How much did my round the world trip cost? Here I share my total expenses traveling on a budget and how I did it. In addition, at the end I give a few tips to make it even cheaper!
How much did my round the world trip cost?
This is probably one of the most frequently asked questions I receive.
Now it is my turn to ask you, how much do you think it costs? It might be cheaper than you’d expect!
When I was preparing the trip I estimated a budget of 12000 €. Did I manage to stay within budget…?
Well, here is the answer: my detailed travel cost for a round the world trip in 10 months and a half.
Final travel cost
Yes, I managed to stay within the budget!
FINAL COST: 10224 € (11166 US$)
I was on the road for 322 days, that means thatthe average daily spend was, with everything included:
COST PER DAY: 31,75 € (34,68 US$)
Not even 35 US$! I’m quite sure that I spent more when I was living in France!
For information, this is what I include in each category:
- Basic expenses: food, accommodation, transport, phone/ internet, bank commissions and other necessary things such as toiletries or clothes.
- Flights: 8 flights (Barcelona > India, India > Thailand, Cambodia > Malaysia, Malaysia > Australia, Australia > New Zealand, New Zealand > central Chile, central Chile > south of Chile, Argentina > Barcelona).
- Visas: 3 visas (India, Cambodia, Laos). With a Spanish passport I didn’t need other visas or they were free.
- Travel insurance for 1 year.
- Extra expenses: everything else such as museums, visits, activities, presents, postcards and stamps.
Note: As you can see, I completely underestimated the extra expenses. I realized it two months after the beginning of the trip, when I was still in Asia. By then I was quite sure I had been accurate about the flights, visas and insurance, so the only option to stay within budget was to cut on the basic expenses.
How did I do it? By reducing the time I wanted to spend in expensive countries. In this case, Australia. It was a difficult decision because it was one of my dream countries, but I couldn’t spend one month in Australia and another in New Zealand as initially planned, so I cut my stay in Australia from 30 to 11 days.
Basic expenses per country
These are the basic expenses for each country. I have marked with a star (*) the countries where for some reason I got free accommodation for some days. For these countries, whenever possible, I’ve made an estimation of how much I would have spent if I had had to pay for all my stay.
As expected, Asia was cheap. I think that India is cheaper than South East Asia, I personally spent more because I was staying in homestays and guesthouses instead of hostels as recommended by my Indian friends.
Note: you can see my detailed travel cost for India, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia.
No surprise, Australia and New Zealand were the most expensive countries I visited. In Australia I didn’t pay accommodation most of the time but I had to buy a jacket so that increased the final cost.
South America came as a surprise. Except for Bolivia which is indeed cheap, all the other countries were more expensive than I expected (and the fall down of euro didn’t help!).
Of course, I wouldn’t have been able to keep the costs so low if it weren’t for all the people who hosted me in different places: my old friends from Sweden and France, my couchsurfing hosts, some friends of friends, and the friends I did on the road who invited me to visit them. To all of you, THANKS A LOT!
What I did to travel on a budget
Basic expenses
- Spend most of the time in cheap countries
- Visit countries where I had friends
- Use couchsurfing (even though not that much, and keeping in mind that couchsurfing is not a network of free accommodation but a network of hospitality)
- Travel slow, spending several days (or weeks) in the same place
- Use local public transport and walk a lot
- Eat in local restaurants or street food, or cook myself when I had a kitchen
- Renounce to certain commodities such as hot water, A/C, heating, private bathroom and private room.
Visas
- Give preference to countries where I didn’t need to pay for a visa
Flights
- Travel overland when possible (night bus for example)
- Travel with hand luggage only
- Be more or less flexible on the dates (even though not on the destinations)
Extra expenses
- Didn’t do many expensive activities
- Didn’t visit a lot of museums
- Didn’t drink alcohol nor smoked
8 ideas to travel even cheaper
Is it possible to travel long term even cheaper than I did? Yes, of course!Here there are a few ideas:
- Visit only cheap countries
- Visit only one continent or region (you save on flights)
- More flexibility on destinations (let the price of flights chose your next destination)
- Travel by bicycle
- Carry and sleep in a tent
- Use couchsurfing, housesitting or woofing
- Volunteer in a hostel in exchange of accommodation and food
- Go to visa free countries
Do you have any other tips to travel on a budget? Please share in the comments below!
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