I am never a fan of the idea of incorporating a WHV into a 'RTW' trip. Generally, the thinking is, I can do this and save up some more money for travel.
I suggest you look at either taking a trip (travelling on money you have) or going to a country to see what life is like in that country (get a WHV).
Your idea of a 'half way' ticket seems to be a reasonable compromise if you can't move your head out of 'I have to plan where I wll go ahead of time' mode.
Thanks for the continued help guys. Well I spoke to a travel consultant this weekend form round the world experts. STA have been incredibly incompetent, so I am hoping for a better response from these guys. They have promised a quote for a half way ticket, a ticket for London, Kenya, SEA, Oz, Nz, SA then home and an alternative that has all these stops but fishiness in America. Travel in Style, I wish I could let go of the pre-booked ticket, but I just can't!
If I were to attempt to travel straight through, without staying to work and just relying on my 11 grand spending money, the trip would look like this:
Kenya, Tanzania, Zanzibar (1.5 months, £1500 including cash for charity project)
SEA - countries to be confirmed (4 months, around £4000 budgeted)
OZ (0.5 months, up to £800 - £1000)
NZ (1 month, up to £2000)
This leaves me with South America, up to 5 months left on my ticket and at last £2500. I imagine I will probably spend less in Asia than £1000 per month, so hopefully this figure will be a little higher. If i stick to these timelines, I'll be in SA around March with at least this much to spend. I'd probably only last around 3 months also. I haven't yet decided on specific countries, but I am open to ideas (Brazil, Argentina, Equador, Boliva and Peru all seem appealing). Does this seem like enough to really make the most of SA? Also March means we begin to enter their Autumn, so the climate in countries not on the equator won't be too great.
As I mentioned, my alternative is to take my time, spend longer in Oz or Nz and HOPEFULLY find at least enough work to sustain me living there, and then spending my remaining six weeks in the US around July - how awesome would a roadtrip down route 69 be? SA appeals to me more because I feel as if it will be a 'proper' traveller's experience, but doing it without enough cash seems like a squandered experience.
SORRY FOR THE ESSAY AND THANKS IN ADVANCED!
Brazil will cost you four times more per day than Bolivia.
Your £2500 won't last more than 5 or 6 weeks in Brazil,while it would probably be enough for a good look at the Andean countries...3 months in Bolivia and Peru.
You will have to pick and choose anyway..it is a huge area and you need lots of time to see even the highlights...
Weedo, you gotta let go of something and so far I don't see you doing that. You're still trying to juggle all the same balls.
I don't see much point to 2 weeks in Australia, the country needs 6 months. A month in NZ is at least somewhat reasonable but what is it going to cost you overall to get to these 2 countries for 6 weeks? If you left them out it would shift 3k to your S. America funds.
Everyone always wants to cover everywhere in one trip. The reality is no one can actually ever do that. You simply end up compromising everywhere you go. Either because of time available or funds available. Again, it's not about how many places you get to, it's about how much you get out of every day.
What is this 'charity project' in Africa? I didn't pick up on it in your OP. Is it voluntourism? Are you paying to volunteer? There was a very good thread on voluntourism titled, 'before you pay to volunteer abroad' but it doesn't seem to have been restored since the TT shutdown. Basically, voluntourism is a very controversial subject with many agreeing that it does more harm than good. I woul do a lot of research before paying to volunteer. http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=voluntourism<i>criticism&oq=voluntourism</i>&gs_l=serp.1.2.0l10.4187.6444.0.9767.13.11.0.2.2.0.171.1139.7j4.11.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.1.6.serp.lxg96vm1_j8
I don't see much point in going to Australia for 2 weeks. Either spend more time there or scrap it completely.
I would also suggest working out where you want to go in SE Asia and deciding what you want to see. Some countries are considerably more expensive than others, for example Singapore will be similar to UK prices, with beer in a pub there costing about £8-9 a pint. Borneo and Burma are also expensive compared to the rest of SE Asia and will eat up your budget a lot quicker than say Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia and Laos. Thailand is in between.
I think the point of 'going to Oz' is that the OP has a 'free' ticket (ie he's not paying for the RTW)..so he wants to use it.
Even if it is only a week or two around Sydney.
Ah, good point lucapal. So now we have the 'I have a pass and want to get my moneysworth' syndrome at play.
Just like a 'rail pass' the tendency is to think that 'getting your moneysworth' means using it a lot. The result of course is confusing quantity with quality. The common phrase is 'to see as much as possible' and people confuse the word 'much' with the word 'many'. They are not synonymous.
The way to see as 'much' as possible is to spend time IN places, not in BETWEEN places. In travel, less is always more. The less you move the more you see/do.
But in this case, not only does 2 weeks not make much sense, the cost factor is signifigant. Why spend 6 weeks in OZ/NZ for 3k when the OP could manage 12+ weeks in SA? Unless what interests the OP more is OZ/NZ vs. SA. If that were the case then dropping SA and spending more time in OZ/NZ would make sense.
But going somewhere just to get 'your moneysworth' out of a ticket makes no sense.
As much as I totally concur with TIS' travel philosophy I don't think new travellers feel comfortable enough to embrace the concept of total freedom, until they're on the road. The OP has already decided on a definite timeframe for the trip and hence the RTW, but I'm yet to meet a single traveller who didn't regret buying that ticket within a month or two of heading off. OP if your time frame could be extended, you could consider staying longer in Oz to top up your funds before heading onwards, but if that isn't a possibility, I'm with everyone else on suggesting you drop something off the itinerary. Australia and New Zealand are ridiculously expensive, much more expensive than the UK because the pound isn't worth much any more. 2 weeks in Oz is only going to give you a taste of the country if you spent some serious money jetting to the best spots (which you are on the wrong thread for, ha ha!).
I suspect your parents are putting up the RTW ticket because they want you to come home. Why's that? Don't they trust that you will? So how you gonna feel half way through when you want to stay somewhere? May be you can do a deal with your parents to not lock you in to a RTW and allow yourself the flexibility that most travellers thrive on.