You’ve made the decision to take a gap year and to travel, great! One of the next questions is what is going to be your itinerary for your trip?
My Experience
Well that depends, some people may prefer to have a set step by step itinerary for their trip, while others may prefer to go with the flow and go to the next place that inspires them. Personally for me, I was in the middle when I planned my world trip. I started off by listing the countries and the areas within them that I wanted to visit. I also listed some of the activities I wanted to do (e.g. volunteering, snorkeling, hiking, museums, shows, etc.). By the time I left for my trip, I had a general itinerary of where I was going (continents and countries), but the timeline was fairly flexible. For the first 3-4 months, I had a set timeline for each country I visited, as I had set dates for portions of my trip. For example, I met up with my best friend to travel around Europe for 2 weeks, and I also set to embark on walking the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route in early May that was set to last a month. Later on though, I spent about 6 weeks in the Balkans region with no set plan and itinerary and I later came back to the United States and Canada to do a spontaneous road trip for a month. Sometimes I would have my transportation and lodging booked well in advance, while other times I booked only a few hours or days beforehand.
My Recommendation for How to Plan
Based on my experience, I would recommend to first of all take some time to list out where you want to go and what you want to do on your gap year. Besides traveling, will you be studying, working or volunteering? If so, you’ll want to factor those into your gap year itinerary as well. After listing out the locations and things you’re wanting to do, I would rank them in order of “absolute must” to “desired.” The reason for this is you may want to visit say for example 60 countries and do 25 different activities, but will you have the time, money and resources to do everything? It’s hard to say initially. From there, I’d recommend doing research on the areas you’re going to, how much time you’ll want to spend in every spot and the costs. Also what will be your route? Will you buy tickets for planes, buses and trains on the go or buy a round the world plane ticket? You may want to spend a certain amount of time on one continent for a while visiting a series of countries at once, and then hop to another area of the world. How will you get from place to place? What are visa requirements and stay limits for each country/region? Figuring out the factors, will help you determine how rigid or relaxed your itinerary will need to be.
Once you determine the “musts” you want to do on your trip, I would look to figure out the best route from area to area. From there you can fill in the blanks with other countries and leave it kind of open ended. The joy of travel is always the people you will meet. When talking to locals and other travelers, you’ll get recommendations of places to check out, so you want to leave some wiggle room in your plans.
As for tools in writing your itinerary, a good old notebook does quite well in my opinion! I also used Google Maps, as you can create your own custom maps within the application, so if you’re a visual person like me, this could be really helpful.
Gap Year Programs vs. Booking Yourself?
There are companies that have formal gap year programs for 3-6 months or for a year or more. If you would prefer to have a travel expert plan your gap year, this may be a good route for you. I personally have not used any of these services myself, so I’m not in the position to make recommendations, but this New York Times Article gives a few options to consider.
Personally, I feel most people can plan gap years on their own with the various free resources out there, but it is good to check out these options if this would make the process easier.
Conclusion
I hope these suggestions help. Setting an itinerary for your gap year can be one of the most exciting and potentially frustrating part of a world trip. I would just recommend to have a general plan, and leave some room for flexibility. Travel is not static in nature, so you’ll never know what you’ll find on your travels that you’ll want to see and do more of. Last, there is no “right” itinerary, as a gap year is going to be different for everyone, based off their interests and goals. The most important thing is to just do your gap year – you’ll figure it out as you go along. Happy travels!
Other Online Resources:
I found these websites to have good information about setting up an itinerary:
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