I haven’t written here a lot, because I did things. Vaccinations, I had 3 rabies shots, plus one for the yellow fever, one for hep-A and Typhoïd, and one for Dyphtery, Tetanus and Polio. I also had my visas cared for me by Action-Visas, a visa agency whose buisness is to go queue at the ambassies for me. They are all super nice and give to charity. So I got my Russian, Mongol and Chinese visas! Yeah! By the way, prepare your documents in advance. I was forced to apply for my visas in Urgency mode because I was a bit late. And the costs were a tad higher, like 30 to 50€ per visas.

I also emptied my flat. All of my life is now in boxes or in my travel bags, except for a few comic books I left to Caroline, a high school friend, who’s inheriting the flat. Speaking of bags, I received mine, it’s a MEI Voyageur, and I have to say I’m really really happy with it. I haven’t traveled a lot yet, but the buying process was really smooth, the customer care was great and, well, the urgency mode worked well too, I received it just in time for the trip! So now my life’s in that bag, and another smaller bag for my computer, cameras and films and precious things. And it isn’t heavy at all! Well, a little bit heavy.

Okay so I’m rambling about all the things, but it’s because of the excitation before the trip. It’s tomorrow, you know… And speaking of which, the microsponsoring project is alive and well, I have had 140 microsponsors, that’s between 1/3 and half of the days that are financed. Thank you so much dear readers, family, friends and/or (ex-)colleagues! Thanks to you I may be able to survive around the world!

Yeah, I gave back my keys yesterday, all was well except that I didn’t have a place to sleep so I went to my sister’s in urgency mode, she’s a photographer, and I finally found a charitable soul with a pneumatic bed : my cousin and his wife. Before I go, I’m cleaning the dishes but don’t tell him, it’s a surprise. Shush! Let’s hope he won’t read this blog, my twitter or my Facebook before I give him his keys back.

By the way, it got me thinking, wouldn’t it be cool if that was my real first day of travel? you know, just before taking my plane, I’m not sleeping at home, everything’s in a tiny bag and such? And there’s also the bug in my blog’s countdown code, it displays the start of my travel today instead of tomorrow (I’m bad at PHP).

And last thing, I put all my CDs and hard drives in a box and I can’t access it now. And my iPod is filled with my “things to listen to while in the parisian métro”, so if you feel I could discover some new sounds, please give me the names! And some samples of course, but no full albums in MP3 that would be illegal and illegalness isn’t really cool I guess, I’m totally for giving money to artists. Yeah. My email: octolan@gmail.com.

Ok. Shower, dishes and zou!

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When I looked for ways to finance my travel around the world, I tried to find how to give to my family, friends, colleagues and/or readers a solution to help me.

I found a solution while discussing with Antoine : I have to get them to microsponsor my project. Instead of looking for hypothetical “regular” sponsors, I’d like to go to people I know and who care about me, and include them into my adventure. They don’t have big money like a big sponsor, but they are a lot and they want to help me… So why couldn’t they participate?

What I’m proposing to my microsponsors is to travel with me. After financing one day of my trip (with a 15€ personnal donation), microsponsors will tell me things to do depending on where I am : special food to eat, a place to visit, a video message to record… and I’ll try to do my best to address these wishes. And there’s more! I’ll send to my microsponsors a postcard from where I am: the postcard can be a sketch, an instant photograph, some little souvenirs… it’ll be a personalised artwork, from me to the microsponsor. Before being sent, the postcards will be photographed and published on this blog, with a Creative Commons license. Then, the recipents will be invited to send me a picture of them with the postcard and post it on a Flickr or Facebook group…

And today, it’s the big launch. Well, in french only for now, but I’ll translate in about two weeks. If you know a bit of French, you should be able to register without a problem. The system is quite basic, I’m doing everything from a base developed by Samuel Martin and Stéphane Deschamps. After the registration, I’m doing the payment validations, the mails, etc. You might expect to wait a couple of days for a confirmation email…

Oh, and I discovered PayPal fees… for a 15€ donation, PayPal takes 75c… This could be quite heavy if I get lots of donation. Don’t hesitate to give more to compensate! (ok, that was shameless.)

What day will you choose?

To help you decide, please consult my plans, I put some dates to help you target a country and a date… but nothing’s written in stone. I’ll tell you if I change my plans :)

Go to the Microsponsoring »

The microsponsoring platform has been designed by Samuel Martin and Stéphane Deschamps. May they be thanked again and again, and may they know happiness and felicity in the coming eons even after the return and rise of the Mighty Cthulhu, which could come soon. If you’re still reading this, go microsponsor me already!

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87 days and still some things to do…

• Work
• Tell my boss I’m going
• Have a meeting with the Hierarchy
• Resign
• Tell my soon-to-be-ex-colleagues for the 83rd time that yes, I’m going around the world
• Last Day!
• Big Party (prepare a speech!)

 



 

• Sac à Dos
• Buy a 30L backpack
• List things to put in it
• Underwear (3)
• Socks (3)
• Shirt (1)
• Pants (1)
• Cameras (3)
• Films (120 format: 30, 135 format: 30)
• Try to fit everything
• Take less underwear and less socks
• Yesssss! It fits!
• And it’s lightweight and I can bring it with me in the plane!
• Passport & Visas
• Get some ID pictures
• Give the application at the préfecture
• Get some new ID pictures done without smiling and without this stupid hawaiian shirt
• Give the application at the préfecture
• …
• Yesssss! My passport!
• Visas for Russia, Mongolia and China, via Action Visas
• Yessssss! My Visas!

 



 

• Medical Things
• First dentist consultation
• Eighty-third and last dentist consultation (and hoping it’ll last a year)
• Vaccines against strange things
• Get prescriptions for anti-allergy medicine, anti-mosquito and andti-sunburn medecine (some of which are classified “Biohazard Type A”)
• I can’t pack these things if I want my photo things. The choice is easy : photo comes first.
• CouchSurfing
• Begin to contact people
• Read the answers “Ok, remind me about it one week before arriving”
• Remind them (one week before)
• Answer : Not Possible!
• Plan B, Plan B!

 



 

• Trip planning
• Buy some books about a lonely planet
• Take only the interesting pages
• Put it in my bag. Paper is always useful at one point or another in any trip.
• Tell my parents!!!!!!!!!!
• oh, no, I told them already.

And many, many more things to do…

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If there’s one remark I always get from my friends, it’s that one about my cameras. Because, you know, I have the reputation to be the kind of guy who collects lots of cameras…

And yes, it’s true. That’s my big brother’s and my big sister’s fault. They had a camera first so I wanted to have one too. My .big sis’ studied photography in Paris and is now a photo-reporter. During My own studies, while I learned about making stuff up on a computer (it’s called 3D modeling), I bought my own camera. And I discovered the dark secrets of Black And White photography. 

Then, two years ago, my big brother brought me to a photography fair with lots of antique cameras shops. That’s when I began my foray into… well… old cameras and stuff. I first bought myself a Canon Demi without knowing anything about it except it was handsome as heck. I had lots of fun with this half format camera, in the streets of Paris, catching random instants that were meant to be catched. Of the hundreds of pictures I took, I found some of them quite satisfying. 

Sadly, I’ve had problems with the light meter, and now half the pictures are overexposed, but it’s not as bad as the other half, that are underexposed. So I don’t use it anymore. Then, well, I scourged eBay and other such ghastly places, sold pieces of my soul to the Devil, and bought more cameras.

One of them, quite expensive, takes panoramic pictures, the aptly-named Horizon. Imported from Russia. I love it a lot, but I’ve had some troubles with it as well. 

Another compact camera, the Canonet QL-17 GIII, with a rangefinder (if it means something to you). Small, lightweight, and I had it with me in my recent travels… it was quite useful. 

This picture was taken in Paris… Aside from the Canonet and the Demi, I had another camera with me on my recent trip. A Medium Format Camera. A Twin-Lens Reflex. The Yashica Mat 124 G. Instead of using 35mm in metal cannisters, it uses mighty 120 film, in rolls. The pictures are square, bigger, better and lemme tell ya folks, that’s real luxury. 

I also got a Bronica SQ-B bigger and bulkier medium format camera, a disposable one with a very wide angle but made of plastic, a Holga (with polaroid back), a Lomo Lubitel 166b, a Kodak Duaflex and a Menokta. The two last ones are like jokes but with shapes of cameras. So, yeah, my friends were spot on about my camera collection. The question they ask me is therefore very interesting.

And my answer might interest you also. I’ll bring my Yashica Mat 124G and my QL17 GIII. Yashy and Canonety. These are two complementary cameras, I don’t use them to make the same pictures. I take instant pictures with the Canonet, but I take my time with the Yashica. The picture from Venice you see up there, it took me 10 minutes to take it. The right framing, the right exposure time, the setting…

I’ll also bring a digital camera. Maybe. Someday, I’ll tell you about digital and film photography and how I see the big “digi vs. film” debate. 

Canonet I choose ya. 

And Yashica I choose ya too. And here’s what I look like when I take a picture of myself with my Yashica…

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I’m telling it right now, I don’t have any idea at what time I’ll go from Paris on the next 3rd of September. Therefore, I don’t know at what time I’ll arrive in Moscow.

In fact, I don’t know a lot of things about my travel. And I have to say, that’s for the better. I know what I want to see, where I want to go and I can guess the way I’ll organize everything.

I know for example that I’m going East, from Paris, by plane for Moscow. Central Europe is not very far from Paris, I’ll have time to go later… to live in Berlin, to go cycle around the Baltic or the Balkans… that’s for later.

Moscow. One week, to be a tourist and to take a special train ticket. A ticket for Uulanbaatar then Beijing, by the Transsiberian train. I’ll stay two weeks around Uulanbaatar, riding mongol horses in the steppes, with a school friend. She told me some time ago she would be in Mongolia by mid-September. An old dream for her, and it’s just at the same time as I pass through the region.

Then Beijing, and the rest of China. It might take a month and a half, from October to mid-November to go around the country, see the East coast and maybe the Gobi desert, and go to Hong Kong. I can then stay for two weeks in Hong Kong, to apply for some visas for the next step.

The next step? As we’ll be at the start of December, it might be wise to go to the South. Vietnam first, from Hanoï to Ho-Chi-Minh City, maybe by bike? Cambodia and the temples of Angkor, and then Thailand, the paradisiac beaches or political demonstrations. Then, I don’t know exactly, I think I’ll take the road down the malay peninsula to Singapore. And then, I’ll hop from an island to the other, by boat, along Indonesia… and I’ll stop in Bali around March.

At the start of Spring, I’ll go North to Seoul, with a stop in Philippines, perhaps. I’ll stay one week or two in Korea, and then two to three weeks in Japan. Hiroshima, Osaka, Kyoto and Tokyo, from West to East, following the cherry blossoms.

Around mid April, I take the plane to cross the Pacific. Ideally, I’d like to go directly to Santiago de Chile, but I might have to make a stop in the US. San Francisco would be cool, that way I don’t have to come back. One week later, South America, and Santiago, where I stop a bit to learn Spanish. Then I cross the Andes to Córdoba, where I’ll visit my friend Pablo, whom I met in Venice six months ago. I stay in Argentina two, maybe three weeks, then I go to Bolivia (with a visit to Salar de Uyuni), then Peru (and Machu Picchu), Equador and Colombia, where I may stay in Medellín. Then Northwards along Central America : Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala… And Mexico! I might arrive around July, and stay two week.

And finaly, the US, around mid July : Texas (in the heat of Summer), New Orleans, Tuscaloosa, AL perhaps, and New York in August. And I’ll finish with Montréal, Quebec, Canada, from where I’ll take the plane back to Paris on the 2nd of September 2010.

At the moment, I don’t have any visas or plane ticket, so I’m still flex in my trip. But still, there’s some things I don’t want to avoid : horse riding in Mongolia, Angkor Wat, swimming in two or three oceans, picknick under the cherry trees in Japan, seeing the falls of Iguazu and going back to New York.

But why, hav I been asked, why wouldn’t I go to Africa? Why am I avoiding India? and Australia? The answer is simple : ex dominions of the British Empire. No, no, that’s not the right answe. Africa is huge. So’s India. And take a wide look at Australia. I won’t have time to go everywhere. I prefer to think that in a few years, I’ll travel from Cape Town in South Africa to Tangiers, Morocco, following the Atlantic coast, for example. Or maybe I’ll go to India, and ride on every train there is, during one year. Or I’ll go working in Sydney? Lots of things take lots of time and one year’s not enough. That’s for later…

And something tells me that I might change my program when I’m on the road…

Embiggen the map

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And so this week-end I tried to calculate how much this project would cost me. The good news is, my estimations were correct. I was guessing a number between 12000€ and 16000€, and now I’ve made the calculations I’m at about 14000€. That’s $18 000, but I’ll write in Euros in this post. If you want, you can ask Google for guidance. Type the number, followed by ” EUR to USD” (e.g.: “14000 EUR to USD”)

I did I do my calculations?
Short answer : I guessed. Long answer : I guessed most of it. Fairly long answer : I guessed most of it, and I used websites to do it.
There are lots of websites who document the basic daily price of travelling abroad and run simulations. One of them is Saving For Travel, I liked the name. It is, though, in Pounds (like in £. The google request is “GBP to USD”). Oh well. This websites uses week-based estimates for the typical cost in a certain country, but using my calculatorial talents, I found the daily costs, it was easier that way. The weekly cost in Pounds (GBP) was then converted to Euros (EUR), and I added 15%, just because the £ lost so much these last months (and my point was, I don’t think that crisis-related price drops were mirrored in the cost estimates on the website. 15% might have been a bit much from my part though). As a result, I get a daily cost that’s following the estimates from the french travel guides website routard.com (e.g.: Vietnam : the daily cost on routard.com is evaluated between 16 and 25€. My own estimation is at 20.5€.)

The daily cost is lodgings (hotel, hostel, b&b…), food and other basic expenses. Lodgings amount to 1/3 of the daily cost, but I can’t find my source. If I do well on CouchSurfing and I find a host for half the nights on my trip, I can save up to 15% on my daily expenses. And it’s more than feasible : during my last trip, I slept 8 night with CouchSurfing and 4 nights at hostels (in Venice and Copenhagen)… And 4 nights in the train. 1/3 of my non-train nights were thanks to CS!

I estimated my stay in countries by the week, and with all the calculations I got to 9750€ for 52 weeks. If I save the 15% thanks to CouchSurfing, the daily expenses amount to 8300€.

And now, for the fun part… the air travels and transportations. I looked the AirTreks machine, who gave me an estimate between $3 000 and $4 000 (2300€ – 3000€). I spare you all the details of my subsequent examination of travel costs with Opodo or Expedia, but let’s say you can find it cheaper on low-cost airlines. In that part of my calculations there’s also the Transsiberian train. I think I should go deeper into that… the prices don’t seem right.

So here I am : 9750 + 3400 = 13150€ is the big estimate, 8300 + 2700 = 11000€ is the small one.(2700is the lowest AirTreks added to the Transsiberian).

Here is a table with my “large” cut :

Perhaps I should count everything else… Everything else? That’s the expenses before the trip. As you could see it on tourdumonde.be if you read French, on the page answering some Money questions, there’s the travel insurance (300€), vaccines + doctor (120€), medical pack (100€), backpack + new shoes + stuff (150€ + 150€ + 150€), passport (60€), visas (Russia 70€ + Mongolia 87€ + China 62€) That’s like 1250€ I have to pay before I go.

Of course, don’t forget visas from countries from SE Asia, but i’ll take them in Hong Kong and on the way.

My budget oscillates between 12250€ and 14400€ depending on the half-fullness or half-emptiness of the glass. Now, I prefer to consider the highest estimate, that way I can have some surprises on the way (“What? I have enough money to go to Eurodisney?”)…

Did you have fun? ‘Cos the next part is way more fun. It’s about the money I bring to the project to bring the balance to the Force.

If I bring all the cash I have (not much) and other things that amount to a little bit more, with, of course, a little something for the taxes (I’ll have 2008 and 2009 to pay, remember) I have about 7500€ in personnal funds. Oops. The lowest estimate doesn’t sound that low, now I have to find 4750€…

Now would be the time to press my trusted [SPONSORS] button, if I had one. My micro-sponsorship program will be at à 15€ ($18) per day, but people will be able to donate more if they wish so. If I get 182,5 friends/family members/nigerian princes to pay for one day each(50% of the 365 days) it will add 2737,5€ to my budget. not too bad, I’m just over 10000€, but there’s between 2000 and 4000€ to be had, if I want to bring balance to my budget.

Now I put a lot of thought into that and I found an idea. I should find a Sponsor and convince him to follow my micro-sponsorship program : if someone gives me 15€ for a day, the sponsor mirrors the amount, and gives 15€ to the project. Of that fund, 1/3 would go to a charity and the 2/3 left would go to my project. If I get to fill up 50% on my micro-sponsorship calendar, the Sponsor gives 2735,5€ to the fund, with 912,5€ given to a charity of his choice, and 1823€ go into my personnal project fund… If nobody sponsors me, I would get 0€, but I woud get 9125€ if the 365 days are taken and 1825€ would be given to charity.

Now, I have to find some sponsors to fill the big money hole in my previsions. Or find the hen, the one that lays them golden eggs.

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In my previous post, I wrote about a train trip I did last fall, from October 2 to 17 I traveled from Venice, Italy to Stockholm, Sweden, and I stopped to Vienna, Berlin and Copenhagen. I travelled with Interrail tickets and CouchSurfing, the community that connects traveling people and people hosting traveling people. I coult write about that in a next post.
One of the things I wanted to know, is that if I could travel alone. Some people have problems with that…

I didn’t have any so I decided to do a longer travel, the one I’m preparing right now, this Round the World trip. I thought I should try to learn things about my previous experience : what could I do to travel better than last time?

1. Have a smaller bag.

   I had a sailor bag. A huge one, around 60L or 70L, filled to the top with lots of clothes. It wasn’t great at all to travel with this bag. Way to big and heavy for comfort… I regretted having it when going to the railway station in Venice and when I arrived in Copenhagen at 8am and had to go to the hostel… Next time, I want a 45L backpack.

2. Travel with a real backpack.

   The problem with the sailor bag is that it isn’t practical, due to the lone strap. I had one of these and a messenger-type bag for my cameras. It was’t really comfortable.

3. Take a seat in the night trains, not a couchette.

   Night trains are very practical but not comfortable. The best way to sleep, I found out, was’nt to take a couchette, but a seat. You have less neighbors in seat-compartiments than in couchette-compartiment… and try to sleep when your 5 swede night neighbors engage in a snoring contest. At least, when you’re alone in your compartiment, it’s quieter. Plus, seats are cheaper!

4. Travel longer.

   This one is quite logical. You should be able to take your time digesting your travel… One year should be great in that regard…

Well, that’s all I can think of for today. Now I have toremember that when packing my backpack and planning my route!

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Well, here it is… I began my travel blog.

This is the blog I’ll keep during the whole preparation, and then it’ll be my travel blog… I began to fill the relevant pages : About the trip, About me, and so on… see the menus! This blog is bilingual. All the posts will have pictures in it. That’s really classy, I think. By the way, the paint is still fresh, if you see some display bugs, please tell me!

Enough about the blog. The real objective’s the trip! Yeah! Eastwards, always eastwards… And then southward. And then nortward I think.

150 days before I go. And I like this :)

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