What we have learnt

We thought it would be useful for those planning a trip to share some information on what we have learnt to-date.

Medical

You will see on an earlier blog that I make reference to malaria advice. Check which countries you are going to as not all malaria tablets work in every place. Carl is going down the allopathic route as he is taking Doxycycline but due to my intolerance to medications, I have opted for a homeopathic solution. If you are only taking a short trip (up to 3 months), you can obtain homeopathic malaria tablets (see ainsworths.com based in London). I have used these on trips to India etc. As we will need malaria cover for about 8 months, I am using a product called Demal200. This is homeopathic and comes in small spray bottle. It can be used as a preventative as well as treatment should you get malaria. It is about £35 a bottle. Check out Blue Turtle website. In terms of skin protection, we are going to use Avon So Soft Dry Spray Oil to keep the mosquitoes at bay. It is kinder to the skin than DEET etc and apparently some mosquitoes are becoming immune to DEET.

I found vaccination advice frustrating as although every doctor I spoke to recommended the same vaccinations for the countries we are visiting, none of them could tell me if medically they would be safe for me to have (as I have a few allergies). One practice suggested that I have a small amount of the vaccine under my skin to see if I would react, other travel nurses just said ‘suck it and see!’ Anyway, not being satisfied with the ‘advice’ I had been given, I paid £120 for 30 mins to see a Dr Richard Dawood at the Fleet Street Clinic in London – he was voted by The Times newspaper as the number one man to know in travel. A somewhat strange little man who certainly knew his stuff and listened to my concerns. Anyway, he suggested a vaccination programme which would be the safest possible route for me. My main worry is that you cannot give some vaccinations to people who suffer from atopic conditions (eczema and psoriasis) from which I suffer. By the way, if you do have these conditions, steer clear of the Japanese Encephalitis jab! Anyway, I had tetanus, diphtheria and polio together, waited for 1 month, then had Hep B, waited for 1 month, then from recollection another Hep B, waited another month and finally a combined Hep A & Typhoid jab. I will need another Hep B and Hep A/typhoid booster when I return in 12 months. I was told it is better for my system not to have the Twinrix vaccination (as this gives you more Hep A than you need). This was the reason I had Hep A combined with Typhoid.

As for remedies whilst we are away, we are taking Liquid Biocidin; this is made from grapefruit seed extract and is anti-bacterial and anti-viral. It is suggested you take this in water to help with traveller’s tummy but is also good for so many other things. Homeopathic remedies we have packed include Arnica (for accidents/shock/bruising), Apis Mel (for bee stings), Coca (for altitude sickness), Cocculus (for travel sickness), Ledum (for bites and any piercings to the skin), Pulsatilla, Belladonna and Rhus Tox.

I would like to point out that I am not trained medically and have not studied homeopathy! These are just things that I have researched.

Flights and Insurance

Round the world tickets are sold in various packages – 29k miles, 34k miles and 39k miles which are generally sold through most specialist travel agencies and a few traditional ones. We can only really suggest shopping around (via an internet search) as our tickets initially were costing anywhere between £3k and £4K each!!! The other problem we had was with our route, as it is bespoke and getting travel agents to think outside the box was difficult. We only seemed to be able to find people who could do the ‘traditional’ routes with Star Alliance, The Great Escapade Ticket and One World.

We would like to say thanks to Travel Nation as they managed to find the most suitable tickets for us using a mix of One World and separate tickets which still gives us the flexibility to amend our dates, and at the most reasonable price of £2,000 each.

As we are trekking to Everest Base Camp, our insurance had to have helicopter evacuation off of the mountain. The best insurances we came across were World Nomads and Direct Insurance. The former covers you for lots of different activities and sports but is much more expensive than Direct Insurance. We went for Direct Insurance as it covered all our needs – it was about £375 for the most comprehensive joint policy for 12 months. (Although it was recommended that if we wanted to do the more risky activates – snowboarding for example – it works out cheaper to add this at the time, rather than at the onset of the policy as this would have doubled the premium).

Finance

Quite a few people have asked us about how we will handle money whilst we are travelling. We have spent a good while researching the various options available and we will only know if we have chosen wisely when we are travelling!

We have decided to take three types of card each on joint accounts, as well as cash and travellers cheques. We have a Caxton FX Global Traveller Card; this is essentially a top up card – a bit like a mobile pay as you go card. We load this with sterling either online or by phone and we can then use it like a debit card as well as at ATM’s. The benefit of this is that it is commission free and we should get better exchange rates than other type of cards (there is a 1% handling fee at the time of writing which is a fee applied by Visa).

We also have a Post Office credit card as again you don’t get charged on transactions abroad. This is also the best way of dealing with pre-authorisation requests you find at hotels etc as even though no cash is taken the holding amount can remain on your card for up to 30 days.

Our final account is a Nationwide account with a debit card. Again other than the 1% handling fee there should be no other charges when using on purchases or withdrawing cash from ATMs.

Ideally you need to have a Visa and Mastercard, to ensure all bases are covered – some places only take Visa and vice versa.

Please note these solutions worked for us and we can’t say whether they are the best or not, we can only give our opinion and suggest if you are planning a trip of this nature you do your own research that best meets your needs.

Documents

It is difficult to know what to take and what not to take as space is at a premium but other than the obvious (passports, driving licence, tickets, insurance etc) we decided to take all other important documents on a USB stick; these have included blood group, itinerary, packing list, useful pages from our travel books as well as scanning the documents we are taking with us. All the documents will be saved to the lowest file structure to avoid any compatibility issues and as a final back up we have emailed all the documents to a secure email address in case we both lose our memory sticks.

Kit

Please see our separate packing list blog