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A journey like this - covering 4 years and nearly 30 countries - should be well prepared! Firstly, the vehicle you travel with should be fit for the trip: in our case, we have not only had to build the interior of our camper to suit our trip but also had to build in extra suspensions, fortified shock absorbers, proper security measures, etc. The measures we took to adjust the camper for our travels can be found under the chapter The vehicle.

Secondly, you should know everything you need to know about the countries you are about to visit: which countries require a visum, where can you apply for visa, which rules apply in which countries, what cultural differences will you have to deal with etc. The information we collected about the countries we will be visiting is stored under Red tape.

Thirdly, you will have to have a thorough medical preparation: start getting your vaccinations in time à i.e. visit a clinic for tropical diseases about one year in advance! We chose to visit a clinic for tropical diseases instead of going to our GP, since there they should have the most up-to-date information and can advise you which medication to use for which tropical disease. Besides getting the right vaccinations, we also got some valuable advise for our travel pharmacy there. More information can be found under Health.

preparing Finally, you should be well prepared for some unexpected situations that await you during the trip. We have done a anti-skid course at the German automobile association (the German equivalent of the A.A.) and a four-day first aid course for travellers at the Johanniter (similar to the Red Cross).

Ah, and of course you should start saving money in time: a journey like this is far from cheap: we had to save for about two years to fund it.

All in all we have been preparing the trip for about one year (two years if you include the time we needed to build the camper). The first 9 months of that, however, we have still been at work, so we could only prepare during the weekends and the holidays. It was only during the last two to three months that we were able to use all our time to prepare.

On this site, we have tried to summarize the results of our preparations in such a way, that fellow travellers can benefit from it, and hope we succeeded!

TIP OF THE DAY

Tips about cash, traveller checks, credit cards, etc.
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TIP OF THE DAY

We have published all the links we have used for our preparations!
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