Why Travel Around the World for Ten Months? 

I actually did not give this question much thought in November or December of 1977 when the possibility of making this trip came up through pure intervention of the Goddess of Synchronicity.  I was drinking in a bar in my hometown of Watertown, South Dakota, when I ran into an old neighbor, Tim Engelhart.  When I asked what he had been up to, he said, “I just finished a trip around the world.”  During a single evening of drinking and then discussion at Tim’s apartment reviewing the planning notes for his recently completed trip around the world, I decided I was going to throw myself into that experience.  I took to heart Tim’s wise words that “there are only three things in a man’s life that limits his ability to travel extensively and cheaply—having a career, a spouse, and/or a mortgage”.  He then opened my eyes when he said, “Jon, you are in that fortunate sweet spot where you don’t have any of those three limiters so you will be able to travel on the cheap around the world.”  He lent me his copy of the recently written “Across Asia on the Cheap” by Tony and Maureen Wheeler which was the “bible” for travelers going across Asia and was the first publication of what would become the Lonely Planet Press series of travel books that I use to this day.  Within days, I decided to give notice of resignation from my position on the staff of a US Congressman I had worked on for nearly two years.

The fact is that I wanted a break from the life I had lived for 23 years.  I was a child of the 1960’s and early 1970’s.  Most of us were touched by the “Beat” and the “Hippie” philosophies to question authority and to question the direction of society. I went through the usual encounters with political radicalism, drugs, alternative spirituality, and pop culture.  The Beatles famously traveled to Rishikesh in northern India in 1968 to train in Transcendental Meditation (TM) from Maharishi Mahesh Yogi–I trained in TM in 1973 in the US. I felt my education and the structure of society was a system designed not to enlighten individuals but to make “useful and busy” citizens of them.  Working on the US Congressional Staff for 1 ½ years after college gave me broad exposure to the political, business, and moral character of society.  Managing a US Senate campaign and attending the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee School gave me intimate exposure to the US political process and all its shallow, unhinged lack of values or purpose.  There is an old saying that “familiarity breeds contempt” and I had become very cynical and focused on all of the greed, selfishness, and manipulation I saw in our government, religious institutions and society.  I didn’t know who I was or my purpose in life.  I had experienced relatively high ego-pleasing “achievements” in terms of academics (graduated Summa cum Laude from college), recognitions, honors, and employment plus I enjoyed some wonderful friends including several very meaningful and extended romantic relationships.  Nevertheless, I was binge drinking more frequently and increasingly using drugs to numb the pain I felt and to briefly escape my darker thoughts.  In short, I wanted “out” and was very open to the attraction of “a year away” seeking enlightenment, truth, and meaning or, at least, escape and good hashish. 

Spiritual Seekers, Adventurers, Bohemian Hash-heads, and Smugglers

As I read more about the Hippie Trail, it seemed to attract at least four types of travelers: spiritual seekers, adventurers, bohemian hash-heads, and drug smugglers. I was definitely a “spiritual seeker-adventurer” with bohemian tendencies but my drug use was in gradual decline and I had no interest in drug smuggling.

National Geographic Magazines: One of the best planning tools I used was to review and to read relevant articles from every issue of the National Geographic Magazine from the 1950s to the 1970s. My parents kept an archive of National Geographic Magazines in bookcases in their basement. In the month after I resigned from my job and before my departure, I read National Geographic articles about everywhere along my potential path. Among the destinations I choose largely through National Geographic reading were Russia, Scotland, the Swiss Alps, Sicily and the Island of Ustica, and Yugoslavia (which I later dropped from my plans), Afghanistan, Nepal, and Phuket Island in Thailand. Australia and New Zealand were also on my list but ended up not being within my budget.

Money:  It would be a gross overstatement to say I actually did any responsible financial planning for the trip.  Through the generosity of my loving parents, I was fortunate not to have college debt.  Through another striking example of the Goddess of Synchronicity guiding my life, I ended up with a relatively high paying job on the staff of a U.S. Congressman (I didn’t apply for a job but he happened to be in the audience of my college graduation and was impressed with my academic honors so he sent me a letter a week later offering me a position).  I had not really saved much money, but was in a position to give a month’s notice to my employer and to my landlord and then bank my final pay checks plus a payout of my government pension account. 

I roughed out that I might have $6,000 net for the trip and then penciled out a few assumptions mixed with a lot of rationalization to conclude that “I can do this.”  Optimism runs deep for most of us who have the “Travelin’ Jones”. My key planning assumptions were roughly as follows:

Key Planning Assumptions to Travel Cheap and to Travel for a Long Time

1. The major uncontrollable expense was transportation.  I quickly determined that I just needed to fly across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans but otherwise could go around the world “overland on the cheap”.  The relatively new Freddie Laker Skytrain airline service between New York City and London was just a flat rate of $197 one way, so that took care of the Atlantic.  Pacific flights were much more variable and I recall thinking, “Hell, once I am in Thailand or Malaysia, I’ll be able to figure out some way to get home, so I don’t need to plan that in advance.”  I also greatly overrated my financial discipline and thought I could just limit expenses along the way or cut the trip short once I only had enough money for a flight home.  Lastly, while my parents strongly opposed bailing out children financially, my mother was a soft touch and the “Bank of Dad” had a big heart even though bailouts came with a serious “this is the last time” lecture!
   
2. Overland travel was much cheaper than air travel.  It became obvious to me that traveling overland was much less expensive and had a lot of other advantages over the “Around the World” airplane tickets that Pan American Airways sold at the time.  My neighbor had used an “Around the World” ticket so I knew what it cost and quickly determined that I couldn’t afford it.  Instead, I roughed out the cost of trains in Europe for hypothetical rough itineraries and then settled on purchasing a 3-Month, First Class Eurail ticket that covered virtually all rail routes in Western Europe other than the UK which involved a separate Britrail card. 
   
   It also became clear to me that traveling overland in Europe and especially across Asia was simply a much better way to go on so many fronts.  It was far less expensive and much more convenient.  Getting to and from major airports is actually quite expensive and time-consuming in various cities compared to “catching a train or a bus”.  Ground transport begins and ends in the heart of everywhere you go—the rail/bus stations are usually next to each other right in the center of the historical district of every city and very close to some of the cheapest lodging.  As for Asia, you inherently “fly over” most of what is interesting if you rely on air travel only.  One can use the airport hub cities as jumping off points for ground excursions to various historical, geographic, religious and other sites, but that is expensive and seemed to unnecessarily complicate the planning from my perspective.
   
3. A key planning assumption was that “Europe is a lot more expensive than Asia, so just make sure to transition to the Asia overland portion of the journey with enough funds.”  Estimating expenses for Europe was nearly impossible given the huge variation in expense between northern and southern Europe, between western and eastern Europe, and between urban and rural areas.  Also, I didn’t really have any particular date that I had to return—I could travel for as long as the money held out.  I quickly settled on “Let’s Go Europe” as the “go to” backpacker’s guide to the cheapest way to see the best of Europe—history, culture, arts, geography, and counter-culture.  Frommer’s Guides had recently released “Europe on Ten Dollars Per Day” which replaced their earlier “Europe on Five Dollars Per Day” due to the currency crisis that devalued the US Dollar in the late 1970’s.  Frommer’s book was geared to traditional travelers rather than to students backpacking on the cheap.   Let’s Go Europe contained some rough expense planning guidelines but actual expense would ultimately depend upon how I traveled, where I traveled, and how long I traveled. 
   
   I ultimately made the macro decision that I would travel in Europe as long as I could until I had spent everything except the amount I needed for the Asia overland portion of the trip.  It was fairly easy to roughly estimate and rationalize how little money was needed for the Asia portion of the trip—about $1,700 assuming I could sell my camera in Asia to generate a few hundred dollars more.  The “Magic Bus Service” offered a single bus ticket for $100 that permitted passengers to travel all of the way from Athens, Greece to Delhi, India or Kathmandu, Nepal.  Travelers were able to get off the bus at each of the major cities en route to take side trips and then just come back to that major city to catch the next “Magic Bus” which generally came through at least weekly though they were notoriously unreliable (but hanging out for a few days in those exotic places waiting for the bus was often some of the most enjoyable time overlanders had—just “watching and listening” was often magical and “just watching and listening with great hashish” was even more magical!  Beyond transportation, the major expense of overland travel across Asia is room and board.  “Across Asia on the Cheap” provided a lot of specific recommendations and cost estimates for all of the major sites that backpackers tended to visit both on the Hippie Trail and on the primary side-trips and experiences.  With a little rationalization, I was able to conclude that I could travel Asia on $1.50 to $2 per day plus transportation.  Surprisingly, that was accurate for many parts of the Asia trip—really everywhere other than the urban centers.  The counter-culture guides all emphasized that being present in a place by “listening and watching” is a lot cheaper than paying to “do and to be entertained”. 
   
   Fundamentally, I simply rationalized that “once I make it half way around the world, I will have to figure out a way to get back” so I didn’t really “run the numbers” very precisely.  In fact, I originally concluded that I would have plenty of funds to visit Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand before my return—I ran out of money so those four destinations remain on my shrinking “bucket list” as I write this forty-seven years later.  I also let myself run out of time as I felt a strong traditional pull to start law school in September, 1979 and the application process required detailed essays and submissions in early 1979.  Thus, Christmas of 1978 eventually became my target return date.
   
4. Logistics: The logistics for ten months of travel consisted of documentation, gear, visas, transportation tickets, carrying enough money, and keeping documents/money secure. I got a new passport, updated my vaccinations and related documents, obtained an International Driver License, and, through a scam, obtained false documentation that I was a student at the University of South Dakota in 1978 (a school I never attended for a minute) and used that documentation to obtain the invaluable International Student Card and a Youth Hostel membership.
   
   

Route Planning

In short, I first thought about a trip around the world and definitely resolved that I was going to make that trip in the course of a single evening of drinking in late 1977—the Goddess of Synchronicity has touched my life many times but this was a biggie!  Within days, I decided when to give notice to my employer and my landlord and set a target date for departure.  I don’t honestly recall ever having any second thoughts about my decision though I certainly talked through lots of “ya, butts” and “what abouts” raised by my parents, my girlfriend, and others.  Fortunately, many of my college friends were counterculture bohemian folks who thought this trip sounded like an important and very natural thing for me to attempt. 

I focused my planning in several major buckets:

1. Weather: I had to familiarize myself with the realities of European winter weather in terms of both my initial gear (I needed hiking boots, a down jacket, basic winter gear, and a sleeping bag) and in terms of my accommodations (I would need to be indoors vs. camping and living cheaply meant dormitory rooms in Youth Hostels vs private hotel rooms). 
   
   
2. Lodging Expense:  I started checking with everyone I knew on leads to their family or friends who lived in Europe that I might crash with for free from time to time.  I became a “professional mooch” which ultimately resulted in free places for me to stay fairly long-term in London, Norway, and Italy.  More than anything, the generosity of others (or, at least, their willingness to tolerate a mooch) made my trip financially possible.  It also proved to be a great lesson in life to learn to accept the generosity of others as the reciprocal to sharing lovingkindness. 
   
   
3. Whether to try and “See it All” or to Focus on “Seeing it Well”.  I was fortunate in that our family had taken a classic “It’s Tuesday so it must be Belgium” Grand Bus Tour through American Express in 1971 that stopped in nearly every country in Western Europe and we visited many of the “top tourist attractions”.  That Grand Tour allowed me to “check off” many urban/tourist destinations and sites from my itinerary since I had “done that, been there”.  It also helped me realize that “seeing it well” would be the most satisfying approach to my journey even though I would need to focus in on a smaller number of destinations.  In hindsight, that was invaluable as “seeing it well” is much cheaper than “seeing everything” and it gives a traveler more flexibility to move between major destinations of focus during “peak time”.
   
   
4. Where to start.  The Freddie Laker Skytrain airline only offered service to from JFK in New York to London, so New York and London became my starting points.  Based on weather and the desire to start experiencing non-English culture, I vaguely planned to cross the English Channel and begin my European adventure in Bruges, Belgium because “Let’s Go Europe” described it as the “Venice of the North”, a home of classic art galleries and architecture, and the location of the “Snuffle Sleep-in” Youth Hostel that not only sounded inexpensive and really cool but had its own bar!  Forty-seven years later, Bruges remains in the top five of all the places I have visited in a lifetime of world travel.  Once again, the Goddess of Synchronicity touched my itinerary and my life.