“Why are you disrupting your life and taking a step backward after working so hard in your career? Don’t you think it is a bad decision?”
Is a question everyone asked, my family included, when they learnt that I wanted to travel for 1 whole year.
In India no one takes a break for more than 10 days let alone travel for a whole year.
To make this happen I saved for 30 months and there were several challenges that I had to face while planning this trip.
Below is my journey before the trip and how I worked my way around it.
The Idea
The prospect of long term travel came to my mind in 2014, when I took a 2.5 week scuba diving trip to the Philippines with 3 friends.
In my known circle at that time a trip that long wasn’t common and unheard off.
The planning, the cost and interactions with travellers from around the world on my Philippines trip opened me to the possibility of living out of a bag.
November 2014 was when I started saving money.
What were the challenges?
The biggest challenges involved money, family, visas (paper work) and consistency.
Without any 1 of these, I would not have been able to execute this plan.
Let’s look at how I managed each one of these
Financial planning & discipline
To make the trip happen, financial stability was of utmost importance. I didn’t want any kind of debt or favours and wanted to execute everything on my own.
Hence, I spent a lot of my time researching cost, the budget and the type of traveling I wanted to do.
I devised a plan with a vague idea in my head and slowly started addressing each issue as I went along.
- Hired a financial firm – as a first step I hired Succinct to help me structure & maximise my investments. It also helped me create a realistic idea on my monthly savings.
- Budgeting – for traveling, I froze my daily budget to USD 30/day. This created a benchmark for how much I needed to save.
- Current Daily spends – I broke down my existing expenses and started curtailing expenses like eating and drinking out to the bare minimum to help me save further.
- EMI’s – I ensured that I did not buy any large ticket items during the saving phase, unless critical. Thus, reducing my expenses.
- Credit Cards – I got travel credit cards that would give me the most bang for my buck. These helped me buy a 1 way ticket to Mexico (4 flights).
- Safety net – while budgeting gave me a good idea, it was important to save additionally for any untoward incidents or expenses on the trip or on my return.
- Travel account – I created a separate travel account to maintain discipline.
- Travel during this phase – I continued traveling extensively and planned my trips in advance to maintain normalcy in my life during this phase.
- Payment instruments – I researched the best payment instruments, with the least fees while abroad in the countries that I was going to travel to.
- Mental preparedness – I had to prepare myself for not seeing a cheque hitting my bank account at the end of the month. This was important to ensure to reduce stress & anxiety.
Family & Friends
To tackle this, I started having conversations and sharing my plans with people I deemed important in my life.
I started sharing the steps, the countries I wanted to visit and my plan for the trip.
These conversations started as early as 24 months to give them enough time to ask any questions that they might have had.
My financial independence helped me to convince everyone around me.
Visas (Paperwork)
Indian passport allows us to travel visa free only to a handful of countries.
Due to this, I had to plan the countries I wanted to visit before hand.
My plan was to see the Americas & my research confirmed that I could travel to most countries in the region with an American tourist Visa.
I had to plan the tourist Visa for USA before I quit my job. This helped in opening most countries is Central & South America.
Consistency
The whole process took me 2.5 years which is a long time. Somewhere, I questioned my ability to do it too.
Being patient and consistent helped me and was an important wheel in the cog.
Would I do it again?
HELL YES!! At the drop of a hat.
Now tell me, do you dream to travel long term or have travelled long term before?
