How Much Time Do You Need to Travel
Justifying a trip is sometimes very hard for the average working individual. And taking time off is one of the big questions. The two biggest ones are "How much time can I get off?" and "How much time will it take to see the area?".
I work a 9 to 5 salary position developing software and that means I have to support it. Taking time off is always a hard one because my department needs someone around at any given time to support our product. This means that I can't just bank up as much time as I need or take an unpaid leave. I am of no use if I'm not there no matter how good I am. So I can only get a fixed amount off every year. Does this sound familiar?
My wife an I like to go far away and see as much as possible. She is a teacher so she is laughing in terms of holidays (as long as she wants the summer holiday I guess). But I am maxed out at 3 weeks plus what I can swing in terms of banking and stuff (I can stretch it to 4 if I need to). So everytime we go somewhere we have to ask, "What can we see in 4 weeks?", and, "Can we see it properly in 4 weeks?".
It is tough talking to anyone about this too. They are typically biased if they have been there already. If they backpacked the region for 6 months and "lived with the people" or whatever else, they are going to say it is too short.
Others, who do the whirlwind tour, flying from place to place, will say its fine and try to do even more somewhere else if you can.
Even more annoying, are the people that like to talk about what they would do and if they couldn't do something they wouldn't bother going (like it's a waste of their time and money). i.e. Don't bother going to Nepal unless you are going to see Everest Base Camp or Serengetti when the wildebeast migration is on. These people, quite often, never end up going there anyways. Sometimes you just have to go and make the most of it. If you can time it right then great.
I do agree with them on some points though. My wife and I had 4 key things for our Ecuador and Peru trip. We would have considered a different trip if we couldn't have made it happen. Whats the happy medium though?
Ask Yourself What You Really Want to See
Ask yourself what you really want to see. Read some websites, a few books, talk to some friends who have been there, and write up a list of must dos in that area and what would be a "bonus". Then look at what else there is too see that is conveniently around there.
My wife and I want to see India, but Tibet, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan are right there. Add these to your list in the same fashion as well, what is a must see and what is a nice extra? If you can squeeze a set of must sees for a whole region into your time frame you might be okay. If not, would it be better to go somewhere and save our pennies and time to go see that region when we have 2 months? Its a tough call.
It is a lot of money to fly somewhere as well. Your money is a lot more efficient when you have more time and you see more in the area. The problem is, this takes time and money as well so your employer and pocket book will not like this.
Around the World Trip
My wife and I are looking at our destinations with this question in mind, "Can we do what we want in a month or could this be included in a longer, round the world holiday in the future?" We are saving our pennies for when we quit our jobs so that we can do an extended trip and cover off a lot of regions.
I know this sounds like a pipe dream for most of us, but if you make the commitment, you can do it. If seriously think you have the nerve and resolve to save up cash, quite your job, and do the around the world trip someday, it will pay off in spades. You are seeing the most out of your dollar and more efficient use of your time. It also makes travel decisions a lot easier in the meantime. But you have to seriously commit yourself to doing it. Otherwise, you will be just another person who doesn't follow through with their grand travel plans.
In the meantime, we save up for a month holiday every year, and take care of those out of the way ones. Europe and Asia will be our extended holiday most likely, but South America and Central America are more the "one month" kind of destinations. Not too say you can see the whole thing in a month, but you could go back in the future to different parts if you wanted. For North American travelers the flights are reasonable and its not too far away. This is also biased on my part, because this is just how we ended up doing it for ourselves anyways. You could definitely do the big trip down there if you wanted.
We also did some of the eastern countries in Africa this summer, which you could say is really out of the way, but it worked out fine, though I could have seen more of it when we were there.
Australia and New Zealand we plan to do as a one monther as we well.
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