A long, long time ago in a country (not)far off, in a city where the streets are paved with gold, a young girl worked for the summer. She had a dream of travelling to lands where it didn't rain constantly and where you could see the sunshine for more than 2 days in a row......so she worked hard in an Essex pub and earned her freedom, to travel that is!
She was joined by a childhood friend and leaving her sweetheart behind, the two girls set off one august morning, through the tube rush hour, in search of those mystical lands known as "the Continent". With only a pittance to survive on and a train ticket in the back pocket, with not even so much a parental credit card to fall back on, they continued through the month and the adventures continued. The almighty thundershowers in the alps, the cold baked beans for dinner in Genoa, the new zealanders in Bari, the marriage proposal in Calabria, the drunken nights in Corfu, the Croatian National Baseball Team in Slovenia, that last night on the streets of Paris...
It was all too much for her - or was it?
For the trip she had hoped might cure her wanderlust had planted a terrific
seed, which would grow and grow and feed and feed until eventually it became
all consuming. That seed, that glimmer of a shadow of a thought was :
There was a whole load of world out there and she wanted it all.
Of course there were small "fixes" here and there through the years,
3 weeks in Northern Europe, 3 weeks in Central Europe, 2 weeks in Eastern
Europe, the odd weekend escape, but nothing could quell the desire to get
back on the road, to go further, for longer, with more.
So at last, after five years of wishing, hoping and longing, after five years of boring everyone I ever met with the details of my plans, after the fears that I might never get it together and the final obstacles that fate had thrown at me, after all that the masterplan is going into action.
Originally I'd been thinking of a single ticket to Oz, with the hope
that I would get a working holiday visa. However I wanted to go to Oz via
Africa and India and I kept being told this wasn't possible on one ticket.
Single tickets from anywhere in Africa to anywhere in India would cost
a fortune.
So what to do?
With a bit of lateral thinking, some crazy person came up with a plan
to go from Africa to India via London - insanely enough it worked out the
best deal for me! There is in fact a ticket which will give you a stopover
in both Africa and India on the way to Oz but its not well known, its called
the Navigator fare, a Round-the-World fare given by a conglomerate of airlines.
Its a very flexible fare and offers a good deal, I recommend anyone thinking
of a RTW to check it out.
The Decision :
After much toing and froing I was left going with a tour
group while in Africa, then I was to return to England and start a Round the World Ticket.
I picked the Escapade Fare with Singapore Airlines, Air New Zealand et al.
A brilliant deal, recommended for anyone who's not worried about having
too many stops in the US.