A full year before I left on my 2025-2026 round-the-world trip, I started planning. (Actually, I started planning well before that, but it was not an organized process. It was like filling a paper sack with a bunch of random thoughts.) I got myself a big, laminated map of the world and some dry erase markers and I wrote all over it. I connected the dots. I made lists. I downloaded resources. And I wrote blog post on my plans, mostly so they would begin to feel real to me.

In December of 2024, I started to plan the trip for real. If you go back to the early posts in this blog you will see my first itinerary, copied and pasted below.

Countries not listed that I did visit on my trip: Brazil (which was a last-minute addition so my daughter could accompany me and visit a friend there), Spain and Portugal! The last two were late entries because going to these two places for ten days made it possible for me to fly back to the US using credit card points. And they turned out to be highlights of the trip. Also a shout out to Kenya. It fell off the itinerary early on but made a surprising comeback in the last month of travel.

As you can see, back then, I did a little research into the best times to visit each location. That turned out to be effort well spent because it allowed me to identify shoulder seasons for some locations (like Japan and Uyuni Bolivia) when going would be worthwhile, less expensive, and not crazy crowded. 

You will note that I have color-coded my first itinerary list to show the I have not gotten to half of the places I planned to see back in December of 2024, a full year before I left on my trip. Plans change and one has to be flexible. But as I look at this list today, I see a plan for the next trip starting to take shape. There is a lot of the world in red above that is still out there and ready to see.

The next trip will likely be west to east, first stop Morocco? One can dream.