Destinations: As many as I can
Trip Length: ~1 year
Vacation Days Used: N/A (I’ve quit my job)
Trip Cost: $20,000
For a long time now I’ve been feeling like my life has been too predictable. I’ve grown up and stayed in the same city in Southern California for 20 years and I knew what I was going to do the next day, the next week, the next month, even the next year with a pretty high degree of accuracy. Although the days themselves weren’t bad, it was suffocating feeling like my life had already been written.
So I decided to make a change and write the chapters of my life the way I want it to be.
I’ve had big travel related goals stored in the back of my mind for a while. I’ve always told myself that I needed to realize some of those goals while I’m still young so that I can I settle down and enjoy a slower suburban life later without the itch that maybe I missed out on a fascinating piece of life. These goals are:
- Be able to feel comfortable and make friends and connections all over the world.
- Experience many different lifestyles.
- See as much of Earth as I can with my own eyes.
I started to travel a lot in the past year, however I have never been out of the Los Angeles area for longer than a month. But as of today I’m off on the biggest adventure of my life to date. I’m writing this now on a one way flight to New Zealand with the intent of bouncing from country to country going westward and meandering around the world until I make my way back to California. I’m doing this because this is a chapter in my life that I really want written.
Loose list of places that I want to explore on this trip:
- New Zealand
- Australia
- Singapore
- Vietnam
- Thailand
- India
- Nepal (Everest Base Camp)
- China
- South Korea
- Japan
- South Africa
- Switzerland
- Chile
I say loose because I’m traveling free form without much of an itinerary, and I want to be open to where the opportunities take me. I’m generally flying westward because it feels right to me and jet lag going west is easier to cope with versus going east.
Funding this trip:
I did some research into how much other people had budgeted out for a trip around the world and I kept seeing numbers between $20k-$25k. For a year that seemed low to me because my yearly bills easily exceed that. However with some more research and my experiences last year staying at hostels, I started to realize that traveling abroad could actually be way cheaper than living in Southern California.
So I dug into some of my savings that I had been nursing since I started working and sold off some lucky AMZN stock that I picked up some time ago during a foray into investing; and was able to carve out the money to do this trip. I’m also hoping to find some freelance remote work to make some money on the road so I can extend my budget.
Fears:
I have so much excitement and good feelings about doing this trip but I’m also nervous about this massive change in my life. Some of my fears are:
- I’m afraid of getting ill or injured abroad and not knowing how or where to find help.
- I’m afraid of being too naive and getting scammed or taken advantaged of.
- Being away for so long, I’m worried about losing the friends and connections that I’ve made back home.
- I’m afraid I’ll get extremely homesick or not be able to find a space to ground myself since I’ll be moving around so much, and end the trip early.
- On the other hand I’m kind of worried that I might not want to come back afterwards.
Overall things will probably be super unpredictable in my life for a while, but I think that’s what will make this next chapter so memorable!
I started my trip on September 19th, 2018 and I’m currently writing this from a cabin near Thames, New Zealand on the North Island.
