Preparing a travelling adventure is indeed an exciting chapter. There are many variables to consider which (lets face it) can easily be overshadowed by the golden idea to ‘drop everything and leave’…

BUT!

Where do you go first?

Which continent will you be challenging?

How long do you intend to be away for?

And most importantly…

Have you set yourself a budget?

Admittedly when we thought about our travelling plans we got pretty excited and initially thought about visiting Asia, Australia and South America – ALL within one year!

However we realised very quickly when we sat down to look into costings that there was no way we’d want to visit all these countries within a year (it’s not that it’s impossible, it’s more of a case that we’d like to pace our travels rather than county hop).

After some thought and consideration, we began to narrow down our list specifically around Asia. We like the idea of spending more time exploring this wonderful continent – and let’s face it there is plenty there to keep us occupied!

Though the idea of travel is having the freedom to go anywhere, I personally think it’s important to have at least some idea of where to go first.

We used that helped us to figure out the basics:

→Choose a destination – this means you have a goal destination to work towards.

→Plan – now a destination has been chosen, the next step can be to book flights, apply for Visas and create a travel itinerary.

→Budget – keep in mind the budget planned. Research whether it’s cheaper to fly into a nearby country and cross borders into another one if it reduces costs. Do consider certain destinations around peak times (Christmas/New Years period or religious festivals) where the cost of activities and hotels will cost more – this is especially the case for beach destinations.

When we chose Nepal as our first destination we felt that our ‘travelling adventure’ became concrete -it became our reality which had its own countdown. This really got us into gear and pushed us in the right direction planning and selling up.

We’re fully aware that the itinerary we’ve created is likely to vary over the course of our journey. That being said, it’s also exciting to know that we have a year ahead visiting most of these countries.

This is how we loosely foresee our travels over the next 12 months:

2014

June & July – Nepal and India

• Our pre-booked Gecko’s tour will start in Kathmandu and will be crossing overland into India where we eventually make our way through various cities and towns to New Delhi.

August & September – Vietnam

• Once the tour is finished we will apply for a Vietnam visa and fly into Hanoi. The initial is to make our way down the country to Ho Chi Minh City.

October – Cambodia

•We’ve estimated a month to spend in Cambodia – this is likely to be shortened as our intentions at the moment are to just visit Angkor Wat Archaeological Park.

October & November – Thailand

• We’re hoping to get a 2 month tourist visa before we enter Thailand so we have time to explore the country.

2014/ 2015

December & January – Malaysia and Singapore

• Malaysia and Singapore are on the itinerary as it’ll be easy to travel overland – there is train which runs from Thailand to Malaysia – and Malaysia to Singapore.

February – Indonesia

• Visas on arrival are valid for a month – our initial intentions are to visit Bali, Ubud and the Lombok.

March – Philippines

• A flight from Indonesia to Japan requires a stop off at Philippines – so we may as well pop in as it’s on the way!

April – Japan

• We’re aware that Japan is expensive so we’re going to decide when we arrive how long we’d like to stay. Tokyo and Kyoto are to-do’s.

May – China

• We’ll be applying for a visa (from wherever we can) but we’re unsure what kind of obstacles may occur (we’ve read that you’ll need to pre-book and provide step by step information). We could potentially book another tour in China to save on VISA complications.

June – Hong Kong

• We predict to be in Hong Kong by June 2014 which will mark 1 year travelling.

If we aren’t ready to go back home after our year anniversary, then we have further plans to visit Australia, New Zealand and Fiji.

But that’s a loong way off for now – we want to challenge Asia first!