How to Take a Flight Around the World or to Take a Walking Tour Through Your Favorite Country

I remember when I was growing up, true to my Cherokee heritage, I used to fantasize about tracing the local creek back to its source, eating off the land, by hiking, camping and canoeing up the creek.

Another favorite day dream of mine when I first heard about Round the World Tickets, was taking a flight around the world and stopping at different places and exploring.

Even though I never had the time to trace that creek, I have hiked and camped in the wilderness and walked many miles in domestic as well global urban settings. And though I've also not done that around the world flight, I have flown to many parts of this country and Europe and I'm planning more destinations.

I decided to write an article about doing that kind of off-the-grid travel for those of you who have the time to do such a thing.

One of the offerings listed involves a specific company. The other involves a specific part of the travel industry:

Country Walkers:

The first option is termed as "world-wide active travel". This is a tour company which offers different walking or hiking trips with experienced guides or as self-guided with their instructions and reservations. You can choose from their selection of available tours or you can request a custom designed private trip. Country Walkers offers active vacations which include local accommodations, cultural experiences and dining experiences.

With the use of local guides you can explore the world in any of 36 countries, which are located on every continent including Antarctica.

Round the World Tickets:

It can be complicated and frustrating to go to the major airlines just to get help with a normal reservation that is outside of their regularly published fares. So imagine going to them about a series of trips where you want to inquire about their RTW, or Round the World Ticket offerings unless you have specific destinations in mind with clear time frames, so that they can give you a quote.

You can either check out your favorite airline websites and do all of the research yourself or you can check out websites which specialize in putting together these kinds of itineraries.

There are several websites who offer this specialized service:

Airtreks:

This website offers help with customizing your round the world trip. They are available to help with airfare, lodging, travel by car or train, tours and other services. Their help doesn't stop with the issuing of your reservations. It extends throughout the trip. They work with you to work in the most flexibility and free stopovers that they can get for your trip.

Not only are you given a personal counselor to walk you through all stages of your trip, the website has plenty of links to pages of advice on everything you need to consider and can expect in a round the world trip.

Justfares:

This website also specializes in RTW or multi-country itineraries. They offer adventure tours and trips, group airfares, really cheap fares for really long distance trips, international rail passes, specialized excursions, sales on travel gear all with personalized help.

Air Brokers International:

This website deals in multi-trip excursions as well as RTW trips, although they do have some exceptions. They do not handle travel on the American continent, nor do they offer economy tickets to Europe. They only deal in business class tickets to Europe.

This site specializes in RTW trips and Circle the Pacific trips. They offer personalized trips. This website also has a very helpful page on the information you need to know before you go on your trip.

For those who choose to go through a specific airline or alliance on your own, there are also several things that you need to take into consideration when you plan your RTW trip, especially if you're not going though an agency:

1. Do you want to plan your trip as you go, reserving and changing tickets as you go or do you want to plan your trip out before you go and have everything already reserved?

2. Also, consider that some destinations would require a firm reservation into and out of the country due to visa requirements among other things. You need to know the specific requirements of the particular fare that you've chosen. Because some are more flexible than others.

3. Which direction is your particular RTW itinerary going in? They usually go in one direction, either westerly or easterly with little or no backtracking.

4. What kind of time-frame are you looking at to complete the trip in? Many of the RTW trips require a minimum of ten days out and a maximum of twelve months. Even though your particular trip may offer quite a few stops, if you have a limited amount of time, you need to consider the time spent in each destination versus how many stops you can fit in to the itinerary to get your money's worth.

5. What does the particular program you're looking at consider to be a stop? For some travel can be considered a stop.

There are also other things to take into consideration that are specific for an RTW routed through the airlines or an alliance of airlines:

1. Your trip needs to to be reserved at least seven days in advance. It will cost you to make any changes in your itinerary. Depending upon the alliance, one airline to nineteen different companies participate in the program. Most of the programs are based on how many miles you're allowed to travel for the quoted price.

2. There are a specific number of stops allowed ranging from five stops to twenty. Depending upon the program you go with, backtracking is allowed only within the same continent or only to a new destination and some only allow crossing the Pacific and the Atlantic only one time each.

3. The prices tend to be similar year round and the coach prices can vary from $2500 to $5500 depending upon the time involved, number of destinations and especially upon which airlines you fly with. The prices are higher for both travel in business or first class. Depending upon the age, child and infant prices can be 75% to 10% of
the adult fare.

For more in depth advise on this go to The Travel Insider.

Sources:

http://www.thetravelinsider.info/howtobookbuy/roundtheworldtickets2.htm

http://www.thetravelinsider.info/howtobookbuy/rtwairfarespart3.htm

http://www.thetravelinsider.info/howtobookbuy/rtwairfarespart4.htm

http://www.thetravelinsider.info/howtobookbuy/rtwfaretable.htm

http://www.airtreks.com/

http://www.justfares.com

http://www.airbrokers.com