The route

Today I bought my first couple of flight tickets, so I thought I'd share with you my planned route for this adventure of mine. Despite being an exemplary project manager (future potential employers, take note!) I don't want to schedule the shit out of my year, but instead plan to lock in a few key tent poles around which I shall hang loose chunks of time where I can be more spontaneous and follow my nose.

This rather childish-looking spidery drawing is my attempt at capturing my route, which can be translated as:

- 9 Jan 2014: Fly Sydney-Vanouver

- Mid-Jan: head to Seattle

- Then Portland, Oregon and Salem, Oregon

- End-Jan: San Francisco

- Feb: Road trip to LA

- Late-Feb: mooch about in LA and surrounds

- 6 March: Fly LA-Austin

- 7-16 March: SXSW festival

- Then 6-8 weeks of Texas and The South (Dallas, Memphis, Little Rock, Tennessee, St Louis, Jackson, Alabama, etc etc, end up in New Orleans)

- Mid-May: Mexico

- Late-May: Lima, Peru, Machu Picchu

- 8-10 weeks in Bolivia and Argentina, (maybe Chile), planning to do some volunteer work in Bolivia, then travel to Buenos Aires

- Late-July: Fly Buenos Aires-Frankfurt

- Hang out in Heidelberg

- August: Geneva, Rome/Barcelona

- Mid Aug-mid-Oct: Corfu (with a trip to mainland Greece in late-September)

- 20 Oct: Isle of Skye

- Nov-Dec UK

- Jan 2015: Fly home to Sydney

Epic, huh?

I have to confirm some of my other big flights in the next few days so it's time to make some decisions about how long I think I want to spend in various places, but as you can see it's still leaving a lot to decide while on the road. It will be expensive to change my flight out of the US and my flight to Europe, so I should try to confirm those now, but around that I can pretty much be flexible.

I've been booking the flights through a friend of a friend called Freya, who works at STA, and she's been amazing. A seasoned traveller herself, her advice has been extremely useful every step of the way. I think she'll be living the trip vicariously through me when I'm on the road!