Visa Applications

Tourists [Enlarge & More]

What a palava it was getting an Indian visa in London. I better explain that I was born in England have a British passport and have lived here all my life so you would expect that I would be treated like a British Citizen, but no. The fact that I have Pakistani origins means they treat me differently, I have to prove that I am worthy of a visa by proving that I am employed and that I have money by providing 3 months of bank statements. The latter being an additional requirement to the last time I applied for one and hence I was not expecting it. It was only when I was speaking to the nice lady on the other side of the counter at the Indian Visa place in London that it dawned on me that I was not as prepared as I thought I was. She could not have been more helpful, however the fact that I did not have any bank statements on me meant that I was not going to get the visa. Thankfully a very very nice lady helped me out at a local branch of my bank and I returned with copies of my statements - at no extra charge. At the end of all of this, it still takes them 10 rather than the 3 days to process my application and I only get a 3 month visa not the standard 6. What's that all about!

While working out what visas we needed a simple internet search helped, a good place to start is here.

Planning Your Trip

First Destination[Enlarge & More]

I found when planning our trip and overall itinerary, that the easiest way to get started was to dive on in there and make a list of all the countries we wanted to go to. After doing this, we selected a few which we definitely wanted to do on this trip (over and above the others). Once we had this list, it was a matter of finding the right airline alliance in which we could incorporate as many of these destinations as possible.

There are two major airline alliances which you can use to book round-the-world tickets – Oneworld and StarAlliance. Each of these are an alliance of airlines which collaborate together to allow you or purchase a ticket which either gives you a certain number of stops on any of their airlines or a set number of miles you can fly (and as many flights as you can manage on their airlines within these parameters). Each of their websites have itinerary planners which let you connect flights and input dates for your travels, and I have to say that this was very useful in planning our stops, and getting a feel for where we could and could not go. Of the two, I have to say that I felt StarAlliance had the better planning tool.

One crucial part of the process for planning our itinerary was the involvement of the company Trailfinders, who will take a list of required destinations from you, and run them through their software which will find possible routes for you, and they’ll suggest a ticket for you that meets your requirements. The guy I spoke to at Trailfinders was extremely helpful in planning our trip – unfortunately, their commission rates were very high and in the end it was significantly cheaper for us to book directly with the airline than with Trailfinders. However, I would still recommend phoning Trailfinders to run through your itinerary – they really helped to firm things up.

In the end, we went with Oneworld. The reason behind this was that Easter Island was one of our required destinations and that it could only be accessed using a Oneworld airline (Lan Chile). StarAlliance did have an excellent range of destinations, but did not suit our purposes as it did not include Easter Island. Thanks to Trailfinders, booking the ticket myself was much easier as I knew the linking flights which were required. I also managed to get a 10% discount on the overall tickets, as Oneworld were doing a promotion due to their 10 year anniversary. Overall, my advice would be to get input from a company such as Trailfinders, but at the same time not to be afraid of booking the ticket yourself and doing your own investigations – we saved a significant amount of money by booking directly with Oneworld.

60 Working days left

Where I work [Enlarge & More]

There are about 60 working days to go before we are off. It's starting to dawn on me that it is actually happening.  I've got a load of questions swimming around in my head.

Will we have enough money for the 12 months?
What happens if I don't get my flat rented out?
How will I store all my belongings?

I know each one of these questions and more will get answered in the weeks to come but at the moment it all seems a little daunting.

Useful Links

These are the references used for planning the trip so far, how useful they are is still to be seen. I'll add more as and when.

Books:
Gap year for grown ups by Susan Griffith for good advise on getting started

Travel Sites:
Oneworld for round the world journey planner and tickets
Traillfinders for friendly advice and tickets

Photography:
Flickr to store all you travel pictures and get inspiration

Career Break

Swindon [Enlarge & More]

Today I had a 12 month Career Break agreed from work. This means I can go travelling and when I get back I can go back to work at my current terms and conditions - as long as there is a suitable job of course. I'm going to start telling my Colleagues from tomorrow, I'm a little nervous but hugely excited at getting it agreed.

Career Break Policies are offered by many Employers it's a chance for you to take some time off unpaid, without in my case impacting the benefits I've gained over my 12 years working there and for them to retain good employees when they are ready to return. My work offers breaks form 1 to 5 years, others I'm sure do the same.