A fantastic round the world adventure can often be as much about the when as the where. Freezing your proverbials off in northern China or southern Patagonia might make for an excellent anecdote in retrospect, but it probably won’t be quite as enjoyable at the time. Similarly, you probably don’t want to be dodging hurricanes in Mexico or continually lashed by monsoons in South-East Asia.

You can try and pretend otherwise, but frankly there’s no way of making a long flight to the other side of the world enjoyable. Unless you’re sat at the front of the plane bathing in a pile of your own £50 notes, then you’re likely to be cramped up in a small seat for longer than you’d really like to be. That said, it is possible to alleviate some of the misery, make the journey more tolerable and fight the jetlag...

The UNESCO World Heritage list can often be used as a lazy tickbox list by travellers – just because something’s on the list doesn’t necessarily mean it’s worth visiting. But while there are plenty of obvious contenders – such as the Grand Canyon, the Great Barrier Reef and the Great Wall of China – a few World Heritage sites are less well known. And these are some of the most obscure ones that are perhaps worth making a visit to...

David Whitley picks out some of the best wine regions that can be built into a Round The World ticket, and offers some wine tourism tips.

The humble grape can do magical things when treated right, and with many New World wine regions easily built into a Round The World ticket, there’s a chance to go and visit the people who get it very right indeed. Over the last couple of decades, wine touring has gone from being seen as the preserve of the specialists to big business. You don’t have to be able to scribble down detailed tasting notes to be able to enjoy a trip round the wineries – many cater for the clueless-but-interested. If you can learn a little whilst tasting, then great, but if not, there’s no crime in just going along for the ride and enjoying the tipples.

Don’t want to get caught by the tourist traps? Well, David Whitley has a few Aussie alternatives that are probably a better bet for what you’re seeking.

Rainbow Beach

Alternative to? Hervey Bay

Hervey Bay is seen as the main jumping off point for Fraser Island trips, and has turned into something of a backpacker party capital as a result. That’s great if you want to drink cheap lager in backpacker bars to the tune of the Black Eyed Peas, but Hervey Bay isn’t exactly blessed with bags of charm. The mistake, of course, is to believe that the only way of getting to Fraser Island is via Hervey Bay. It isn’t. In fact, it’s not even the quickest way. The ferry crossing from Rainbow Beach is much less time-consuming, and Rainbow Beach is arguably a much better jumping-off point for Fraser. To call it a town would be pushing things a little too far, but it’s a laid back little settlement surrounded by colourful sand dunes, and feels like a much nicer spot to kick back in.

If you’re going away for a long time, there’s a definite art to packing. Deciding what to take with you and how best to fit it all in becomes rather important, and while there’s no ‘right’ way of doing it, there are certainly plenty of wrong ways.

Pick the right bags

The first thing to do before getting any items of clothing ready is to pick the bag or bags they’re going to go into. The backpack versus suitcase debate will no doubt rumble on for centuries, but let’s just say that a backpack is a darned sight easier to carry around when you’re trudging a couple of kilometres between bus station and accommodation. That said, it’s a lot easier to keep things neat in a suitcase.

If you’re going away on a big trip, one of the greatest fears (for your parents if not yourself) is how safe you’re going to be. Unfortunately, you can never guarantee that everything will run smoothly. Muggers strike in unexpected areas, buses crash and earthquakes are largely unpredictable. But the chances of misfortune striking you are greatly reduced if you take a few simple precautions and apply common sense. Here’s a ten step plan for cutting the risks.

Unfortunately, your flight ticket isn’t the only thing you’re going to have to fork out for if you are planning a round the world adventure. You’d better make room in your budget for the sort of this little lot, too...

Getting to and from the airport

Your adventure starts at the airport, but you’ve got to get to the airport first. And given the delightful state of the British public transport system, that can be rather expensive. If you’re going for a long time, driving there and leaving the car in the long term car park is prohibitively expensive, whilst train tickets bought on the day can be ludicrously overpriced. The best bet is to either cajole someone into giving you a lift, taking the tube (if you live in London) or buying your train tickets at least three weeks in advance (if you live elsewhere). Also bear in mind that if your flight leaves in the morning, you may need to get an airport hotel the night before.

Want to veer away from the obvious tourist trail? Well, here are some options for doing things differently in ten cities that are popular on round-the-world tickets.

One of the joys of a round the world trip is meeting new people, and occasionally joining forces with them on the journey. But there are some people you most definitely don’t want to tag along with – and here are ten types you should probably be running a mile from...


The Tightwad

He’ll happily waste half a day, traipsing around to save the equivalent of a pound, and he’ll negotiate the price on absolutely everything – even if it means eating into valuable time in which you could be doing something much more interesting. He gets aggressive with anyone he feels isn’t giving him the rock bottom local price on everything, rules out anything that looks fun but is ‘too expensive’ and will force you into hours of circuitous public transport rather than cutting the time spent by two-thirds in exchange for a couple of extra coins in a taxi.

What food-lovers can expect on a round the world adventure.

Part of the joy of travelling around the world is trying something new, and that most certainly applies to food. Many key hotspots on round-the-world routes are glorious places in which to pig out, tasting some of the best dishes and ingredients imaginable. So, if you like you eating, here’s where you can indulge...

One of the great joys of heading off around the world is seeing those that you share it with. And whether it’s penguins in New Zealand, polar bears in Canada or the safari stalwarts in Africa, it’s possible to take in plenty of jaw-dropping animal encounters on a round-the-world trip. Here are just ten options for wildlife wonders...

Kangaroos and koalas

Australia’s weird, unique wildlife is one of the country’s main draw cards for international visitors – even if Australians do get baffled by the expectation that you’ll see kangaroos hopping around the streets of Sydney and Melbourne. There are numerous good places to see them in the wild (and plenty of bad ones too if you happen to be driving through an avalanche of the hopping menaces at dawn or dusk). The Grampians in Victoria is teeming with them – particularly the tourist hub of Halls Gap – while just about any rural golf course will be overrun.

For koalas, try Port Macquarie on the New South Wales coast or Magnetic Island in Queensland. Alternatively, the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary in Brisbane allows you to hold a koala and hand-feed a kangaroo.

A round the world trip is the chance of a lifetime for many travellers. And if you’re going to take the plunge for such a holiday, then you may as well push yourself further to take on something you’ve never tried before. And there’s more than one way to get the heart going and the adrenalin pumping – as these potential adventures on popular RTW routes show...

For many people heading out on a round-the-world adventure, budget requirements mean that spending every night in a lavish hotel is out of the question. Frankly, unless you’ve got the sort of inheritance that allows you to splash the cash at will, then there’s a high chance that a significant amount of time will be spent sleeping in hostels. Thankfully, the old image of hostels – Spartan rooms full of Austrian hikers, 9pm curfews and an almost monastic code of miserable silence – are long out of date. But hostels do require some adjusting to and modification of behaviours and routines.

Head to the pub

There’s no point in going into the detail before you’ve got the juices flowing. And the best place to get excitable about an impending round the world adventure is the pub, preferably aided by a gaggle of mates. Get a few drinks, bat a few ideas around, compare war stories from trips past, drool over dream destinations and pick up top tips about life on the road.

One year to six months out

Start having a think about where you’d like to go. Start tapping up your friends for ideas and utilise the internet for inspiration. Put potential destinations in a rough geographical order, check out weather patterns, get ideas of what you want to do where and generally get rather excited about the whole thing.

Five to six months out

• Check how long your passport is valid for. As a general rule, you need to have a spare six months available from the date you come back. So, if yours expires in the next two years, get down to a photo booth, fill in the forms and send off for a new one.
• Give your friendly expert travel agent a call to get a rough idea of how suitable your dream itinerary is, and get a rough idea on costing. Just about every route can theoretically be done, but some are a lot cheaper than others. For example, if you want to island hop through the South Pacific, it will almost certainly work out a lot less expensive if you combine Samoa and Tonga rather than Samoa and Tahiti. Once you’ve got a rough idea of what you can and can’t do for the price, you can fine-tune your plans.

Australia’s days as a cheap destination are well and truly over (well, for the moment at least). The glory days of getting three Australian dollars to the pound faded into the distance long ago. But this doesn’t mean that you have to feel priced out of visiting Australia – it’s simply a case of spending your money smarter. And by utilising some of the following tips, you can make your budget extend a lot further...

Luther Vandross and Janet Jackson may have reckoned that the best things in life are free, but that’s because they’re famous and generally don’t have to pay for stuff. Unfortunately, on a round the world adventure, you will have to shell out some money to experience a lot of what will become the highlights. However, that’s not to say that the budget-conscious can’t enjoy some of the key RTW destinations on the cheap. Most major cities have a host of attractions you can enjoy without spending a penny/ cent/ baht – and these are just some of them...