In September 1993, I was staring at the world map pinned to the wall over the computer, contemplating all the places Karin and I planned on visiting in short excursions from work over the next twenty years. Suddenly I realized we could make a continuous path out of the trips. I quickly justified it by saying that the separate trips would not leave enough time to see much, and would be more expensive. The daydreams started to sound like good ideas, then I started justifying a longer, or more open-ended time and money allocation!

Six years of reading rec.travel allowed me to think that way. Discussing it with Russell Gilbert and other travellers became time consuming, so I organized this guide as a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) for the newsgroups, a starting point for further discussion, and my small contribution to fellow travellers. All comments are welcome and appreciated.

We left in July 1995 and "The Trip" was even better than we expected. Here is where we went for 31 months (arrows are flights): Florida → Dallas → Denver, San Francisco, Yosemite, LA → Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia → Australia → New Zealand → Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, China, Pakistan, India, Nepal, India → Netherlands → Florida → Caribbean → Florida → Caribbean → Florida and SE USA. We came home early to see family and save up for future travel. Some of the places we want to visit next are Peru, Turkey, Southern Africa, Southern India, Myanmar, and Cambodia.