We have been asked many questions about the year we spent travelling around the world. But interestingly, one question pops up again and again: “How much does it cost?”

In total we spent 20.700 Euros per person for 354 days on the road. If you prepare a Round The World or consider such a plan, do not be horrified: this is definitely a high budget! On average, the people we met travelled with a budget between 12.000 to 15.000 Euros per person for one year. We even met a couple who lived on 10.000 Euros between the two of them for 2 years, but there are also people on the road who splurge 45.000 Euros per person in about 15 months. So the range is really broad, as you can see! Of course, it does only make sense to provide figures if we give some insights on how and where we travelled.

First, let us start with what we figured out were the key elements that really had an impact on our budget travelling for such a long time:

1. The first and most important rule is: cheap countries are really cheap, expensive countries are really expensive. This sounds trivial, but no matter how we travelled, this had a critical impact on how much we spent. In Bolivia or Laos, we just stopped pinching Pesos after a few days, and still spent far less than almost anywhere else. On the other hand, in the Pacific, we simply found no way to stop the hemorrhagic! We spent 28 weeks in South America (53 Euros per day), 11 weeks in the Pacific & New Zealand (98 Euros per day) and 12 weeks in Asia (38 Euros per day). In short, we spent almost one half of the budget in the Pacific, although we spent only one fifth of the time there. And in South America, we spent almost twice as much per day in Argentina and especially in Chile than in Bolivia or Peru.

2. The faster we travelled, the more we spent. Crashing in a village in Bolivia or Laos costs very little. Moving every other day from one place to another, as we often did during this trip, greatly increased our budget. Maybe also because when were exhausted, we tended to reward us with little extras and a better comfort. Since we visited 16 countries in 3 different areas of the globe, we spent quite a bit on international flights: 4.020 Euros per person. On top of that, we slept in 174 different places in 354 days! This enabled us to see and experience a lot, but was also expensive. The total budget for transportations of all kinds was 7.740 Euros per person.

3. Last but not least and of course, the way we travelled and the level of comfort we chose indeed influenced our budget. But interestingly enough, this was all in all a less crucial for the budget than where and how fast we travelled. Maybe worth mentioning, we no longer are in our 20s, so our “camping or dormitory times” are over. We chose budget hostels, but stayed in double rooms mostly with private bath. In most of South America and Southeast Asia, we frequented very local restaurants or even food stalls. In Chile, Argentina & the whole Pacific, we cooked every single meal. We took many tours or guides in museums or points of interest to make the most of those places. We also travelled with more comfortable buses, at least when those were available, and a few times decided to fly to avoid too long bus trips. We did save a lot of money by avoiding bars or clubs, but regularly enjoyed a drink or a bottle of wine with our fellow travellers in the hostel.

So, what did we spend on what? Transport: 7.740 Euros per person, of which 4.020 on international flights. We decided against a RTW-ticket, which is extremely inflexible, and all in all not that cheap, especially if you look at a somehow more complex route for your trip, for instance one that includes either South America or Africa / Hostels:3.790 Euros per person: 20 Euros per night in South America, 35 Euros in the Pacific (almost always rooms with shared bathrooms) & 15 Euros in Southeast Asia / Food & drinks:3.590 Euros per person: 9 Euros per person per day in South America & Southeast Asia, 15 Euros in the Pacific / Tours & various activities:3.790 Euros per person (that also includes scuba diving) / “Every day life”:1.810 Euros per person: Internet & communications, laundry, purchasing various “stuff”… / Souvenirs: We bought quite a few souvenirs, but did not integrate them in the budget of the trip. By the way, all those souvenirs we sent back home with regular postal service arrived safely in one piece!

Now, the geographical split (this does include transport but not international flights): South America: 53 Euros per person per day - Venezuela (31 Euros), Brazil (42 Euros), Peru (34 Euros), Bolivia (29 Euros), Chile (58 Euros), Argentina (54 Euros), Uruguay (58 Euros) / Pacific: 98 Euros per person per day - Easter Island (59 Euros), French Polynesia (166 Euros), Cook Islands (73 Euros), New Zealand (59 Euros) / Southeast Asia: 38 Euros per person per day - Hong Kong & Macau (32 Euros), China (36 Euros), Laos (23 Euros), Cambodia (35 Euros, but this was the last country, so we spent much more than usual), Thailand / Bangkok (43 Euros).

Last but not least, you may wonder how to reduce costs if you do not have as much as 20.000 Euros for the trip. You definitely can cut it by up to one third without major problem if you consider the 3 “Golden Rules” we identified at the beginning: 1. Do not underestimate how fast you will burn your budget in expensive places like Western Europe, North America, Japan and the whole Pacific area including Australia & New Zealand… If you are on a budget, try to stick to cheap places as much as you can. Southeast Asia & the Andean Countries of South America (except Chile & southern Argentina) are your best bet! 2. Do not try to pack too much in your itinerary. Travelling fast will cost you a lot of money. 16 countries in 3 areas of the world is the limit! We would even recommend cutting to 2 areas of the world if budget is important for you. Many people start planning an itinerary with more than 25 or even 30 countries over 4 or even 5 continents. It is definitely doable if you have a private jet, but just forget about it if you are on a budget! On top of that, you would experience nothing but airports and touristy destinations. 3. Of course, you can save a lot of money by reducing your “standards” like staying in dormitory or camping, using the cheapest buses, ...

When we first thought about creating a website for our trip around the world in 2007 - 2008, we never imagined that this website would become so popular! As for today, in a little less than 30 months, 30.000 visitors used this website, spending altogether more than 2.040 hours.

How about the content? The travel reports we posted during our RTW consist of 220 pages, accompanied by more than 1.860 pictures. If you add the “Other Travels”, we get a total of 2.920 pictures and more than 255 pages or about 171.000 words. Not bad!

Which countries are most popular? By far Bolivia, Venezuela & Argentina followed by Peru, Brazil, Laos, China, Cambodia, Easter Islands & Cook Islands. Colombia, which we travelled in summer 2009, has been the most popular country in the last 7 months.

And since this website is in English, it is not surprising that more than a quarter of the visitors come from the USA, followed by England & Canada. Our home countries, Austria & France only account for 11% of the total traffic.

Well, a good reason to keep on writing!

When we first thought about creating a website for our trip around the world in 2007 - 2008, we never imagined that this website would become so popular! As for today, in a little less than 30 months, 30.000 visitors used this website, spending altogether more than 2.040 hours.

How about the content? The travel reports we posted during our RTW consist of 220 pages, accompanied by more than 1.860 pictures. If you add the “Other Travels”, we get a total of 2.920 pictures and more than 255 pages or about 171.000 words. Not bad!

Which countries are most popular? By far Bolivia, Venezuela & Argentina followed by Peru, Brazil, Laos, China, Cambodia, Easter Islands & Cook Islands. Colombia, which we travelled in summer 2009, has been the most popular country in the last 7 months.

And since this website is in English, it is not surprising that more than a quarter of the visitors come from the USA, followed by England & Canada. Our home countries, Austria & France only account for 11% of the total traffic.

Well, a good reason to keep on writing!

Most of our friends and Gilles colleagues kept asking the same questions: 1) What was the trip like? 2) Which were our favorite places? 3) How much did it cost? 4) Will we organize a DiaShow?

Let’s try to answer them …

1) The first one is the hardest to answer. How do you explain that what we experienced exceeded all our expectations? That it was the best decision we took in our life? It is difficult to communicate that within one year (!) we encountered just a few minor problems, Heidi’s moneyless purse being snatched at a bus station, Gilles suffering from a cold. Any of these inconveniences could have happened to us in Vienna. What also makes it difficult to talk about the “overall experience” is that so few days after our return, the true dimension of our impressions has not really sunken in. Usually, it is in the course of the longer conservation that this or that experience pops up, although we are cautious not to bombard people with our stories.

2) Our favorite places? First of all, we truly loved and enjoyed all countries we visited but some more than others. Argentina will always rank first, for its incredible scenery, wildlife and above all its people. Bolivia we found irresistible because its “Indegina” culture and lifestyle is so prevalent. On the other hand, these were the two countries where we stayed longer than in any other. Is it because we liked them so much, or do we prefer them over others because we dug a little deeper?

Generally, we believe that we experienced the countries in Latino America in a more authentic way, because we both spoke Spanish and thus could talk to ANYBODY, whereas in Asia the common language was English, which limited our contact to people in the tourist industry.

China surprised us in a very positive way. Experienced “China hands” joked that we got to know only the “non-Chinese” region, the Southwest, since this area is the home of many of China’s minorities. They still cling on to their tradition, language, dresses, architecture etc... On top of that, the area is extremely scenic. Apart from all that we were full of admiration of how the country coped with a human tragedy of mind-boggling dimension, the Sichuan earthquake. It was also the country where we moved in an environment where very few, often zero people spoke English, but we still managed somehow.

3) Costs? We spent a little more than 20.000 Euro per person on transport, accommodation, food and activities, basically everything except shopping for souvenirs in one year. For those who are shocked by the figures, we freely admit the trip could be done a lot cheaper, especially in terms of accommodation & food. But we never stayed in dormitories, except on mountain huts or on boats. Also, towards the end of the trip, we chose more upscale accommodations, compared to places we stayed in South America. Maybe because we knew we had not run out of money! Apart from that, we ate well most of the time. In the so expensive Pacific region - Easter Island, French Polynesia, the Cook Islands and New Zealand - we cooked each individual meal ourselves.

4) How about a DiaShow? Of course we will be more than happy to present our best photos to friends and colleagues with stories & comments … Just give us a little time to prepare it!

Our advice… Anybody who has the chance to take a year off and do such a trip - DO IT!!!

Tired of traveling?

Within a few days after our return, Gilles had booked four trips to Paris in the course of the next few months. Heidi soon found herself booking a flight to Paris for mid August to take her niece to Eurodisney. After that, she plans a week of fasting in a monastery in northern Austria. And in the meantime, we are answering requests for a home exchange in Moscow over Xmas and New Year.

Beginning of September, we are traveling to San Francisco for six days to attend the wedding of Gilles cousin. In order for the whole Barbier family to stay in comfort, Heidi had arranged a home exchange with a family in Palo Alto, California.

It looks very much as we are infected by a traveling bug!

The best part of coming back has been meeting friends and family who are genuinely happy to see us again. Gilles colleagues even organized a surprise “welcome home party” which we enjoyed tremendously. Heidi keeps meeting her friends individually and each time she is excited and truly looking forward to these animated chats and exchanges.

Of course our first days were busy with rearranging the apartment. The content of our two backpacks, eight boxes stored in the basement and six more boxes that we had shipped with art / souvenirs needed to find a place in our already cramped apartment. Not an easy task! What will we do with the colorful sturdy piece of clothes used by women in the Andes to carry their firewood, children, shopping? Maybe leave it in the cupboard next to the blanket we purchased in a Masai village in Tanzania…

Faster than we had imagined, we were back doing things we had done a thousand times before. Before our trip such everyday chores were a necessity that we never questioned, but this now seems a tedious routine. Idle thoughts we know, but this is how we feel these first few days. After a year of discovering new places every day, such activities seem terribly repetitious. Telephone lines had to be connected, mails sorted out, Heidi’s lost credit cards and driver license replaced, nothing terribly exciting…

Luckily, after a few days of rain, the weather was at its best and we enjoyed the quietness of our cabin on the Danube. Heidi loved to stroll through the city watching tourists. Being a local for once after such a long time was quiet exciting! But generally she felt rather restless, unable to find meaningful occupation.

Gilles went back to work only 5 days after we returned and had less time to think about such frivolity. The first two days on the job, he was totally disorientated, but reality caught up with him very, very fast!

Heidi had planned to enjoy our cabin on “Alte Donau” during the month of August, since she only starts working on September 1st. Well, this plan quickly changed!

After traveling approx. 107.000 km in 362 days, we landed in Vienna on Wednesday July 23rd, 2008 in heavy rain and with temperatures around 12 degrees Celsius. A shock! Actually not, the cool and fresh air was something we had not experienced since we left New Zealand in early April.

No more wondering where we would spend the night - we frequented 177 different places that year - and how we would move on.

We often ask ourselves if it was really a year that we were gone… It seems to have passed so awfully quickly!

We have been dreaming about it in the last years and been preparing it in the last 10 to 12 months … And it now has turned into reality: we are leaving Vienna for one year!

We finished our last preparations the evening before our departure on Saturday, July 28th. A few plans didn’t materialize - for instance studying the manual for our new camera or Heidi’s ambition to brush up her Spanish had to be taken off the ToDo-list!

Looking back what took up most of our time preparing the trip was the “administrative stuff” in Austria: selling the car, renting the two flats, with a tenant cancelling the lease two weeks before the departures, organizing our financial matters, getting our mail rerouted, cancelling subscriptions, health checks of all sorts, ...

The trip itself was actually relatively easy to plan, especially because we only booked the first leg of our travel - Vienna - Caracas to guarantee maximum flexibility

There is one point where we clearly missed our target: traveling light! When we packed the backpacks, it turned out that we actually had much more luggage than we would have liked to have. So, at least in the beginning, we will be carrying not less that twice as much as what we had planed or hoped, which already brought Heidi to complain about how heavy the whole stuff was!

It is really difficult to imagine that we are leaving for a full year! Will we indeed visit about 14 countries in the 12 months to come? We hardly can imagine what it really means. We think we will need a few days to work it out and to slow down, for the pace in the last 3 weeks has been relentless.

So we are now on the plane … And the first leg was a very special plane ride! Firstly, because someone had brought his dog along, the poor thing was squeaking in a shrill, nerve-raking manner most of the flight. Secondly and most important, because one of Heidi´s Friends organized that Gilles was able to access the cockpit at least for the approach and landing. A fantastic and very impressive experience, especially because it turned out to be a rather shaky approach, something Gilles will surely never forget!