Making the Dream Trip a Reality; The New York Times, October 12, 2010
Hierve el Agua, Oaxaca, Mexico
This is not a groundbreaking article but it still hit a note. It's now sometimes surreal to me to read articles like these. I was wearing those wary shoes 9 months ago. Now I feel like an intermediate level traveler but still with much to learn. It's cool how fast attitudes and life changes. Now I'm reading such writings from the other side.
by SUSAN STELLIN
http://travel.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/travel/17Prac.html?hpw
IT’S a dream anyone with a passport fantasizes about once in a while: ditching everything to travel the world for a year, or at least long enough to forget about office life.
Acting out that fantasy tends to be reserved for retirees and recent college graduates, but some midcareer globe-trotters hope to show that anyone can hop off the treadmill and go travel.
“Once you get outside the confines of your day-to-day life, you discover things about yourself,” said Sherry Ott, a New Yorker who quit her middle-management job in 2006 to travel and who now wants to inspire others to take the leap.
She and two partners started the company Briefcase to Backpack, which offers seminars (and a coming online class) on the practicalities of planning an extended journey, or what they call a career break.
“What makes it a career break is you have to have a career you’re leaving, but you plan to come back, maybe even in the same field,” she said. “It’s not just early retirement.”
Ms. Ott and other career-break veterans recently hosted events in 13 cities, where they answered questions about their experiences from 1,500 aspiring travelers (in some locations, hundreds more were on a waiting list). I dropped by the one in New York a little skeptical about what I’d learn, but found that I could relate to many of the issues the panelists identified as barriers to taking time off.
Here is some of their advice about clearing those obstacles.
Plan for Your Budget
For many people, a big issue is determining how to pay for an ambitious journey, which definitely requires some saving - and planning - a year or more ahead. The career-break veterans on the panel estimated that they spent between $1,500 and $2,700 a month (a person), or about $20,000 for a year away. But they also suggested ways to keep costs down.
“It’s more expensive if you keep moving around from place to place,” said Michaela Potter, another Briefcase to Backpack founder, mentioning Central and South America and Southeast Asia as more budget-friendly destinations. She cited hostels with communal kitchens as a cheaper lodging option because they allow travelers to keep meal expenses in check.
Other people save by becoming volunteers. Ms. Potter, who managed to save for several long trips while working for a nonprofit organization, spent about $2,000 for a six-week volunteer experience in Cuzco through the group Peru’s Challenge. The trip included housing, Spanish lessons and a trek along the Inca Trail. She recommended idealist.org as a helpful resource for volunteer opportunities.
Working along the way is another option. Ms. Ott taught English during an extended stay in Vietnam. With high-speed Internet access, other globe-trotters said they were able to do freelance editing, copywriting or computer programming. Selling or subletting your home can also help finance a trip - especially if you can do so at a profit.
Expect Resistance
It may not come as a surprise that pressure from family members can dampen a dream to travel the world.
Marie Elena Martinez said that when she decided to quit her job in book publishing and travel to South America, her parents worried that she’d get off track in her career, not to mention put herself in dicey situations by traveling alone. “Their fears became my fears,” she said. “Once I kind of shut off that white noise, I took the leap.”
Other career-break veterans echoed that advice, and found that with technology offering more ways to stay in touch, the naysayers often became armchair travelers through Facebook updates and blog posts.
Marc and Danielle Hoffmeister took on an even bigger challenge when they sold their house in Dallas and took their daughters (ages 7 and 10) on a yearlong trip - one of many families who have chronicled their journeys online, proving it can be done.
Although Mr. Hoffmeister thought it would be complicated to take the girls out of school, all he had to do was fill out a form; the family liked home schooling so much that they stuck with it after returning to Dallas. They’re now planning their next trip.
“Just having a second bathroom feels luxurious,” he said. “We’re able to live a lot more frugally now.”
Know Your Limits
Not everyone can - or should - take a year off.
“People get overwhelmed by thinking they have to do it all at once and give up everything, and that’s not the case,” said Ms. Potter, whose trips have ranged from nine weeks to six months.
Easing into your trip in a more familiar country is a way to reduce anxiety about leaving home. When she and Michael Bontempi (the third Briefcase to Backpack founder) first traveled together on a nine-week trip, they started in Australia so that he could decompress without too much culture shock before visiting Thailand and Laos.
But most people who spent a year or more traveling said that they planned only the first three months, letting the rest of their trip unfold as they learned more about the world and themselves.
“I learned fairly quickly that I had a real interest in traveling to remote and undeveloped countries,” Ms. Ott said. “I never would’ve believed that about myself when I was planning my trip in New York.”
She also joined a group trip to go places she was uncomfortable in traveling alone, like visiting Morocco with Gap Adventures, which specializes in small group travel. “At first I was scared of traveling alone as a female,” she said. “Now it doesn’t faze me anymore.”
Plan Your Return
Returning to the working world can take just as much effort as mapping out a travel itinerary, but it isn’t as daunting as some people imagine.
For instance, Mr. Bontempi quit his job as a management consultant because he was ready to move on, and traveling for several months helped him decide that he wanted a different type of work when he returned. He now works for a global outsourcing company, and he said that during his job search, he found recruiters more wary of his time off than employers, who viewed it as an asset in a global economy.
He and other panelists advised keeping in touch with work contacts while away, letting people know when you’ll be back, keeping your résumé updated and marketing your travels as an experience that will make you a more valuable employee.
“At networking events you differentiate yourself almost immediately,” Mr. Bontempi said. “I found a lot more people wanted to talk to me.”
But if you hope to return to the same organization, approach your employer with a firm plan, said Elizabeth Pagano, a founder of YourSabbatical.com, which lists nearly 100 companies that offer sabbaticals and sells an e-book (for $37) with advice on negotiating with your employer. One tip: offer suggestions on how the work will get done while you’re away.
“You need to show them that you’ve thought through what you’re going to do, how it will make you a better employee and how it will benefit the business,” Ms. Pagano said, adding that in a shaky economy, an unpaid leave can save your employer money.
“If this is something you really want to do, you can do it,” she said. “People of all economic situations find a way.”