Hi all

1st post on her but have been reading this site for months and have found some great infomation. I am looking to do a round the world trip in a couple of years and am looking at some advise on a time range as my possible travel partner would like a rough time scale. my route would be something like this but obviously things change and i also understand china maybe a issue.


UK France, Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Russia, Kazakhstan, China, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore.

Ship the car to Australia

drive around Australia for a couple of months.

Ship the car to Belize

Belize, Mexico USA and Canada.

Ship the car to South Africa then go up the west coas back to the UK.

I Know this is almost a how long is a piece of string question, but any sort of timescale would be helpfull.

cheers

You may have a problem with the China segment.
Ocean shipping times are unknowns at this time.

Jules Verne says it's 80 days...

Hi
Yes you are right about this question 'how long is a piece of string?'
Loads of people spend a whole summer in Europe.
As for Australia, a couple of months will hardly get you up the east coast. I think you should consider at least a couple of years but more like three if you want to experience the countries rather than just the highways as there certainly won't be too much time for fun if the trip is much shorter than that.
Everyone has their own idea's on this one. How much time equals how much money?
Plan what you can afford, don't rush it too much, you may not ever pass that way again.
Good luck!

The "how long is a piece of string" is accurate as there are lots of different ways you could cut this but to try and give you some base, I would allow the following if I was doing it. For context I've done most of it including trans Africa but from Uk - SA, lived and travelled round Aus over five years, overlanded from Hong Kong to Uk but by public transport. I haven't done much in Central / North America.

My assumtion is that I want to allow enough time to really see the places along the way, be able to stop off for a few days so not driving 500 miles every day but equally not going that slowly because assuming at some stage I have to come back to the real world and so have a finite timescale.

UK - Singapore - 9 months.
Australia - 6 months
Belize - US - 9 months
SA - UK via west coast - 9 months
Shipping - assume somewhere between 4 - 8 weeks for each section (also dependent on whether this is lined up in advance or whether you wait until you get to a port before you work out who / how to ship).

As mentioned, you could do it alot faster if you just drive each day, you could do it as slowly as you like - years and years but the estimates above are my personal opinion on the minimum I would allow for each part (ideally I reckon I would like about 5 - 7 years for all of this route). To me, if I found I could not spare that much time, I would then start cutting back the journey rather than looking to drive faster. You could always do other sections like Africa later rather than compromising the whole trip by rushing it.

Only my opinion - good luck in what ever you decide.

Thanks for the help. I was looking to do this to raise money for cancer research but maybe im trying to do much in a to little time. really want to drive around the world but have always dreamt of london to cape town! May have to rethink a route

Well spoilt for choices - choose what best suits you, and your travelling partner. The fewer compromises the better.

__________________
ChrisC

I'm thinking I will only have a year so may drop of north america.

do you think its possible to go overland to OZ, then spend a 3 months in OZ and then drive the west coast from Cape Town to London in a year?

also there may be 3 of us in one vehicle, what do you think is the best option?

any advise is appreciated.