Planning a long trip is no easy task. It takes hours and hours of research to figure out all the logistics from A to Z. In this post I will give you step by step instructions how to plan your multi-month trip!
1. set a budget
I personally really believe that defining a budget is the first and most essential part of any trip planning. Your available budget will define how long you can travel and might also influence your choice of travel destination.
To make this clear, a budget does not necessarily refer to all your available funds. You must decide for yourself how much money roughly you are willing to spend on your upcoming trip. Is it all your savings? 50%? That’s something only you can decide.
2. Find travel inspiration
If you’re going on a multi-month trip, you’ll likely want to visit several different countries or even continents. However, you also need to be aware that several months is most likely still not enough time to see the whole world.
Here’s what I like to do.
Make a list of all the places you would like to see in a lifetime. And I really mean in a LIFETIME. Hear me out.
I personally like to pin whatever cool place I hear about directly on Google Maps. See a beautiful beach on Instagram? Pin the location on Google Maps. See a beautiful waterfall on Tik Tok? Pin it on Google Maps. If you do this, over time you will have a collection of bucket list places ready at your fingertips.
I’d recommend taking some time to do this, maybe it will even take you a couple of weeks or months. Get some inspiration from social media, from blog posts, from friends, TV… wherever really! Just add all the random places you see to the map, wherever it may be! Don’t worry about that any planning just yet.
In the end, this approach will allow you to have a visual representation of where your points of interest lie.
3. Decide on a geographical region
If you’ve done the last step as I described, ideally you might already see a concentration of places that you are interested in one specific geographic region. This could be for example, Asia, or Europe, or maybe South America. If this is the case, this would make picking your destination quite easy, as it would be natural to go where there is most to see for you, right?
Even if you don’t see a clear focus, generally, I’d recommend staying in a similar geographical region during your trip. For example, USA + South America perhaps? Or Asia and Australia? Europe + Middle East/Northern Africa? This approach is both more environmentally and budget friendly. So you kill two birds with one stone 🙂
4. research daily costs
Now this is where your planning becomes research intensive. In order to see how far your budget will take you in your chosen destinations, you need to have a feeling for how expensive these countries you want to visit are for travelling.
There are two main things to consider here. First of all, the general cost of living in your destination of choice. For example, traveling in Switzerland or Norway will cost you a lot more than spending time in South America or Southeast Asia. With the same budget, you will be able to travel for longer in cheaper destinations compared to more expensive countries.
The second thing to consider is your travel style. Whether you will be staying in hostel dorms and cooking your own food, or choosing a resort and eating out all the time will greatly impact your daily budget.
Knowing this, I would highly recommend to roughly figure out what the expected daily expenses in your country of choice and for your travel style will be. For selected countries I have some guidelines on my blog here.
For additional info I would check booking.com to get a feel for what the average nightly rate might look like. For other costs (e.g. food & transportation) I’d recommend to simply do a Google search.
5. Define length of stay
Based on your budget and the estimated daily cost you’ll now be able to define how long you want to spend in each destination.
If you love planning like me, this is the time where you can go ham with the details! When I was planning my two-month trip, I knew it down to the day how many days I want to spend where! But that’s just me 🙂 If that’s not you, it’s enough if you just have a rough estimate of how long you plan to stay where, no details needed.
6. Figure out the best time to visit
Now that you know which destinations you are visiting and how much time you want to spend in each destination, it’s time to define WHEN you want to visit. Some things to consider are:
- High and low season: If you visit during high season expect to see more crowds and higher prices. Lower seasons might give you a quieter experience.
- Weather: One of the most important things to consider here are the opposite seasons in the Northern and Southern Hemisphere. If you’re visiting South America in June, for example, you’ll be visiting in winter. If you’re visiting countries around the equator, it’s important to consider that there are rainy and wet seasons. Monsoons, hurricanes, etc… make sure to check when those usually occur and try to avoid those months!
- Special events: If you want to experience special events, such as the carnival in Rio, or the Holi festival in India, you will have to orient your trips around these given dates. You might also want to avoid these locations for the exact same reasons, as always, it depends on your preferences. Either way, I’d recommend checking whether there are any major holidays during the time you plan on visiting.
7. Book your first (and last) flight
This is where things finally start to feel real!!! I would highly recommend to book at least the outward flight as soon as possible! We all know that booking tickets in advance is much cheaper than getting last minute flights, so just do it!
I recommend to use Google Flights for checking the ticket prices. There’s an option there to check what average prices are for that period, and you can see what day the flights are the cheapest within a given timeframe!
If you already know when you’re going to return and more importantly from where, then also go ahead and buy that ticket as well.
Otherwise, it’s ok to leave the return ticket open for the moment and see where the journey takes you 🙂
OPTIONAL steps
Book all accommodation
While booking everything in advance may take out some of the spontaneity and fun, there are several occasions where I do recommend to do this.
- Budget Just as with flights, hotel deals tend to be better if you book them in advance. If you want to save money, this might be a good option. Additionally, if you book in advance you have a lot more options usually than when looking for something last minute. The cheapest options might not be available anymore.
- High vs. low season: If you’re not very flexible on your travel route, you might want to book accommodation ahead if you are visiting super touristy places during high season. I’ve experienced that (affordable) accommodation sells out in an entire city, and you don’t want to be stuck without a place to sleep. So book ahead if this description fits your travel plans!
- Limited accommodation options: This is very specific. But for example certain national parks only have a very limited number of accommodation which sells out months and months in advance. If you want to stay there, you NEED to book ahead!!
Personally, I really like to use booking.com for all my accommodation reservations. I love the feature where it basically gives you a timeline of all your stays. This is very helpful in keeping track whether you might have missed or confused certain dates.
Book other transportation
If you still feel like planning, go ahead and book all the in between transportation ahead as well. This might be any domestic flights at your destination, train journeys, ferries, etc…
There are several pros to booking ahead. One, you will already have thought your route through from the comfort of your home. You won’t be stuck in a foreign country trying to figure out where to go or what to do next. You’ll already have everything sorted.
Additionally, anything you book ahead, at least in your head, will not affect your budget when you are on the road. Personally, I don’t have a very high credit card limit. That means, that anything I book ahead I can spread over different monthly invoices, which leaves me more available money on my card while I’m actually on the road.
Book tours / activities
Lastly, if there are certain tours that you want to join or activities that need to be booked in advance, do it! For example tickets to Machu Picchu need to be reserved in advance, tickets for certain museums, etc…
Booking tours in advance also gives you enough time to compare different options and I would recommend doing this especially if you are on a budget. If you book at the destination itself you might be overwhelmed and tempted to get on the first tour you find. I personally like to use GetYourGuide for booking my tours.
That’s it, now you have all your essentials planned and mostly booked for your BIG trip!! If you’re super obsessed (like me) and already so excited for everything you might already start looking at restaurant options as well hihi! There’s always more information you can gather beforehand, it will make you look forward to your trip even more!
Let me know in the comments what trip YOU are planning. I’d love to chat <3