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How can I find the cheapest luxury travel?

With INR 1cr (USD 200,000), what travel route/strategy should I take to keep my transportation expenses to a minimum on a world tour?

  • I have set aside a sum of around INR 1cr (USD 200,000) and a time of about two years to travel around the world. I am open to travelling by all means - road, rail, air, sea. I don't care about luxury/convenience at all. I am just interested in keeping my 'commutation' expenses to the bare minimum. My starting point and end points of the journey would be: Delhi/Mumbai/Kolkata/Chennai in India Destinations: All around the world (including Antarctica/Greenland etcetera), if possible. Travel start - Oct, 2013 Travel End - Sep, 2015 If you were me, what optimal route/strategy would you adopt to keep your 'transportation' expenses to a minimum? What route would you take (rail, sea, air, surface) going from location X to location Y? Where would you start (as in go to which part of the globe first, and then how to proceed ahead, culminating back to India after two years)? Keeping in mind the following things: 1. Optimal time of the year to visit a place (for example Germany might be a great place to be around the Beer Fest or Antartica is not possible during winters and so on). So, I might want to be in Germany during the Beer Fest and Antarctica has to be done during summers. Getting my point? 2. Some must-visit places/events/festivals along the way. My areas of interest include - spirituality(meditation, mysticism and it's branches), cultural fests and parties, events/shows related to cosmology, astrophysics etcetera. Plus anything else, you find super-interesting. So, basically I am asking you to draw my calender (not my itinerary) for next two years, starting Oct 2013. If I find an answer to be incredibly well-researched and detailed, I will contact you personally and will pay you upto USD1000 for planning my calendar. P.S: I am only looking at 'transportation'/'commutation' strategy. Please don't include any accommodation suggestions in your answers. Thank you! :-)

  • Answer:

    Depending on what country you buy it in, and the distance you fly, you can get a round-the-world (RTW) ticket in economy class for about US$3,500 - 5,500.  This ticket allows you to change flights or leave all segments open except the first and even, to some extent, allows you to change routings after the trip has started. There are three main types of RTW tickets for sale, one on each of the major airline alliances (Star, One World, and Sky Team).  The main limitations are that it is good for a maximum of 16 segments and 1 year.  To stretch it, you might want to buy regular one way tickets for the first and last part of your trip and start the round the world ticket midway through.  Alternatively, it might work out to get two consecutive RTW tickets.  This covers the longer distances and looks like it would be significantly cheaper than buying a Royal Enfield as proposed by another replier.  However, it won't help with local transport, of course.

Dick Karp at Quora Visit the source

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Travel by ROAD whenever possible would be the most cost efficient way as far as transportation expenses are considered. The downside of it would be the time taken to complete the journey, but since you have 2 years I think you have enough time. I would suggest you buy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Enfield_Bullet (Approx INR 200000) from India and travel by road with in Asia and Europe, transport it to Africa by sea and then fly it to the Americas and then to Japan and the Australian Continent and the other south east Asian countries Another option would be to rent out a similar vehicle in the local country, but that will take its own time and in a new place you might find it difficult to get it cheap As far as Antarctica or Greenland is concerned, you can buy/rent a snow mobile, while you are there. Now the route. I would cover the places in the following order: 1. West Asia, starting from Pakistan 2. Eastern Europe 3. Africa 4. Western Europe 5. UK, Scandinavia 6. Iceland, Greenland, 7. North & South America 8. Antarctica 9. Australia 10. South East Asia & Japan 11. Enter China 12 conclude in India again. So probably 2 months for each leg (on average). I have not factored in the complications that might arise due to weather and legal entry regulations

Selva Subramaniam

That sounds like a pretty huge budget to me and I don't think you'll struggle at all to complete a world tour on it. With the resources you have available I would definitely include a cruise to Antartica if I were you (note that the best time of year for this is November to February - in the southern hemisphere summer). Personally I would avoid air travel as much as possible, you'll get a much more authentic travel experience going by land. The only real advice I can offer would be for Western Europe, where travel can be pretty expensive and you may want to look into buying an Interrail pass, which allows for last minute train travel around Europe for the duration of the pass One interesting option (I've no idea how this works out cost-wise) could be to drive. If starting from India you could find a car thats going to be able to take the strain of several thousand miles and drive it all the way to the UK (or wherever your route would take you). And it would offer somewhere to sleep if desired. Once you reach the end of the driving portion of your travels you can find someone to sell it to.

James Foreman

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