Our Planned Travel Route: 30 Countries in 9 Months

Our Planned Travel Route: 30 Countries in 9 Months

Planning a multi-country trip is equal parts exciting and paralysing. You start with "I want to see everything" and end up in a spreadsheet at 2am comparing flight prices between cities you've never heard of.

Here's where we've landed. Our full planned route and the budget expectations for each region.

The route at a glance

Approximate budget

This will be the most interesting thing to track as we go. We've already spent about $13,000 AUD on pre-departure costs, which covers most of our main flights, insurance, accommodation deposits, and is skewed more toward SEA, plus some plans we've already locked in with friends across Europe.

For the remaining expenses, we've earmarked the below amounts. Follow along on our journey and see where we end up:

• Southeast Asia: $10,000
• Europe: $22,000
• Americas: $15,000
• India & Sri Lanka: $5,000
• Japan: $15,000

Total Budget: $80,000 AUD

The logic behind our route

We're departing mid-April from Sydney and want to get as much travel through Southeast Asia done before the wet season kicks in.

We'll be travelling east to west — from Hong Kong to Vietnam (Hanoi first, then down to Ho Chi Minh City), across to Thailand (Phuket through to Bangkok), and wrapping up in Singapore before heading to London in late May.

How we're budgeting for 9 months of travel

With our average daily budget of around $290 AUD, ideally our 45 days in SEA come in under this, as we expect Europe to be higher on average. The Americas should be a little cheaper again, while India and Sri Lanka will be mixed — especially with a wedding in Goa. That'll leave us to survive on whatever's left for the snow in Japan (7-Eleven noodles and Lawson egg sandwiches will be the go-tos anyway).

Our main expenses fall into a few key categories:

• Accommodation
• Food & Drinks
• Activities
• Flights & Transport
• Insurance & Health

For accommodation, we've found that Booking.com and Trip.com are the best options for both price and availability. After making multiple bookings on each platform, you start unlocking further discounts through their reward programs — which has already helped us score a handful of free bookings.

We haven't spent anything on food and drinks yet, but this will probably be the most varied category. From cheap noodle dishes across SEA to pizzas in Italy and street food in Mexico, we'll be conscious of our meals but not at the expense of missing out on amazing food.

Activities don't always have to cost money, and we've already got our eyes on a bunch of free experiences. That said, we've also already spent a decent amount just booking rifugios for our Dolomites hike six months in advance. This is one we'll keep updating on a daily basis (along with all our expenses), so check in to see what different activities end up costing us.

Flights so far haven't done as much damage as they could have, thanks to credit card points we'd been accumulating over the past few years. We both had a decent stash of Qantas and Velocity frequent flyer points from rotating through cards since 2022, which meant certain legs have been extremely cheap relative to what we would have spent out of pocket. Transport will also be pretty varied across the regions, and we're open to trains — especially across Europe where they might make more sense than flights from a budget perspective.

Insurance and health has probably been the most surprising expense so far. If you haven't already read our post on what it cost us to leave our jobs and travel the world, we've already spent $4,300 AUD on travel insurance and travel vaccinations alone. That's 33% of our pre-departure spend, but when spread across the full trip it works out to about $15 per day for peace of mind that we're covered.

How we've planned things so far

YouTube, Reddit, a whole heap of Googling, but most of all some lengthy conversations with Claude. The coolest thing about planning a trip in 2026 is leveraging AI (which is ultimately pulling from every relevant source) and creating a project to detail all your thoughts, plans, and dates until you land on an itinerary.

It's been super helpful for flagging national holidays, wet seasons, better travel windows, and as a decent baseline to budget from.

What we haven't decided yet

While we've mapped out the countries we want to visit, especially with a degree of uncertainty around travelling in 2026, we're totally open to spending more time in fewer places or skipping some countries altogether. We've both got non-negotiables and a number of places we really want to visit, but outside of that we're also fine going with the flow. After all, that's what travel is all about.

The budget reality

Is our budget realistic? Will we end up going totally overboard, or come back with a little more than expected? I genuinely don't know yet — and that's kind of the whole point of this website. To find out and share the real answer.

Check the Spending page once we're on the road for daily live updates.