Time to prepare for your trip and start smiling...

Picture right - The banks of the Amazon River (Rio Solimoes), Manaus, Brazil.

Preparations

Now you are all booked it's time to start preparing to leave home.

Moving out
Primary concerns are saving as much money between now and leaving as possible. Sell anything you own that will depreciate whilst away, e.g. the car. Other major concerns are where you are living. Obviously if you've booked your ticket I'm sure you've thought about that one already but preparations have to be made. If you are homeowner, you will need a reliable tenant and backup cash for the mortgage or any other house problems whilst you're away, you can guarantee something expensive will happen whilst away such as the boiler will blowing up! Something I have given thought to on planning my second trip now I'm a homeowner is to get a mortgage policy next time that allows a mortgage break for a year, effectively adding one more year to the mortgage terms. This way you can break form your mortgage go for a year, rent it out and either have additional spending money or a bit of cash on return to to help pay the mortgage and live on until you find work here again. That's assuming you return! Of course if you are renting you need to give enough notice to move out without upsetting the landlord and losing your deposit. Bear in mind that most letting agents charge an admin fee on leaving. Ours was about £70.

Leaving work
Work is another important factor. Try not to burn your bridges. You may dislike your job but it's bringing you the money in to save for your trip and your employer may let you have a career break allowing you to return to your duties after your extended leave. Trust me you'll be totally broke on return and work will be much appreciated. However, on the other hand if you are escaping to think about your life and a career change may be on the agenda, now's a good time. The trip will allow you time to think about what you want to do with your life, if you put your mind to it that is! Remember it may be worth leaving a position open for your return just for peace of mind, of course you don't have to return to it if you decide to do something else.

Health
So they are the major things, now for the more detailed things. Firstly lets talk about health. Your health is the most important thing and being as fit as you can get before you leave is one thing but it's not going to stop malaria or rabies for example. Fitness will help you fight disease but protecting yourself before you leave is important. A trip to your GP or local travel clinic is advised to discuss your destinations and what diseases you will vaccinating against whether it be by injection or orally. Some are free and some you will have to pay for. The most likely jabs you'll have to endure are Hepatitis A & B, Tetanus, Typhoid and Tuberculosis. You may need to take an oral vaccination against Polio. You may have to have other jabs to protect you against more tropical diseases such as Yellow Fever, Japanese Encephalitis & Rabies. You must also consider the biggest killer, Malaria, especially if traveling to Africa or the Amazon basin. There are many types of tablets for malaria and some need to be taken daily, weekly and twice a day. We personally opted for a relatively new drug at the time called Malarone. It was one tablet a day and to be honest didn't have any side affects that I could put my finger on. A few vivid dreams was about it. The best thing is to talk to a specialist who knows the most effective drug for the endemic area you are visiting. Be prepared for an adventurous RTW trip to cost you about £250 each in vaccinations!

Money
The next thing on the list is money again. We saved hard before going away and managed to get right through our trip without having to work, although I have to admit we borrowed about £2000 towards the end as Japan was a little more expensive than originally anticipated! In total our RTW trip cost us £25000 for a period of 10 months and that was really not holding back to much on the fun side of things (See about our RTW trip). This cost included all of the clothes in our backpacks, the backpacks themselves, all of the vaccinations for both of us, both lots of flights adding up to £5544 and 10 months living costs including food, accommodation, internal flights, overland journeys, trips, SCUBA diving, adrenaline sports and everything else. Of course you can do things on a tighter budget, if this is the case then maybe buy a book about traveling on a shoestring. I believe the Rough Guide and Lonely Planet have them. The other alternative of course is to do casual work whilst away. You can plan this too. One of my friends actually works for an international company and did a stint working for the same company in Sydney for a while to top up the funds and gain a bit more experience. Also if you are planning visiting friends or family around the globe then see if they can sort something for you. If not it'll be easy enough as long as you don't mind doing anything! You are better off however, finding the work in a country with a strong currency, or else money saved will be worthless in the developed world.

Carrying Money
You are probably planning to go to many different countries that each have their own currency. Well don't worry too much, there are plenty of ways to carry money. The easiest and best way is the same as at home. Carry your credit card and debit card (Maybe one in your pocket and one in a backpack). You will find ATM's almost everywhere that will accept a card with either visa, cirrus, maestro logos on them. Secondly, if you're are going really remote it's definitely worth carrying either US dollars in cash and taking a few travelers cheques too. Remember you can get the money back on the cheques lost or stolen but make sure someone at home has written down the id numbers of the cheques and that you keep a note separately of the id numbers on the ones you spend. My best advice on carrying cash is don't carry too much on you, separate the rest in different compartments in you and your travel buddies backpacks and carry a 'muggers wallet' with a load of crappy cards and a little cash to hand over to an opportunist thief that may have a knife! You can buy money belts which stops being pick pocketed so easily but most muggers are on to that one!

What to pack
Finally, what to pack! Well I'm not going to re-invent the wheel so on this one I'll send you this site for advice. Travel Independent is a developed site and is very comprehensive in it's entirety. It covers everything on this site and more. This site is simply a quick guide to getting ready to go simply from our own real experiences. However, on this page you can find out exactly what we had in our backpacks. This may help out.

So you should now be set to leave home.