This page and its links are dedicated to helping you make the final step and booking the trip. Thers no going back from here!

Picture right - Milford Sounds, South Island, New Zealand.

Booking your round the world trip

O.k. so you've planned your route, sorted your timescales, worked out your budgets, forecasted your trip with the seasons in mind, thought about specific events around the globe e.g. Rio Carnival, Laos New Year in Northern Laos, Whale shark season off the coast of Western Australia etc. and your ready to book. There's no turning back now then, you are on your way to having a lifetime of experiences on a RTW trip!

Cool! Go ahead and book it, take your time when talking to the travel advisor again, they may introduce ideas that are useful and maybe you hadn't thought of. Remember you are about to fork out a lot of money and this advisor is going to pocket a commission, get your monies worth.  

Once they have sold you the tickets you're on your own, they generally won't want to know you afterwards unless you are simply asking for information about your already booked tickets! However, it is easy to change dates and times of any flights from most travel shops around the world for a small fee or free directly with the airline carrier. I did actually experience once a time and date change mistake on a ticket through a small travel shop in Thailand and they didn't change the dates for a certain flight, the carrier on our arrival still put us on a plane without a problem even though the flight we were booked on was a month before. Tickets can only be booked up to a year in the future so if your booking your flights e.g. 6 months before you go they will have to put in dummy dates for the last 6 months of your trip if you were heading off for a year. You can of course change all of this before leaving and whilst traveling.

All sounds a bit tiring doesn't it and it doesn't get easier from here on in either. My suggestions now are to get up the gym and get as fit as you can before leaving, because I promise you will want to be fit to fight foreign bugs, cope with disgusting food and climb mountains! It will be a challenging year, full of fun and once you have returned after a couple of weeks I promise you'll want to do it all over again. So now is the time to prepare for your first round the world trip.

Good Luck.