Around the World

Initially I tried to get an around-the-world flight package through student travel agencies such as STA and Council, which have a reputation for being able to get bargain fares. I would give their agents a rough itinerary of my trip destinations and ask them to put together a package and price. It soon became apparent to me that most of these young agents had gone through the US public school system and had no clue about geography as they would have me flying into Vienna, then back to London and then back to Athens - all over the map.

Early on in my research and reading in the guidebooks, I came across mention of around-the-world airfares. I later discovered that there are two groups of airlines that offer around-the-world airfare packages and they were both about the same in terms of price - it would cost me about $3,500 to fly the route I had planned. SF - London - - (travel around Europe for 3 months on a Eurarail pass) - Vienna - Kathmandu - Bangkok - Hong Kong - Tokyo - Auckland - Honolulu - SF. With both of these group fares, I could change dates for free and destinations for $75.

I happened to find a reference to a travel agent, Max (AirConcierge.com), in San Francisco who was supposed to be an around-the-world expert and he put together a package for me that was about a thousand dollars cheaper than if I went directly to the airline groups. The only limitation was that I could not change destinations, though date changes were still OK and free if I made them through Max.

The tickets for my trip were actually issued by a company in Australia, which I was to learn later, is the around-the-world capital of the world - there are more Aussies doing around-the-world trips than travelers from any other country.

As it turned out, Max did have a little difficulty getting the tickets delivered from Australia in time for my first flight - he actually had them Fedex the tickets overnight to him and then he hand delivered them to my door an hour before the airport shuttle was to arrive.

This is not the only time he went out of his way to help me. Throughout the course of the trip, I made about six different date changes by email through him (sometimes involving 5 or 6 flight reschedules) ....and, even when I offered to pay him more, he refused.

Europe

For most of my travel in Europe I went by rail using a 3 month Eurorail Pass that I bought in the US for about $1500. Given that I also had to pay on many private rail lines in Switzerland and that Italian train fares are so low, I might have done it cheaper by purchasing fares as I went along, but that would have meant standing in a lot of lines and wasting a lot of time. It was so easy to just board trains with my pass and also have access to first class seats (and bathrooms).

The train system is so extensive all throughout Europe that is THE best way to get around. All the train schedules, even between countries, are timed so that there is minimal wait times between connections. For the most part, the trains are fast and clean. The exceptions being Italian and Greek trains. The stations are usually centrally and conveniently located.

I carried a train schedule with me that covered all of Europe, which was invaluable to me when planning legs of the trip, but I also found that if you stood in line in stations and asked the attendant to get you a list of all possible connections between points A and B on such and such a date between this and that time - they could hand you a printout that listed all your options for possible trains, along with their ID numbers, destination and arrival times and track locations. In Switzerland stations I found that I didn't even need to wait in line for a printout - there were often terminals in the stations that anyone could use. At one point, during a 5 minute wait interval between train connections at a station I had been to before, I found and logged on to a terminal and within two minutes had a printout of the an upcoming journey that would take me from a little village in the Swiss Alps to a small town in France, covering 1000 kilometers and involving 6 trains with the maximum wait between trains less than 20 minutes.

Shortly thereafter, I found that you could do all of this online and didn't have to go to stations. Unfortunately, one could not make and pay for seat reservations or buy tickets or pay supplementary fees online and one is forced to go down to the nearest station to complete these transactions.

I did use the bargain airlines, Easyjet and Ryan Air, for a couple flights in Europe that were too expensive to add to my around-the-world fare...... a round trip flight from London to Edinburgh, Scotland and a flight from London to Paris (2 hours faster and $40 cheaper than the train supplement I would have had to pay for).

Nepal

I found a website online that featured supposed unbiased recommendations for guides/porters and was able to find one (or at least his cousin) who worked out OK.
The in-country flight with Yeti Air from Kathmandu to the small mountain airstrip 100 miles away in Lukla ran about $230 for both of us.

Southeast Asia

Max arranged for a couple round-trip flights from Bangkok to my destinations in Thailand that were too much mileage to add to the around-the-world fare: Koh Sumui, an island in the southern Gulf of Thailand and Chiang Mai, a temple city in the north. Initially I had planned to go to Hanoi, Viet Nam, but after reading the guidebook extensively and checking airfares, I decided to visit Luang Prubang, Laos instead (round trip from Chiang Mai - $120).

In January, I also decided to skip the 3 weeks I had planned to visit the karst valleys in China (Guilin and ), shorten my stay in Japan from 2 weeks to 1 week and to move all my dates up so that I could be in New Zealand in February instead of March when there might be less rain. It also looked like Bush's war would break out soon and I wasn't comfortable traveling at that time.