I quit my job to travel around the world for 9 months

After an amazing 4 week long road trip in Australia back in early 2016, I was fascinated with travelling over longer time periods and fell in love with life on the road. It was clear to me that I would want to do something similar like this again in the near future.

A trip around the world - a thing not few people have on their bucket list.

It was on my bucket list as well. But if you think about it, how many people actually actively work on their bucket list? And how many people just have made a bucket list just for the sake of making one. I find in life in general, if you want something you need to go out and get it or do that thing you always wanted to. No matter how big, how hard or how difficult, If you really want something there is a way to get it and you can get it if you work hard enough for it.

I applied this same mentality to this "World Trip" thing that was sitting at the top of my bucket list. I really want to do this, so when should i do it? And this question is another one that I guess goes through the head of every person with the same goal to do a trip around to world some time.

Well, the answer to the simple question "when?" is: there is never a perfect time. And I personally think that a lot of people post-pone their wish to do a trip like this because they want to wait for this perfect timing. It's seems like such a shame to let a dream like this go to waste just because you want to wait for a better time?
So I took the matter in to my own hands and decided that NOW, right NOW is the perfect time for me to go on a trip around the world. I thought to myself, if I act as everybody else and post-pone this dream of mine to some time in the future, I will never get the chance to do something like this.

Of course you can't just leave everything behind and just head to the airport and leave... Well I guess nothing is impossible and you can do that if you wish to. But I wanted to be a bit more sensible. It was early in the year 2017 and I knew it's going to be this year. So together with my girlfriend we did a little bit of planning and decided that it will be after the summer, towards the end of this year when we'll leave.

So after deciding that this will happen this year and setting a rough date, we needed to plan "How Long?" and "Where To?". This was a very though part, as we both have traveled a bit over the past years and we wanted to agree on country's and locations where we've both never been to before. We both also had our own lists of favorite places to see, and those two lists we're very different. After long discussions and a few sleepless nights, we managed somehow to agree on only ONE route to travel around the world. First we agreed to travel for a longer period of time than our trip to Australia in 2016, which was 6 weeks including a stop in Fiji and Hong Kong. We thought about doing this Trip around the world in 6 months. However, after trying to find out on how long to stay in which places we came to the conclusion that 6 months is nowhere near to enough time to see all the places on our route without getting to stressed out. We knew that if this should work out well, we need to plan some extra time at every destination to relax and re-charge. Something like also having "Sundays" during our travelling where we just chill out and do nothing pretty much the whole day long. So after these "highly precise" calculations we settled for being away from home for a total of 9 months.

The rest followed pretty naturally. We both informed our employers and gave in our letter of resignation. Then we started booking the first flights. We actually wanted to keep the trip as spontaneous as possible, but most countries don't let you enter without already having your departure flight booked in advance. So we booked pretty much all long distance flights including the last flight back home already. Simultaneously we started preparing our packing lists. What should I bring? This is usually the standard question you ask yourself when you're packing for a trip away from home or holiday. But, when you're packing for a trip of 9 months you start to think a bit more on what you really need and what you should leave back at home so you have more space for other things.

For me this was especially though, as I'm a passionate photographer and I was looking forward to bringing some of my camera gear to shoot photos and videos on this trip. I knew, I won't be able to bring everything. Otherwise I'd break my back as my backpack would be to heavy haha. So after months thinking about this, I finally decided on what I need to bring and what I can fit in the extra space in my camera backpack.
For the Camera-Nerds this is a quick list of my gear:

• Sony A7SII, 16-35mm F4, 55mm F1.8, 25mm F2, 35mm F2.8
• DJI Mavic Pro Drone with polarized ND Filters (4/8/16)
• GoPro Hero5 with KnektUSA Dome Port

So we had our tickets booked, bags packed, jobs quit and so ready for our big adventure!
Time flew by and next thing we knew we've said goodbye to all our friends and family and we were sitting in the airplane towards our first stop in Asia.

I made myself a personal challenge for these next 9 months to make one video every single week. I've made a few travel videos in the past. But they we're mostly just montages of the great times we had on our vacation. For this World Trip I wanted to make my videos a bit more personal and give a bit of narrative information on what we're up to, while still including my happy vibe montages. Also it's an easy way for me to update and stay a little connected with all friends and family back home while we're on the road. It's definitely a huge challenge for myself to create a video like this every week, but I know that I can do anything that I put my mind to!

Below you can view the first video I created back in November when we embarked on our trip and went to Singapore and Myanmar. It was a great week filled with a lot of new experiences. My personal highlight was for sure the stunning hot air balloon flight over Bagan in Myanmar.

Until today I've been able to keep up my weekly videos and I hope I will be able to continue this throughout 2018 and until the end of our trip. If you're intrested in staying up to date, feel free to check out more of my videos on my Youtube Channel.

If you're intrested to see more of my Photography, be sure to check out my Instagram.

Otherwise, please comment anything you' like to know from me below!
I'd be happy to answer any kind of travel or photography related questions you have!

Can't wait to tell you more about our travels here!

Until next time...

• Oliver