Round the world trip?

Anyone ever considered a Round the World trip or even done one? Just before I go to University I don't want to take a gap-year but maybe 3-weeks a so off to go round the world, mostly by train.

I've pretty much got the plan roughly sorted out and I'm hoping it won't cost too much but I'm hoping for a 'experience of a lifetime', I'll probably go it alone as that's usual for round the world trips but I'm not really sure xD

Here it is anyway, I'm quite impressed with it ;)

My local train station to Leicester, train to London St Pancras. Connect to Eurostar and end up in Paris, this should take about 6-7 hours and if I leave early I should have time in Paris. Then catch a late-night sleeper train to Berlin and spend a day or two there, catch another sleeper train to Moscow which will take 2 nights, this'll go through Poland and other Eastern European countries.

Spend a day or two in Moscow and then the Trans-Siberian train via Mongolia to Beijing (China), this should take about 7-12 days and be the core of the journey. Then spend time in Beijing and catch a bullet train to Shanghai and spend another day there.

Fly over the Pacific to San Francisco, spend time there and catch a train through Seattle to Vancouver (Canada), catch a sleeper train through Canadian Mountains to Toronto, change trains in Toronto and catch another train to Montreal and spend time in each of the cities. Finally catch another train to New York, spend even more time there and then fly back to the UK.

Train is one of the best ways to see the world and easily second to flying, it's surprisingly cheap as well and from what I've read the biggest costs will be hotels by far but I've tried to choose sleepertrains.

I really hope I can do this and I don't see why not but it's still a bit of a dream :D

looks like youve got it all planned out, go for it :)

I want to go on a round the world trip, just need to convince some people to come with me :)
I may even steal your plan, you seem to have put a lot of thought into it, saves me having to do it :)

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Originally Posted by Trinity

I want to go on a round the world trip, just need to convince some people to come with me :)
I may even steal your plan, you seem to have put a lot of thought into it, saves me having to do it :)

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It's quite fun picking a journey, it's difficult getting a balance between the time of the trip, the price and whether it's over-night or not. I tried to go to the big important cities but this is still a rather brief trip as I won't be spending much time anywhere, just to see the typical tourist sites and then when I'm older I can perhaps see China in greater detail maybe. For London to Moscow there is about 6 different options, via Warsaw, Cologne, Amsterdam, Brussels or wherever you wish.

Try www.seat61.com/ for your options, I made the trip myself but I had lots of ideas from there. They do a good trip to India which also looks good and also a nice trip from London right to Singapore and then to Australia, it's amazing how far you can go from your local train-station :P

The difficulty will be booking it and getting times which work with each other but I'll have to wait a few years for that lol.

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Originally Posted by Jordy

It's quite fun picking a journey, it's difficult getting a balance between the time of the trip, the price and whether it's over-night or not. I tried to go to the big important cities but this is still a rather brief trip as I won't be spending much time anywhere, just to see the typical tourist sites and then when I'm older I can perhaps see China in greater detail maybe. For London to Moscow there is about 6 different options, via Warsaw, Cologne, Amsterdam, Brussels or wherever you wish.

Try www.seat61.com/ for your options, I made the trip myself but I had lots of ideas from there. They do a good trip to India which also looks good and also a nice trip from London right to Singapore and then to Australia, it's amazing how far you can go from your local train-station :P

The difficulty will be booking it and getting times which work with each other but I'll have to wait a few years for that lol.

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I'll have a look on that site now, thanks :)
I've decided not to use your plan now, going to plan my own. It'll be similar to yours but with more time in France and Germany (I have friends I can stay with in France and Germany), and replace China with Japan. And of course I'll have to finish it off in the greatest country in the world, Wales.

Yer i did this christmas last year.
we went from heathrow to singapore and spent a few nights there, then to cains to do some diving where we spent about 5 nights. Then went on to melbourne and spent 3 nights there. Then to aderlaide where we spent xmas day on the beach. next it was to sydney for new year to see the fire works. then to hawaii for a few nights then LA then home!

all in all it took us 4 weeks 3 days and was great fun! aswell it only cost about £4k for two of us!.
We found that it was cheaper to get round the world tickets then goto australia as it wud of cost us about £1500 just to goto each place seperatly

Nope, I can't stand really long plane flights, such as from London to Australia, that would be so many hours and stopping for fuel and everything, I'll stick to Cyprus or Turkey for holidays.

You don't have to stop for fuel they just put loads in the tank thats all

They mostly do stop off and pick up more passengers and drop some off, and I don't think the fuel tanks are big enough ;)

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Originally Posted by Jordy

the Trans-Siberian train via Mongolia to Beijing (China), this should take about 7-12 days

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A 7-12 day train ride?! I wouldn't survive!

I would love a round-the-world trip, but I've always pictured getting around by plane. :P Good plan though!

How long do you plan to stay in Leicester? A few minutes? It'll be the highlight of your journey :P

Good luck with it, sounds amazing :) I'd love to do this sometime in the future aswell...

I love traveling and seeing new places. I'm going to when I'm older for sure.

I highly considered this but decided to just apply for uni this year coming because of financial reasons. You sound like you know what your talking about but if i was you i'd wanna spend more time in each place, if you do what you've planned by the end of it you may have been everywhere but probably not of seen everywhere, i'd wanna spend atleast a few days in each place i go.
Have you considered going on one run by a gap year company, i was highly considering realgap, they came to my college and i went to talk about it in manchester. Costs are gonna be pretty high, talking £3000+ but everythings arranged for you, theres no hassle.
But then again i'd like the idea of doing things my own way haha.
You'll need to make forecasts of costs and if it's realistic for you at the time or not, but your doing the right thing planning early, i think if i started planning earlier i'd probably be going on a gap year next year but meh,
maybe after uni, when i'm in thousands of pounds of debt eh?

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Originally Posted by Herman

A 7-12 day train ride?! I wouldn't survive!

I would love a round-the-world trip, but I've always pictured getting around by plane. :P Good plan though!

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Hmm that's what most of the journey is, I just checked and it's actually 6-7 days and the trans-Siberian railway is easily the longest in the world, though I'm technically going on the Trans-Mongolian trip which just misses Siberia but the rest of it follows the same route.

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Originally Posted by Kardan

How long do you plan to stay in Leicester? A few minutes? It'll be the highlight of your journey :P

Good luck with it, sounds amazing :) I'd love to do this sometime in the future aswell...

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An hour maximum? :P

It's just 15 minutes away from me so I can catch some St Pancras train from Long Eaton but then at Leicester I'll just change to a high-speed one, it'll save me an hour or two going on a high-speed train, more time in Paris ;)

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Originally Posted by Ramones

I highly considered this but decided to just apply for uni this year coming because of financial reasons. You sound like you know what your talking about but if i was you i'd wanna spend more time in each place, if you do what you've planned by the end of it you may have been everywhere but probably not of seen everywhere, i'd wanna spend atleast a few days in each place i go.
Have you considered going on one run by a gap year company, i was highly considering realgap, they came to my college and i went to talk about it in manchester. Costs are gonna be pretty high, talking £3000+ but everythings arranged for you, theres no hassle.
But then again i'd like the idea of doing things my own way haha.
You'll need to make forecasts of costs and if it's realistic for you at the time or not, but your doing the right thing planning early, i think if i started planning earlier i'd probably be going on a gap year next year but meh,
maybe after uni, when i'm in thousands of pounds of debt eh?

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I reckon this should be around £2000, the sleeper-trains are actually quite cheap, it's only about £250 to get from Moscow to Beijing in 7 days but yet it'll be about £400-500 for the Shanghai > San Francisco and New York > UK flights :(

Travel Insurance will also be needed and I suspect that'll be expensive, I was checking up on Visa's earlier and they seem to be particularly expensive, on the Berlin > Moscow train ride it goes through Poland and Belarus, Poland is in the EU so I'm fine going through there but for just a few hours travelling through Belarus it's going to cost about £90 to get a Visa. Russia and China are similar prices but at least I spend time there. Getting a visa in America should be easy and I'm hoping Canada will be easy too. Getting all the trains and flights booked will be difficult as some of them you can only book a few months in advance.

Security also needs to be taken into account, I really don't fancy walking around Paris late in the evening but there's no other option, that's the main problem that I'm going to be carrying around a laptop, probably a decent camera and phone and a few suitcases...

I could probably spend a bit more time in them all but I should be able to do the highlights of each city and then if I enjoy them I can revisit in later life, I've seen bits of Paris already and there's a few other bits I want to see there but I can always get there easily. Not sure about Berlin I'm sure I can easily spend a day or two there and Moscow should be easy to spend time in too. Beijing & Shanghai there should also be enough to do and then San Francisco and Vancouver too, lots to do there, Toronto I could see the Niagara falls & CN Tower, unsure what's in Montreal and then New York I'm sure I could spend ages there.

I also worry that if one train was late or whatever I could miss bits of the trip, if need be I could fly ahead but that's not cheap or ideal. Probably won't have the time or money to take a year out sadly, it could well be up to £3000 I just realised :P

wow too much to consider planning it all urself eh? i wud like to travel round the world someday but by planes please heh :P
i can imagine however the great fun travelling round with trains

neways,good luck mate :)

I was planning on doing a Europe trip - i.e going to every country on Europe, however, with a twist. To cut down on costs and really take our time I was planning on going round on a bike. I know we could only probably do about 150/200 miles a day but that's enough and I was thinking maybe 6 weeks which is around 8,000 miles which should be enough for some countries anyway. It will cut down on costs, camping and couch surfing (Google it) and it will certainly be the trip of a lifetime.

I wouldn't do it on my own though :P.

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Originally Posted by Skajo

I was planning on doing a Europe trip - i.e going to every country on Europe, however, with a twist. To cut down on costs and really take our time I was planning on going round on a bike. I know we could only probably do about 150/200 miles a day but that's enough and I was thinking maybe 6 weeks which is around 8,000 miles which should be enough for some countries anyway. It will cut down on costs, camping and couch surfing (Google it) and it will certainly be the trip of a lifetime.

I wouldn't do it on my own though :P.

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I watched a 4-part documentary before on a guy who cycled round the world to beat a record, looked like fun but he was so knackered. He could only manage 100miles a day or something, I think?

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Originally Posted by Cylinder

I watched a 4-part documentary before on a guy who cycled round the world to beat a record, looked like fun but he was so knackered. He could only manage 100miles a day or something, I think?

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He might be thinking of a Motorbike and not a pushbike, not sure :P

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Originally Posted by Jordy

He might be thinking of a Motorbike and not a pushbike, not sure :P

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lol...never even crossed my mind that, haha. Your probably right :P. I automatically assumed push bike because I was blurring on about the documentary, lol.

It will sure cost a fortune with the current exchange rate, you may wanna go after you leave uni at this rate...

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Originally Posted by Jordy

Anyone ever considered a Round the World trip or even done one? Just before I go to University I don't want to take a gap-year but maybe 3-weeks a so off to go round the world, mostly by train.

I've pretty much got the plan roughly sorted out and I'm hoping it won't cost too much but I'm hoping for a 'experience of a lifetime', I'll probably go it alone as that's usual for round the world trips but I'm not really sure xD

Here it is anyway, I'm quite impressed with it ;)

My local train station to Leicester, train to London St Pancras. Connect to Eurostar and end up in Paris, this should take about 6-7 hours and if I leave early I should have time in Paris. Then catch a late-night sleeper train to Berlin and spend a day or two there, catch another sleeper train to Moscow which will take 2 nights, this'll go through Poland and other Eastern European countries.

Spend a day or two in Moscow and then the Trans-Siberian train via Mongolia to Beijing (China), this should take about 7-12 days and be the core of the journey. Then spend time in Beijing and catch a bullet train to Shanghai and spend another day there.

Fly over the Pacific to San Francisco, spend time there and catch a train through Seattle to Vancouver (Canada), catch a sleeper train through Canadian Mountains to Toronto, change trains in Toronto and catch another train to Montreal and spend time in each of the cities. Finally catch another train to New York, spend even more time there and then fly back to the UK.

Train is one of the best ways to see the world and easily second to flying, it's surprisingly cheap as well and from what I've read the biggest costs will be hotels by far but I've tried to choose sleepertrains.

I really hope I can do this and I don't see why not but it's still a bit of a dream :D

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Almost got a 6 week one organised, there are loads of cheap gapyear/summer holiday companies out there. Hoping to travel South America. Wouldn't really wanna go to North America though- i'd rather spend money to visit somewhere cultural lol

Two of my Uni choices involve years abroad. One in Northern America and the other in China, so I was planning that if I got accepted onto one of those, I'd spend the out of term time sightseeing in the regions.

It's a bit of a tiring plan mate, you might want to think of like, backpacking it (don't think you want to be lugging suitcases around if your sightseeing), and finding somewhere to stop for a week to get a decent shower, wash, catch up on sleep etc.

There is some companies ive been looking at that do packages where you fly to about 10 different locations for around £1500

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Originally Posted by partie2

There is some companies ive been looking at that do packages where you fly to about 10 different locations for around £1500

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Links? :)