It’s always nice to read about people spending 3 years travelling the world and experiencing the most incredible things. But if you have a full time job, studies or have other limitations, making time for travel can be hard. Here are our 7 tips and own experiences on how we have been able to get around the world and how we’re planning to travel on.
#1: Utilise long flight layovers
Tired of spending hours in the airport only to get to the next one? Connecting flights is a good way of seing new places without having too many expenses. When we travelled to Cuba in December 2015 we had to make connections in both London and Toronto. Neither of us had been in London at Christmas time before, and all of Canada was new to both of us. We could have spent 36 hours or so doing nothing but flying and airport transfers, behind exhausted when we arrived in Cuba. Instead we extended the layovers to around 18 hours both places and had time to see a bit of the cities as well as having a good night’s sleep. Of course you won’t have enough time to properly explore a place, but you do get a first impression, which is a good foundation to decide if you want to go back there later.
#2: Planning
“Everyone” have seen pictures of 42nd Street, Big Ben and Burg Al Arab. Visiting places like this, even for just a short time, is very exiting because you recognise the places in movies and pictures all the time later (“Hey, I’ve been there!”). Much can therefore be experienced in little time. But in order to make time for as much as possible, planning is a prerequisite. This might sound obvious, but we see so few people actually doing this. Usually, we print a map of the area we are going to visit, preferrably in a laaaaaarge format, and pin all places we wish to visit. After this we check how to get around as easy as possible, with bus, taxi, metro etc. For instance, we figured out that there were three areas in Dubai we wanted to visit last year. By planning well we spent the time experiencing all the places and attractions instead of travelling back and fourth all the time. We actually went as far as making a schedule down to the hour on what to do, but in return we managed to see more in an extended weekend than most people do in an entire week.
#3: Double leave around New Year
Most people working (in Norway) are limited to 5 weeks of leave per year. If you really want to travel around the world without applying for unpaid leave, winter time is perfect for this. You can spend your annual leave for this year, then spend the next year’s leave right after New Year’s and combine the two for a total of 10 weeks of leave. This makes it possible to travel from 25th of November 2016 to 5th of February 2017 by only using annual leave and public holidays. Just remember that doing so will leave you no more leave for two years …
#4: Two passports are better than one
OK, this one might only be applicable for Norwegians. Anyway:
Some countries requires visas, and you often have to send your passport to their embassy to get the visa application approved. If you do this a long time before travelling, you “lock” yourself to that passport and cannot replace it if if gets damaged etc. in the meantime, not to forget the time the passport will be in the hands of the embassies. Also, a stamp from Israel can prevent you from entering the UAE later on. This makes frequent travelling harder. The solution is to get multiple passports. It might sound a bit sketchy, but is actually 100 % legal and quite easy to obtain (again, in Norway, at least). It is called a duplicate passport and can be obtained by having your employer writing a letter stating that you travel a lot and therefore have the need for two passports; these requests usually gets approved. If you mainly travel for personal reasons, it might be a bit trickier, but if you state a good justification for your request, it might get approved as well. The process itself is just like applying for a regular passport and the duplicate passport looks just like a regular one, with the exception of the passport number and expiration date being different (these passports are only valid for two years)
#5 Carry on luggage
By skipping your check in luggage you can come later to the airport and leave sooner. It is also quicker to move around in general because you have less to carry. The movie Up in the Air has a quite funny scene about this, a movie I by the way recommend to watch.
#6: Visit smaller countries
When travelling through Europe, capital cities are often the most popular ones. This also means that you need to cross lots of borders to get there. If you travel to the smaller countries, the distance between the cities are smaller as well, and you spend your time visiting places instead of travelling to them. We visited Prague, Bratislava, Vienna and Sopron in an extended weekend last autumn. That being said, we wish we had more time in both Prague and Vienna, but we still got to see much more than we would have had time for if the distance between the cities were greater.
#7: Check other means of transport
Early 2015 we tried to go to Russia; in the end we gave up, due to the incredibly terrible visa application process, complex rules all that it takes to get there. Later on we realised that there are other ways of getting there than flying directly to your destination. For instance, if you fly to Tallinn or Helsinki, you can take the ferry from there to St. Petersburg. If you do this, and spend less than 72 hours in St. Petersburg and have a guided your (hop on/hop off bus qualifies as a guided tour!), then a visa is not required anymore (at least for Norwegian citizens). The same can be done by flying to Gdansk and taking the bus to Kaliningrad. You do need a visa for this, but the process is a lot easier than the visa for the rest of Russia.
