Travelling for more than a Year

Many travelers go the extra distance and travel for more than a year (also upto one year). Travelling for more than a year is an experience in itself as you are on the road for a long period of time. The learning and experience that long term travel offers is unmatched. The main aspect of long term is travel is when you finally make a decision and are up for it. There are many factors which have to be considered for going to travel for more than a year – your job, your house, marriage (incase) and maybe who’ll take care of your pet when you’ll be away. A lot of deliberation needs to be done when you decide to travel for more than a year. The key is to take it up as a commitment and not worry about it too much.

Now that you have decided that long term travel is your cup of tea and you will be on the road for more than a year, next comes the most crucial part – your RTW ticket. Airlines generally release the inventory of the seats only upto eleven months (330 days) from the present date. This basically means that as your travel period is more than one year, you would not have tickets for that part of your journey which is beyond the time limit of 11 months when you make the purchase of your tickets.

Airline tickets are usually valid upto one year from the date of purchase of the ticket and not the date of departure. This means that one will be left with the time gap (for travelling) of when you book the ticket (purchase date) and the day when you head for the trip (actual date of departure). By this way, the remainder of your trip would have exceeded this one year time frame.

Well, to some people this could sound like a dilemma as one is not having their tickets for the entire leg of the journey. The solution to this issue is to book your tickets in two phases. This effectively means that if you book, say today (i.e. 3-4 months before your actual date of departure), you can book that leg of your journey which is outside the stipulated time frame 3-4 months from today or some days before when you set for your trip. The main advantage is that, firstly all your tickets have been booked and you don’t need to worry about not having a ticket for a certain part of your journey and secondly, you get to travel non-stop without having to break you journey or taking a stop because of non-availability of tickets.