tulum.

Costa Rica

The east side is way cheaper than the west side, where tourism has pushed prices up. We saved money on the west side by cooking our own meals, while on the east side we ate out at least once a day.

Panama

Food can be had for somewhat cheap, but we had trouble finding affordable accommodations online outside of Panama City, meaning you might have to do some searching when you arrive. If you want to watch the Panama Canal in action but the Miraflores Locks museum is closed or out of your price range, take the bus to the Pedro Miguel locks instead and watch the ships pass by for free, though behind a chain link fence.

Colombia

In Cartagena, stay just outside the walled city to get far better hotel rooms and food for less money. Head to Santa Marta or Medellin for a slightly less touristy experience, and in my opinion better food.

Ecuador

We found hotel rooms for less than $30 a night in Quito, though food was more expensive than Colombia. Pollo broaster was a staple, served with rice and heaps of beans.

Galapagos

If you want a cruise, you can get one for less than list price using the guide I wrote here. Be prepared for even the hostels to be expensive on the island, buy groceries from areas further from the city center, and double check prices before you buy — the price of staples can vary depending on the store (or perhaps whether the vendor thinks they can charge you a higher price than the locals).

Peru

Low season definitely cheaper in Cusco, the gateway to Machu Picchu, but be prepared for people pushing hard to get money from you. Skip the $200 train to the ruin and instead hike the Salkantay or catch a bus to Hidroelectrica and hike from there.

Or if it’s food you’re after, head to Arequipa instead, where food and board will be more generous for the same price.

Chile

Hostels weren’t much of a thing in Arica, the city in Northern Chile we visited, so be prepared outside of Santiago to do some on-the-ground research for a cheap place to stay. While flights are the fastest way to travel the length of the country, buses are far cheaper and can be taken overnight.

Oceania, Asia, and Europe

These three are stuck together because I honestly couldn’t figure out how to split Russia in half using Inkscape, and the map looked idiotic with Russia just missing. Anyway, the breakdown of cost here is one most people already know: Australia, New Zealand, and Japan are expensive. Hong Kong, surprisingly, has a similar cost compared to Western Europe, while Southeast Asia is super cheap (excluding Singapore, which we didn’t visit). In Europe, things get cheaper as you go east through Central and East Europe; this trend continues through Russia as well.

Oceasiaope? Cost comparison of this half of the world, with Africa TOTALLY grayed out because we didn’t get there (next time…). Attribution for the original map vector: Lokal_profil.

By country, here is the advice I can offer:

New Zealand

Hostels and motels are super expensive, so AirBnB it in Auckland, then rent a car and have travel double as your place to sleep. New Zealand has a strong camping culture, so 1) don’t trash it because you’ll ruin it for the rest of us and 2) they have tons of freely available campsites, bathrooms, and rest stops you can access. They’re handily plotted for you in the CamperMate app. While there are free campsites around the islands, many are also a hefty $10-20 a night, so be sure to either account for time to travel to a free campsite or money for that nearer one.

If a standard rental is too pricey, you could always also consider a relocation rental, where you pay a nominal fee (between $1 and $5, or nothing at all) to drive a rental car to where the company needs it – just be aware there’s usually a time limit for completing the trip.

Australia

Another expensive country, though the hostels are more affordable here than in New Zealand. If you’re going to be in the city for more than a week, consider renting a room or flat — Australian rents are often charged by the week instead of by the month, so you can find weekly rentals beyond Airbnb.

Indonesia

We visited the island of Java and found it to be one of the most affordable countries on our trip. Save money by choosing hostels in less affluent parts of town (like Glodok in Jakarta); you don’t have to worry too much about crime, save maybe petty theft.

Vietnam

Book onsite instead of beforehand online for tours, and check with others for the names and locations of tour and other services because in Vietnam you’ll get six places named the same thing, all of varying quality.

Hong Kong

If you’re looking for a cheap room in the city, chances are you’re staying in Chung King Mansion. There are dozens, if not a hundred hotels running out of that building, which at ~4,000 people is city unto itself. Be prepared for some closed-spaces jostling and vendor-shouting (“Want to buy a sim card, friend?”, “Copy watch for you? Maybe copy handbag?” – he means counterfeit), complete with weird smells and dirty dishes being carted in soapy buckets in the elevator (there are several illegally-run restaurants in rooms throughout the building). Take it all with a smile; despite the close quarters, violent altercations seem rare.

You could also get some of the cheapest food in Chung King, but with tons of amazing restaurants (and some of the most affordable Michelin-starred restaurants in the world), you might want to splurge on food here.

Taiwan

Hostels here were surprisingly expensive and poorly-built, but read reviews to find suitable locations and be prepared for a private room to literally be a mattress on the floor with a bare bulb as a lamp. Get cheap food at corner cafe-style, no frills restaurants during the day and in the nightly street markets at night. And yes, you can get cheap sushi here, but sometimes it will make you sick.

Oh, and want another way to save money? Don’t get bubble milk tea every day, but good luck with that.

Japan

You can find affordable hostels in large cities such as Tokyo and Kyoto, but in smaller cities you’re better off going with business hotels, which offer discounts on the weekends (because businessmen have all gone home), or love hotels (which are exactly what you think they are). If you’re watchful, you might also be able to snag a weeknight deal at a ryokan, which will still be a pricey but worthwhile splurge.

Cheap food can also be hard to come by, but your best bet are the Gyu-don and Ten-don counter shops you’ll find scattered about the city, especially concentrated around major train and subway stations. If you can’t find one, though, you can always head to 7-11 or another convenience store, where the cheap food offered is freakishly good.

Russia

If you want to save money overall, skip Moscow and St. Petersburg and stay east of the Urals, where there is gorgeous hiking, cheap campsites, cheap hostels, and cheap food.

If you’re traveling short on money and a light sleeper (or the idea of plazkart terrifies you), go for kupe, where you’ll have other roommates who were also willing to pay more not to deal with plazkart.

Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Austria, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Italy, France, Geramny

I haven’t really got good advice for you here, now that we’re in Europe, because save for Bulgaria it felt like we were literally sprinting across the region. Our biggest tip is to find a place to stay with a kitchen (hostel or Airbnb) and make your own food, because even the cheap eats are pretty pricey (yeah, even that shawarma).

If you’re ever in a town without affordable accommodation and you’re desperate, you can always see if the local convent will take boarders for a nominal fee (that’s where we stayed in Sant Agata del Feltria), though in some places morning mass is requisite.

The Cost of a Year Around the World, Part 2: The Spend

Last time, we talked about the budget process for a year around the world, where I estimated that it would take $28,000 per person (around $500 per week) to circumnavigate the globe (at an enjoyable pace) in roughly a year. After the 54 weeks of travel across 5 continents and 28 countries (31 with layovers), we had spent $25,286.50 per person ($468.27 per week)! Below, I’ll talk about what we actually spent our money on and how we kept our costs down, as well as how you might be able to spend a year traveling on even less.

Our breakdown of spend for the year.

Sticking to a Budget

A budget only works if you stick to it, so I built a tool to help us track our spending through the entire trip. It’s an Excel spreadsheet with tabs that I tracked all of our spend on in five categories – lodging, food, travel, personal hygiene and health, and fun. It then calculates total spend by category for each week and by country. You can download it for free below to use on your trips, and if you have any questions feel free to contact me!

Download the World Budget Template

P.S., one thing I would change about my budget is to write the spend in on the day the event occurred, not when we purchased tickets. This is the same day for most things, but for travel will help you sort spend better by region. For example, spend in LATAM looked way higher originally because it included the tickets for our flight to New Zealand, but that should actually be part of the Oceania part of the trip. I’ve made adjustments to the data manually below, but it was a pain to do.

What our budget went to

Because I love data, I ran an analysis on our expenses from the trip and below describe our breakdown of what we expected compared to actual spend by category. As an overview, travel was definitely the biggest part of our budget, which is unsurprising when you’re circumnavigating the world. But even this, as well as food and lodging cost less than we thought. And as avid hikers and explorers, we found tons to do that was fun and free.

Our weekly total spend by region.

Travel

Expected: $200 per person per week
Actual: $162.24 per person per week

As mentioned above, travel was our biggest budget category and is nearly twice the size of our nearest other spend categories (food and lodging). This is primarily because I set out with a goal for us to circumnavigate the world AND chase summer, so we had to travel round the globe in a giant sinusoidal shape (that’s a sideways “S” shape for, for those of you who don’t know). We had to cross both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans and shift between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, and that much distance to cover in a year while leaving time to enjoy things means we paid money for flights. It was normally a couple hundred dollars here or there, but there were also a few big-ticket items like the flight from Phoenix to Mexico City, to and from the Galapagos, from Santiago to Auckland, and the flight home from Berlin. Trains, which were really only available Western Europe as a mode of transit (save for Russia and Indonesia), were surprisingly often as expensive as flights. Bus was often the slowest, but cheapest and most interesting option between locations (even the bus ride from hell counts).

Our best rule for saving money became the two-week rule: unless there was no other way, we booked flights only if we were travelling more than two weeks out. If we were within the two-week period, we caught a bus or some other mode of transit instead. Rome2Rio helped us out a lot in figuring that out.

Weekly spend on travel by each region; definitely pricier in Oceania and Europe, while Asia’s is higher because we bought 2-week JR passes in Japan.

Lodging

Expected: $105 per person per week
Actual: $78.39 per person per week

Another expected, constant cost of our trip was a place to sleep each night. We had a budget of $15 per person per night, and what we could get for that varied a lot both between and within countries — heck, it varied a lot even within the same city. Prime example was Cartagena, where a private hostel bedroom within the walled city with the bed taking up nearly the entire space, no AC, and gaping holes in the ceiling that let mosquitos in cost us as much as an air-conditioned, modern room with a TV just outside the city’s walls.

My primary strategy to keep cost down was research, research, research. If I had the time or knew we were going to be somewhere for a while in advance, I checked Hotels.com, Booking.com, and HostelWorld.com for the cheapest deal, looking in particular for multiple-day stay discounts. If it was last minute, I skipped HostelWorld and just stuck with Hotels.com and Booking.com, looking for last-minute discounts.

We also cut costs by having transit sometimes double as lodging, taking overnight buses, flights and trains. This was particularly helpful in South America, where long-haul buses are commonplace and first-class seats were affordable for travelers, even on our budget. For flights, the airport often doubled as our accommodation, as we would find a quiet part of the airport and rolled out our camping mattresses before or after our flight. Since people frequently sleep overnight in airports (there’s a whole website dedicated to it), most airport staff don’t bat an eye.

Lastly, we cut about a month’s worth of lodging (and food) costs and had the most amazing time possible by doing the obvious: visiting where we had friends and family currently living. It meant we had a happy host, a welcoming bed, amazing food, and often a far better guide than the internet to the area.

Weekly spend on lodging by region; the spend in Asia is so high primarily because of Japan, but also due to a few nights of splurging on a hotel room here and there, and lower in Europe because of stretches of stays with friends and family.

Food

Expected: $105 per person per week
Actual: $89.66 per person per week

Like having a place to sleep, you always gotta have something to eat, but we found while food could vary wildly by country, we had more control over it than the cost of lodging. If you’re staying in a hostel in almost any country, you can pick up ingredients from a local market and cook a meal for a fraction of the cost of a meal out. This played a big role in making Western Europe affordable, where we saved for one nicer ~$25 meal a day and otherwise snacked on homemade sandwiches and salads. The only caveat I would give here is that there is an opportunity, no, an enjoyability cost. Because a place’s cuisine is often unique and singular to a place (like the culture), it’s worth springing the money to enjoy at least a couple of meals and understand how the locals eat. We would rather spend a little extra on food over lodging any day (which usually gives you less of a window into culture), and our actual spend reflects that.

Beyond cooking your own meals, the other way to save costs is the above-mentioned stay-with-friends-and-family method. Not much can beat a home-cooked meal, and in many countries your more rural relatives have better tips on the best cheap places to eat.

Weekly spend on food by geography; Asia is high primarily due to volume of food and not necessarily cost, and costs in Europe are lower due to a lot of staying with friends and family, netting us delicious meals.

Personal hygiene/health

Expected: $20 per person per week
Actual: $41.88 per person per week; $11.46 per person per week without our year of travel health insurance

So depending on whether you want to count the pre-trip costs in the budget, I was either wildly under-estimating this one or just a little over-estimating it. When I put together the trip budget, I originally dropped the pre-trip expenses into a different spreadsheet and built the travel budget without it, so I wasn’t counting the travel insurance. As I mentioned in the last post, that travel insurance wasn’t useful beyond peace of mind, because even when I took a fall in Peru and needed an X-ray, the full cost of the visit was the equivalent of ~$200 USD and it was difficult to keep track of receipts and submit them for reimbursement while moving around so much.

Otherwise, this category sat pretty unused with the exception of repairing our equipment and restocking medicine, which I’d recommend purchasing when you are getting modestly low, not when you’re low or out, because there are some countries that just don’t have certain medicines. Pharmacists in Indonesia and Vietnam, for example, had no idea what bismuth subsalicylate (Pepto Bismol) was, so we were out until we got to Hong Kong.

The equipment repair and replacement was also pretty variable, and mostly consisted of us repairing the same pairs of shoes we wore throughout the trip. In general, a good rule to determine whether you should repair or replace is look at the current socioeconomic status of the country around you; depressingly, it’s affordable to get things repaired when you’re in a poorer country, but to buy something new when you’re in a richer country, just because of the variation in cost of labor. In some countries, we couldn’t even find people who still repaired camping equipment or shoes.

Weekly spend on personal hygiene, medical, and emergency by geography. The cost in Oceania is so high because we bought a UV sterilizer when our water pump broke, and in Europe we had to renew travel insurance.

Fun

Expected: $100 per person per week
Actual: $96.10 per person per week

I’m thrilled to see the budget for fun experiences and souvenirs is almost spot-on with what I predicted, because I wasn’t sure if I had dramatically under-or over-estimated. We started out in South America being cheap as hell and got a little spend happy in a couple of other places (Japan, Western Europe, looking at you). We did have a couple of big splurges on the trip, like the five-star Galapagos cruise with a Cordon Bleu-trained chef on board (why our LATAM bar is so tall) and fine pens/hobby equipment in Japan. I also placed meals in really nice restaurants in this category because they felt more like experiences than food. But overall, we managed to keep costs down by being outdoorsy people and going for hikes or walking around town. We would also ask locals for recommendations on what to do for fun, as these tended to be way cheaper and more interesting than whatever was set up for tourists.

Weekly spend on fun experiences and mementos by geography; the cost in LATAM is our $3,000 Galapagos cruise, and everything in Oceania cost so much money to do that we basically on did free hikes.

How to do it on less

There are two ways you could travel for a year on less: make fewer hops between countries, and stick with cheaper countries. We stayed in a location 1-2 weeks before moving on, which meant we were paying a lot in travel expenses. We also intentionally visited some more expensive countries (New Zealand, Japan, France, Germany), because we wanted to see them. If you weren’t set on the idea of circumnavigating the planet, stick with just Asia or LATAM and save yourself the cost of cross-continental hops.

Next, I’ll be doing a breakdown by country of our costs and provide some tips on how to save money in each country.

Read Part 1: The Budget.

Read Part 3: Country Comparison.

The Cost of a Year Around the World, Part 1: The Budget

My boyfriend Stoytcho and I traveled around the world, across 5 continents and 28 countries (not counting layovers) for 380 days. “Wow, amazing! How did you plan it?” people say. Or, those more to the pointed among you ask, “How much did that cost?” The short answer to you is: not as much as I thought it would.

The Budgeting Process

Budgeting a year of travel around the world is a big project, but when planning something like this the goal is to get a rough estimate of the cost and wherever possible, take the higher cost. It’s better to over-budget than to under-budget. In my case, I used the benchmark of living in the U.S. for a year, which was around $30,000. The U.S. has an advantage of being one of the most expensive countries in the world to live in, so it had a built in overbudgeting factor. Then again, we would be spending money on planes and trains and general transit that I wouldn’t normally in a year, so I left that $30 K number where it was. I then separate out the individual things we would need to budget for: food, lodging, travel, fun (experiences, souvenirs), and miscellaneous (which ended up being mostly medical and personal hygiene expenses).

Food = $105 per person per week Lodging = $105 per person per week

Partly based on personal experiences in prior travel, partly based on internet research, and partly because I watched a ton of Rachel Ray’s $30 a Day travel food show as a kid and thought “holy crap, $30 buys you a ridiculous amount of nice food”, I set the food budget to $15 a day per person. I did the same for lodging, mostly based on prior experience traveling in Australia, figuring that was the more expensive end for hostel beds. This made $105 per week per person for each of these categories.

An affordable lunch in Taipei.

Travel = $200 per person per week

For the travel budget, I priced out the cost of our most expensive trips (these were big flights/trips like the one from Chile to New Zealand and the Trans-Siberian trip from Ulan-Ude to Moscow), then guessed at the number smaller hops we would have to make and their average cost to get ~$200 per person per week.

 

Train, bus, and plane were our main modes of transit, like this train in Germany.

 

Personal Hygiene and Medical = $20 per person per week

Personal hygiene and medical costs I totally just fudged – maybe $20 a week? That’s enough to buy over the counter anti-diarrheal and cold medication here in the U.S., as well as personal hygiene products (sunblock, toothbrushes, deodorant, etc.). That also leaves enough for any potential rare but costly medical expense (I got $200 X-rays in Peru after a fall). While we had a year of travel insurance that cost an insane $1,700 per person, we never used it once because it turns out submitting reimbursement forms while traveling is really hard. (Who knows how to say “fax machine” in Bahasa Indonesia? Oh, and where did those receipts go again?) It was good peace of mind, though, so get it if you want that.

Another thing it note is that this is where a lot of our pre-trip costs ended up, including the aforementioned travel insurance and all of our travel vaccinations, which included but were not limited to: Yellow Fever, Japanese Encephalitis Virus, Influenza, and Hepatitis B. This is also the bucket where I tossed the cost of 3 weeks of malarone, our fairly pricey anti-malarial.

 

Actually, a lot of this category ended up going to patching any equipment as it fell apart, or buying new equipment.

 

Fun = $100 per person per week

That left the fun budget, which I also spitballed and listed as $50 a week, because that was $100 for two people and that seemed like a reasonable amount to be spending on experiences and souvenirs – mostly experiences, because the thought of carrying anything else in our backpacks quickly became a recurring nightmare (although we still managed to pick up an irrational amount of STUFF, including but not limited to: machine parts, rocks, brochures from a bajillion places, business cards, and a sad paper snow man from the street in Ecuador. Don’t ask.)

Prambanan on Java, Indonesia, a pretty affordable travel experience.

Communication = $20 per person per week

There was also this category of “communication” that I had intended to account for SIM cards abroad and estimated at $20 per person per week, but then it turns out Stoytcho’s T-Mobile plan worked EVERYWHERE we went except for Vietnam, where a 2-week 4G-included SIM cost about $15. So just save yourself the trouble and get on T-Mobile’s phone plan to scrap this category for yourself.

The legendary phone that (almost) always had data connection! It also doubles as a size reference.

With these 6 categories, our total spend came out to a neat $500 per person per week, meaning a total of $28,000 per person for the 56 weeks (a year and some change, just to be safe).

So…how did we do?

After traveling for 54 weeks through 28 countries (31 if you count layovers), we had total spend of…$25,286.50, or $468.27 per person per week! How’s that for some on-spot budgeting? Tune in next time to find out how we traveled around the world on less than it takes to live in the U.S. for a year*!

—

*Ok, living costs in the U.S. vary pretty significantly, but I’d argue this is true of the average cost of living in the U.S. It’s probably less than what you’re spending right now, and you could live abroad for far cheaper than we did. I’ll detail how in the next post.

Read on to Part 2: The Spend.

Hiking Chamechaude

 

Hundreds of trails weave through the mountains surrounding Grenoble, several only accessible through villages nearby. But planning a weekday getaway hike can be a challenge without a car, as most of the buses out to these trailheads only run on the weekends outside of the summer holiday and winter ski months. There is one trail, though, that takes you up and away from civilization to the highest peak in the Chartreuse mountain range: the hike up to Chamechaude that starts in Le Sappey-en-Chartreuse.

At 9 miles, hiking Chamechaude is a pretty straightforward day hike for the intermediate or experienced hiker, though the uphill may take you a bit longer if you haven’t hiked in a while and the top might be challenging if steep slopes and sheer edges make you nervous. We took our time and the whole hike took us around 7 hours. We didn’t need any special equipment; just food, a few liters of water, and sunblock. We also picked up a map at the Grenoble Tourism Office (Office de Tourisme Grenoble-Alpes Métropole).

We wake before dawn to catch an early #62 bus to Le Sappey-en-Chartreuse, and in minutes we have left the city for behind. The bus trundles along on a neatly paved two-lane road and we watch as dawn spills across the swelling hills and forests. Near the end of our ride, we see a steep cliff jut from the landscape to the left. This is Chamechaude, what we’ll be climbing today.

The bus drops us off in the center of town, less than half a mile from the trailhead. The morning chill has yet to dissipate, so we zip our jackets and start hiking to warm up. The path immediately slants upward, and with few exceptions, will continue uphill for the next several hours.

The first part of this uphill hike is through thickly wooded forests, and wayfinding is made difficult by the profusion of trails sliced through the forest, a combination of hiking and ski trails marked with heiroglyphic patterns of colors. We imprint on our trail’s symbol of a red and white flag and follow it, learning on the way that an ‘x’ in these colors means don’t go this way, it’s not the same trail. I’d wager in the winter these ‘x’ symbols also mean “Do no enter. Downhill only.”

An hour into the hike, the forest thins and we break into a broad meadow at the foot of Chamechaude’s steep side. Chamechaude is on this side is a sheer cliff of a massif, a deformation in the Earth’s crust that might be made if someone dropped a cosmic sized bowling ball onto the ground. Climbing it from here is not a hike but an actual climb, and we’re not equipped for that.

Instead, we follow the trail to the left and around the back of Chamechaude, once again into forest, across small streams and through handmade livestock gates maintained by those who still graze their flocks here. There are even signs asking that we not disturb the cows and sheep.

Finally, we find ourselves on the other side of Chamechaude, a steep but climbable slope cut with a narrow switchbacked trail. Three hours after we began our uphill hike, we begin to hike uphill in earnest, planting one foot in front of another, plodding up and scrambling over small piles of limestone rock. I pick one up to examine it and find traces of fossilized clam and snail shells. This area is a protected park, so I put them back.

While in distance summiting Chamechaude should be only a mile, it takes us more than an hour to climb. We’re exposed here, above the treeline, and are thankful for extra sunblock as the noontime sun glares down on us. But we rest only at the top, heaving and sweating. Was the climb worth it?

You decide:

 

A view from the cliff’s edge down toward the meadow.

 

 

 

Downhill, while precarious, slips by faster than the uphill and we are back at the foot of the mountain in forty minutes. We take the long way back, savoring the cooling shade of the evergreens and brilliant colors on the deciduous trees in the forest. It’s 5 pm and the day is done by the time we again reach the town center of Le Sappey-en-Chartreuse, and we’re just in time for sunset on the bus ride back to Grenoble.

 

Sunrise and Sunset at Grenoble’s Bastille

Dawn over Grenoble, as seen from the Bastille.

Located on a hill in the north, the Bastille affords some of the best views of Grenoble and is an ideal place to watch the sun rise and set over the city. Though the entrances through the parks at the Bastille’s base are locked and inaccessible outside of business hours (rendering them unusable for hikes up to see sunrise and sunset), there are several routes and trails up the hill to the Bastille. You just have to know where to look.

The winding multitude of paths down the Bastille to the Isere River (top).

 

The Bastille at dawn.

A view of Grenoble just below the Bastille.

Should you plan on doing a sunset or sunrise hike, bring a light, since there are few lights along the Bastille trails. Second, bring water. The Bastille hill isn’t that tall but some of the trails up can be steep, and the only source of water I saw were fountains at the top where the “bubble” gondolas depart. Third, bring a windproof jacket. Even when the air in the city below is still, it whips and chills at the top of the Bastille walls.

There are no lights along the trail to the Bastille, so bring your own.

Some of the stairs and paths are pretty steep, so bring water.

The wind can be pretty rough at the top, so bring a jacket to stay warm.

If you’re coming from the part of the city just south of the Isere River, the easiest route up to the Bastille is at the southwest end of Rue Saint Laurent. Look for the Fontaine du Lion, a massive fountain depicting a lion battling a snake; there are stairs just south or a bit north of this fountain that will take you to a trail that leads up to the Bastille.

The Fontaine du Lion; there are entrances up the hill to the Bastille to the right and left of this statue.

One of the entrances up to the Bastille. Just keep heading up.

I’ll try to get an actual trail route up here later, but for now the best instructions I can give are to stay to the left to avoid the road, and keep looking for stairs or switchback trails leading up. After 10-20 minutes you should reach the first Bastille walls with stairs leading up into the ruins. Walk up the stairs and continue climbing, but any tree-free outlook after this point should provide a good view of the city.

One of the many stairs up/down.

The gravel paths around the Bastille are favored by walkers and joggers in the morning, so once the sun rises you’re unlikely to be alone.

At the top of the Bastille you’ll find a lookout point and the “bubble” gondola that can take you back down to the city (11 AM – 6 PM). Enjoy the views, and then climb or take the gondola back into town.

A view of Grenoble at night.

Spare gondolas in storage.

Gondolas come into the station at the top of the Bastille, overlooking Grenoble.

Mostar

A lone person traverses the Stari Most in the morning.

A couple hours’ bus ride west of Sarajevo, the city of Mostar is a point of pride for the country. When we asked people in Sarajevo where else we should visit, the answer was also “Mostar, because it’s beautiful.”

One of the old buildings in the downtown, at dusk.

Situated on the aquamarine Neretva River, Mostar’s most famous landmark and namesake is the Stari Most (Old Bridge), a 16th century Ottoman Bridge made of silken white stone. Destroyed in the Bosnian War, Stari Most was reconstructed with the help of the U.N. Protections Force and funding from several countries, in part using stones from the original bridge that were fished out of the Neretva. Local tradition of jumping off the bridge as a right of passage for men has morphed into a tourism attraction, and on a lucky day you’ll see a tourist or two taking the plunge. The bridge is also now a stop on Red Bull’s Cliff Diving World Series.

Staring down into the Neretva River.

Stari Most at night.

The downtown area is a tourist hotspot, with market stalls packed full of souvenirs, artisan shops, and restaurants. Most of touristic good sold are likely made elsewhere, but if you find a craftsman at work then you’re likely getting the real deal. Hand-hammered copper reliefs and Turkish coffee sets* make ideal take-home gifts, so as you walk through the marketplace listen for the clink of chisels on metal.

The touristic downtown market.

A coppersmiths workshop. Jizve are being molded using lead (silver circle) at left.

Outside the downtown area, the city bustles on, a network of roads full of cars and lined with densely built shops and houses. There are fewer physical signs of the war here; fewer bullet holes or mortar shell scars. The neighborhoods get a bit rougher looking at the city’s edge on the west side, but we had no problems walking through at dusk. If you’re not behaving strangely or wearing anything ostentatious, you’ll probably be left alone.

The remains of a building.

Modern cars parked in front of a building, likely damaged in the war and now left to decay.

Oh, and when you’re there be sure to stop by Tima Irma to eat the best kebapci money can buy, served with fresh veggies, cheese, and pita bread. You can even wash it down with a local beer.

A view at the edge of town.

*A slight word of warning: traditionally, the jizveta are formed by pouring lead into the mold, and then removing it afterward. It’s been done this way for centuries, but if you do get one you might want to test it for lead before using it to make coffee.

**A second slight word of warning: the countryside around here may look dreamy, but don’t wander off into the hills without a guide. Mostar sat at one of the fronts during the Bosnian War and much of the area is still mined.

Travel Tips : Sprawl and Sweep

This is all of our travel gear (more or less), packed up and ready to go hiking from Jogjakarta, Indonesia. This is how I like to see everything, accounted for and tidy.

We had a reservation for a much smaller room and got lucky!

We have stayed in a lot of hostels, hotels, campsites, side-of-the-roads, and air-bnbs. From all that time traveling, we’ve lost hardly a fraction of our gear. The notable exception to this was in Australia where we stayed for a month and violated one of our two main rules. That rule is sprawl. We don’t do it whenever we can avoid it. We’re natural sprawlers, myself more than Natalie, but it’s dangerous when you travel. Everything should be kept in a neat pile or two, or, even better, in the bag. We’ve fared the best when we take out only what we need and then keep it piled on top of the open backpacks. Especially when the room is large and inviting like this one in Vietnam, it can be so easy to let all our stuff sprawl out.

An off season deal that we found at the edge of Jogja, right near Prambanan.

It’s especially important not to spread stuff out when there are lots of nooks and crannies like this huge room we found in Indonesia. Lots of places for things to hide under make it that much easier to lose important pieces of gear. It’s ok to spread out temporarily of course, when we’re working with our gear or packing it ready for a hike, everything comes out, gets checked, and gets put back in. This sort of short operation is ok because things don’t sneak away and get forgotten three days later when its time to move again.

 

 

The easiest room to sweep, ever. A hostel in Taipei, Taiwan.

Why is not allowing sprawl so important? Because of our second trick – the sweep. Typically when doing a final check, many people resort to a list. They tick off each item, making sure it’s accounted for. When the list is all checked, everything is safe and packed and they have peace of mind. This works super well for a few pack-ups. I do it when I’m going camping as a matter of course. Unfortunately, it just didn’t work for us on the road. We tried it briefly, in Mexico, and found it entirely too cumbersome. Checking off a list makes it hard to pack fast and go, and either we have to take out all our things to check them, or ‘check them out’ as we take them out, then check them back in later. It’s a hassle and we didn’t have the time.

Another easy room to check – Hong Kong.

Instead what we do is call a sweep every time we leave somewhere. This means we pack our bags as best we can, and then we go and check in corners, under tables, behind beds, and in the bathroom, for any and all items that have scurried to a back corner. We do a specific check for vital items like passports and some electronics, but outside of those, we don’t tick off by name. Since we made sure not to sprawl out terribly much, the sweep tactic catches the rare items that have escaped and puts them back in the bag. This has worked astoundingly well for us, except when we’ve let ourselves spread our gear all over the place.

All neat on the train. Is there a bag over our heads? It’s probably not coming with us.

The one part of travel this hasn’t worked super well for is trains. We usually are leaving them in a bit of a rush because we don’t know the route, recognize the stops, or understand the language, so our destination comes as a bit of a surprise. Our number one loss location is the overhead rack in trains, followed by the under-seat. We don’t seem to have the same issue in buses or airplanes, but we’ve lost more than one bag full of food, or a shirt, or some other goodie, to the rails. Luckily no catastrophes because we always make sure our main bags are with us, but any additional plastic or paper bags are fair game for the train gods.

 

 

7 tips to make the most of a short stay

Every week a new city stretches before us. We’ve spent a few weeks in some (Sydney..) and a few days in other (Panama, Riga..) but on average we spend about 3-5 days in any given city. That’s not a great deal of time to see everything, but we’ve worked out our system pretty well, and we’d like to share what works for us.

Walking along the Danube in Budapest.

• • Pick a few must-see destinations. We know we’re not going to see everything. Letting go of the feeling that we must see it all is the key to enjoying what we do see. We usually explore the area around the hostel the first night, and for the remaining days we mark down 2-4 areas we’d like to visit around the city, usually concentrated around busy market-type areas, attractions, and food. We mark down our must-sees if we have any. In most cases we try to set aside a day or two for outdoorsy adventures, like a hike nearby. How do we pick where to go? High concentrations of things to do, and recommendations online or from hostels. Traveling has changed with the advent of the internet, and there’s no reason to not take advantage of collective knowledge.

A highly recommended budget restaurant for crepes in Tallinn. It did not disappoint.

• • • Walk, walk all day long. We find we get the most out of a city when we walk as much as we can. We arrive in an area of interest and spend anywhere from a few hours to a whole day just wandering around. If we’ve planned super well, our areas of interest are connected or very near to each other and we can usually metro out to the farthest point and spend the day walking back. If we’ve chosen parts of the city that are pretty far apart, we definitely try to take the metro between them. Otherwise, walking. It’s great. Plus, it keeps us nice and somewhat trim so we can eat all the local food with a little less guilt!

Spur of the moment decision to donate and paint a brick in Prague.

• Wake up early. This one is not my favorite, but it works. Getting out the hostel at 8 am and getting out at 10pm are vastly different experiences. We’ve, unfortunately for my late-sleeping self, found that as early as possible is best. In hot cities it’s going to be cool, in popular areas it’ll be less crowded. It works out pretty well with walking most of the time as well – by the time we’re flagging it’s either breakfast or lunch depending on when we left. Despite the early wake up, I’m left feeling way more satisfied at the end of an early day than a late one. We just accomplish so much more.

Busy tourist areas offer fun experience like being surrounded by bubbles!

• Poke around in vibrant areas. We normally pick where we want to go based on the density of interesting things. If a spot has a few cafes, several landmarks, a market, and some event for the day, that’s a jackpot. Not only will there be all those advertised things, but there will also be at least a handful of unannounced delights. This picture of a joyous Natalie holding a hedgehog came about because I said “Hey, that guy’s selling comic books” – which led us into a urban art space full of activities in St.Petersburg. For food, if you haven’t picked a place already, follow your nose.

They had a meet-a-hedgehog event in St.Petersburg!

• • Bring snacks. We always have snacks on hand. Hunger has been the #1 source of discontent on our travels – it makes everything else worse, and is so readily cured. It’s not that there won’t be food – there’s almost always food somewhere nearby. But often there’s no food right where we are, or we happen to have wandered into a district way beyond our budget, or we don’t feel like bread and fried meat again. The snacks are a life saver.  It’s 100% better if they’re local snacks, foods native to the country we’re in or picked up to-go from a local shop.

Sicilian breaded and fried bread stuffed with mozzarella and tomato sauce, in Prague.

• Take water. This one is pretty self explanatory, but paradoxically more important in the developed world than in other areas. When there’s no clean running water, vendors sell bottles of water everywhere for very cheap, so it’s ok to buy as you go. In places where there’s clean water in every house bottled water is very expensive, and very often there are fewer water fountains than is healthy for an all-day walking tour.

This is a veggie burger in Tallinn made of sweet potatoes. It was very, very good.

• Rest. Resting is absolutely vital and for me at least, transit does not count. I need real, solid, head on pillow time to be at my best. It’s not just for keeping up a good mood, it’s also for avoiding the sick. Traveling across so many different areas and interacting with so many people is a great way to encounter lots of different germs. Less sleep means more sick, means less seeing cool stuff.

Nothing like a nap in the sun.

Happy efficient travels!

Bialowieza Forest

A plaque at the entrance to Bialowieza National Forest.

Bialowieza, the last old-growth forest in Europe, is the real reason we’re in Poland. About a month ago, when we were deciding between visiting Chernobyl in Ukraine and Bialowieza, we heard that the Polish government had green-lighted some logging in the forest. We figured, ‘Well, time to see it before it’s gone.” It’s not like Chernobyl is going anywhere soon.

A tree on one of the Nordic Ski Tracks.

Moss and lichens growing on a low roof in town.

We caught a train from Warsaw to Hajnowka, and a bus from there to Bialowieza, the eponymous town on the park’s east side. From here, we ended up doing two hikes: one along the Nordic tracks on the East side of the town, and the Bialowieza National Park Nature Tour for Scientists. The former winds confusingly through state forest (where the logging is taking place), while the latter takes you into the actual national park and requires a hefty 550 zloty fee (~$161 USD) for the guide. Overall, both hikes were nice, with two caveats: an absolute boatload of mosquitos, and a fairly ‘touristy’ feel to the National Park hike—you’re walking a well-worn path, occasionally past another tour group. It’s not like hiking open and free in the wilderness.

Resident wildlife.

Logging in the state forest, along the Nordic Ski Tracks.

A logged clearing in the state forest.

Untouched fallen trees in the National Park.

That said, the park does have an impressive array of mosses and fungi. Because they don’t remove dead and fallen trees, there’s plenty of material to support the growth of saprophytes, in turn hosting tiny insects and insect predators like spiders. You might catch glimpses of animals from afar, so bring the camera with the nice zoom lens. And you may even see wild boar if the population has recovered by the time you arrive—we saw none, because most were wiped out by swine flu a couple of years ago. Our guide reported that summer, you could smell the rotting boar carcasses every time you got near the forest. But that’s the course of nature for you.

The trail of an animal through the morning dew in a field near the forest.

Late afternoon in the fields.

A few tips for when you go:

• You could easily stay in Hajnowka and hike from there if you’re not so interested in the national park. The town was adorable and untouristy, and we found their tourism information center to be super helpful – they’re open 9-5 Monday-Saturday, and 9-1 Sunday.

• We stayed at Dwor Na Otulinie in Bialowieza and loved it because it’s on the outskirts of town, nearer to the forest. The hosts are lovely folks and they’ve got a mini-kitchen downstairs to prepare meals for yourself.

• We tried a handful of restaurants in the town and found Bar Biesiada Jolanta Żłobin to be hands-down the best for cheap food, even compared to the ‘supposed best’ Bar Leśna Dziupla. It’s partly because they have amazing pierogi (though I suppose you could order something else), partly because they have these delicious sodas under the brand Vilnele, and partly because the cook/barman/waiter at Biesiada looks a bit like an overweight Harrison Ford. He speaks almost no English, so arm yourself with Google Translate.

• There are mosquitos. Not just mosquitos, singular at a time, but whole swarms of them that will relentlessly follow you as you hike. Try early on to make peace with the fact that you’re going to lose some blood.

Some more photos of Bialowieza:

Bar Biesiada’s counter, where they also sell fried jelly donuts.

A brown puffball grows in the grass.

This is a woodpecker, but you probably couldn’t tell because we didn’t bring a DSLR with us.

King of the hill: insects climb on a mushroom in the National Park.

Mushrooms on a log.

A monument to those killed in the forest during the World War.

Yellow coral fungi on the forest floor.

Little snails, probably the most common animals you’ll see in the forest.

This is what a hazelnut looks like.

An orb weaver (Agriope); our guide was excited about this because she had never seen them in this part of the park before.

Another snail, snailing along.

And sunset.