2015 - ROUND THE WORLD IN 42 DAYS. LADIES WHAT TRAVEL!
After my 40th birthday, I decided that I would celebrate my 50th birthday by indulging in one of my passions, my love of travel and to get a chance to see other cultures, but of course I wanted to do this in relative comfort. I was not going to backpack around like some teenager or someone in their twenties! I had earned my stripes, and I had nothing to prove to anyone, myself included. I started thinking about this trip 10 years prior to my 50th, I felt it would need careful planning and then execution, after all how does one go about doing this sort of thing! I also felt that I needed something to mark this big milestone, I had done the party thing for my 40th and I was not going to do that again, thank you very much. I was going to be selfish and have fun for me, I did not need anyone else. I was entitled to do this, I kept telling myself. I could not travel for extremely long periods of time because I still had one kid at home so looking at all the restrictions, I came up with a plan that will accommodate all my needs and the restrictions I had.
I recall then mentioning it to one of my best friends, Mo, at the time and she declared an interest in joining me on my journey and we could make it a joint 50th birthday celebration. The two of us together will make the trip double fun, two middle aged ladies having fun, it sounded great, and it was great. I was delirious with excitement, so we had a few years to plan. Like two giddy schoolgirls, we would talk about the trip and imagine what we would do, anyone who knew us heard about the plans from us talking about it. Suddenly, or that was how it seemed, we were only a couple of years off our 50th year and the reality had set in. Were we prepared? We had weathered a recession between 2008 and 2014 and work had been difficult. I had no money for the trip! I was made redundant in 2013 and did not have a steady income for a long while
In 2015, I was fortunate to acquire a couple of roles that gave me an income to resume my travel ambitions. I started researching on the internet looking for travel agencies that specialised in our type of trip, at the same time, I pulled up a global map and picked out a route and bucket list of countries that I would like to visit. I prepared an itinerary and then started making phone calls to various travel agencies to get a feel for the costs, I still did not have a clue if I could afford it. In tandem, I also used the British Airways website to plot a route via the One World group of airlines .
Following my research and telephone calls, one travel agent called Rachel from the Flight Centre office based in London reached out to me and responded to my enquiries. She was helpful, took all my requirements including dates, destinations, comfort, excursions, must haves and most importantly budget. She prepared a programme which suited my tastes took care of the visas, gave me the standard of hotels I requested. I discussed the first draft with Mo getting her opinion on the route and her thoughts on the costs and our budget. We were pleased with the outcome. Suddenly, this was within our reach, all our criteria were met, we could afford to go. This was now a reality. We discussed this well into the small hours of the night. Mo was based in the US whilst I was based in the UK, which meant working with an eight-hour LA time difference to make the plans.
How I prepared for my rtw trip
Budget
Our budget was tight. Even though we gave ourselves a range, realistically we needed the budget to be around the £5k mark each. Exceeding the budget would mean cutting back elsewhere. We still needed funds for necessities and expenses such as food and excursions. Our final agreed flight and accommodation costs came to just over £5.1k each. We were happy with this figure which included transfers and breakfast. We also budgeted £500 for cash which we divided up between the currencies of all the countries we visited. I changed my money at the money exchange kiosk in my local Tesco supermarket which made it very convenient for me.
Time
The time of the travel was crucial. It had to coincide with our birthday months. Mine was November and Mo’s was December. So, we were looking at a travel period in November and December, this meant traveling during the winter period. For some of our destinations this was in their cold season, whilst for other countries this was their hot (summer season). This made packing difficult as we had to take clothing for both seasons and we only had a single piece of luggage to be checked into the airplane. We traveled on 11 November and returned on 23 December
Destinations
Round the world trip means circling the globe, plane hopping. I imagined being able to say that I had travelled around the earth in a single trip and over a set number of weeks. We had to visit Rio de Janeiro, Great Reef Barrier, Sydney, Tokyo and Dubai. We wanted to include Perth (Australia) and Auckland (New Zealand) but that would have increased our budget significantly, so we decided to remove those destinations. Something for another time, we thought. Finally, we settled on the London- Dubai-Tokyo- Fiji- Sydney- Cairns- Melbourne- Rio- London which was travelling east with Dubai to be our first stop, then we decided to change it to having Dubai as our last stop so that the family can join us for a few days before returning to London. So, our implemented route was London-Rio - (Santiago Stop Over) – Sydney – Cairns – Melbourne - Nadi, Fiji- (Sydney Stop Over) – Tokyo - Dubai – London. That is a lot of airports and flights over fourty two days.
Accommodation
We are women of colour, over 50s, we wanted a four-star hotel in all our destinations. We believed we deserved a bit of comfort after we would have spent a major part sitting in an airplane. We were happy for Rachel to make the choice for us as she could use her experience of the country to choose hotel locations that will give us the maximum enjoyment for our relatively short time in each destination and the closeness to all amenities. Rachel gave us all we needed.
Experiences
I find it difficult to talk about myself or the things I have done. It is what people call sharing nowadays or giving testimonials. Lately, I have been reminiscing during these Covid times and revisiting my travels. On return from my RTW trip, I started writing a journal about the trip, but I did not quite finish it. I did not have the enthusiasm; I realise now that I was not in the correct frame of mind to do it. As time went by, I had given up thinking that I would not recall the trip, but far from it, I recall it very well. They were some of the most memorable times of my life and I now find it so easy to write about it. Mo flew into the UK from LA ahead of our departure date, she joined me at my home on the 10th of November. On November 11, 2015, we took a taxi to London Heathrow Terminal 5 to start our round the world trip of a lifetime
