So how much did it cost us? What is the breakdown on a country by country basis? How much money did we spend on accomodation? ...

A Blurb

We never stayed in the lowest priced accomodation available, opting for basic rules - reasonably clean toilets and clean(ish) beds. Not all the places we stayed in had in suite shower/bath and toilets. For establishments with shared facilities, as long as the shared facilities were well maintained and clean, we considered staying. In Tanzania and Asia, we had a soft ceiling of $10 per night for double room accomodation and it was not hard to find decent (even good!) accomodation at this price. Turkey (Istanbul!) and Egypt were more expensive. Whenever possible we would opt for a higer priced room in a quieter neighborhood.

Food is something that should never be compromised. We tried local fare from street vendors in Turkey and Asia, but usually ate in restaurants with menus. We had a water filter/purifier with us (saving many hundreds of plastic bottles and some money) and we augmented filtered water with bottled soft drinks that are now ubiquitous all over the world - even in villages with no electricity or running water!

For communications, we used the internet which is also spreading around rapidly. Since the public cybercafes are the only internet access available for most of the planet, access is usually cheap - ranging from $0.50 to $1.75 for an hour in most towns that we accessed email. We also wrote and mailed a lot of postcards (about 260!) to friends and family.

Transportation made up one of the bigger chunks of the budget. We also tended to move quite often and so had higher transportation percentage. Whenever possible, we would pick transportation that was comfortable - in Turkey we opted to travel with one of the more reliable bus operators, in India we chose several times to travel by airconditioned 2-tier rail coaches.

Even when travelling light (we carried on average 30kgs between us on our backs!!) it is very hard to stay out of the local souvenir shops. We did a tiny bit os shopping in Turkey, a little more in Egypt follwed by a little more in Tanzania, knowing that we would have an opportunity to dump some stuff at home in India. Travelling through Asia, we were not strong enough to stay out of the busy and colorful markets, picking up stuff in all the countries we travelled. Luckily we started with lighter packs from India ..