i know it's a basic question and probably comes up a fair bit, but here goes anyway...
PLAN A
planning to fly from perth to south africa (most likely cape town). planning on taking a tour north through africa spend about 2 months travelling. tours i'm looking at are about a month and run at $6K. would like to spend 3-4 weeks travelling around morocco (independent travel). would consider short tours across northern africa to take in libya/egypt, would like to spend about 2 weeks in egypt (including 3-4 days at beach resort).
would like to spend some time in UAE, maybe two weeks or so, with a week of that probably in dubai.
like to travel north to syria and jordan, will probably take a tour at this point at around $4K.
turkey independently for 3-4 weeks.
my route gets a little bit blurry here as i still haven't figured the logical direction for travelling in (advice in that matter would be appreciated as well!).
option 1 is to head into central asia (uzbekistan, tajikstan, turkmenistan, khazakstan etc.) and then into pakistan, india, nepal, tibet, china and then option A - head across the silk route back in the direction of central asia and head north to russia or option B do silk route return to beijing from urumqi and head into russia via mongolia.
, OR
option 2 is to head to russia, and take trans siberian from moscow - beijing and then head south through china, tibet, nepal, india.
either way i estimate to be the biggest part of the trip at around 6 months (or longer - not bound by time, only money).
i wouldnt want to sacrifice any part of the trip - im especially keen for the silk road.
I figure - two months for central asia - open to taking a tour on this part for ease of organising visas - haven't looked into costs too much so keen to know. Keen to go trekking.
One month for Russia (trans-Siberian).
Two weeks for Mongolia on tour.
Beijing-Urumqi 3-4 weeks independently.
Back to eastern China - Shanghai and head to Tiger Leaping Gorge, maybe another 3-4 weeks indepently.
Tibet 2-3 weeks independently.
Nepal 3-4 weeks independent/tour as i'd like to go trekking
India 2 months.
PLAN B
Same as above, but sort of in reverse, so I end up in South Africa. From there I would travel to South America. I haven't done a great deal of research but figure 2-3 months could take in most of what i'm interested in.
Then head into North America. No set plan as yet. I know I want to take in LA, San Fran, Las Vegas, Miami and New York. Not a very clear/logical direction of travel around US but I know where I want to go! I figure two months independent travel. I believe air travel in US is reasonably priced.
And then either from NY to London to Bangkok to Perth OR LA to Sydney to Perth.
Overall, I'm not much of a flyer so I'd like to keep taking short distant flights to an absolute minimum. Much prefer overland travel (see more, meet more) or generally whatever is the cheapest option.
Keen to take in some tours where I've said though perfectly comfortable with independent travel as well.
Happy to stay in hostels and eat street market food.
Based on what i've researched, some places are going to be very cheap, and some places are going to be very expensive even for budget travellers.
I love to shop but I can control it on a tight budget. I will be looking for stock for my store so I probably wont be able to resist at certain points along the way...
Probably looking at 12-18 months on the road. Seems like a long time and seems like I would need a never ending supply of money for something like this. But people seem to travel overseas for a year or more at a time with not much money?!??!
Would appreciate if anyone could give my advice on the route i have (vaguely) mapped out and advice on how much money might be needed for a particular part of the journey (or the whole journey, if you've been there done that).
