Epic Adventure Design: Brainstorm, Budget, Go!

1. INTRODUCTION: Are you dreaming about an epic adventure? No, I'm not talking about a long weekend in New York. More like a month in Amsterdam. Canals, museums, delicious food that I can't pronounce. Hookah bars. That would be epic. Or how about three months exploring Spain and Portugal, Madrid, Granada, Lisbon, amazing history, architecture, food and wine. Or maybe you need a year traveling around South America. Tourists upon EA, iguanas, Sioux Falls, and pinatas. It's a big continent. There's a lot to see. That's what I'm talking about. An epic adventure in this class who will make a bucket list of dream destinations and choose one to design your very own epic adventure. We will iron out some details including when you should go and for how long. And finally, we'll tackle the big burning question. How much will it cost? Maybe less than you would imagine if you've been thinking adventurous thoughts, but just need a little direction, a little push. This class is for you. I'll be sprinkling in some of my travel photos for destination inspiration. I'm Alexis Dian cab. I'm a nomad photographer and travel blogger and I wonder the world on a tight budget. I'm in Mexico to share my process for designing extended travel and help you plan your epic adventure. 2. BRAINSTORM your dream destinations: Hi everyone. I'm Alexis, I'm on location in Mexico. This is epic adventure design. Now, I'm a nomad and I've traveled quite a bit. I have a fairly simple multi-step process for designing adventures that I've perfected over the years. In this class, I'm going to explain the process and walk you through some examples. As we go along, you will have the opportunity to practice this process with your own epic destination. Now, this is a creative process involving brainstorming research and honestly, a little bit of soul searching class. You'll feel your adventure coming together and have a clear picture of the parameters of your trip. We will answer the big questions where, when, how long, and how much. Now we're going to start by creating a bucket list. So I have an ongoing bucket list of destinations that is always evolving. Usually I get my best ideas from other travelers. But also YouTube and travel blogs. Don't feel like your list needs to be set in stone mind certainly isn't. It's always growing. I mean, you don't ever want to run out of destinations. So in a notebook or on the back of an envelope, whatever you happen to have nearby, you're going to jot down some of the places that you would love to visit. This doesn't need to be in any particular order, just whatever comes to mind. These places could be cities, countries, regions, continents. There are no rules, just any place that you think would make a great destination. Even if you already have a destination in mind for your epic adventure, this is a great exercise for any adventurous type. So here goes. Now I have a couple here that are particularly popular, so I'll just give a shout out to Iceland, very popular, also very expensive northern lights, geothermal springs, volcanoes, what's not to love? Croatia, miles of coastline, great beaches, fairy tale cancels National Park Zagreb. Does this down. Good. Feel free to add these to your list. Portugal, outstanding wine, amazing pastry. I think I gained five pounds there. New Zealand, never been, but I hear it's beautiful. Okay. If any of these places sound intriguing, add them to your list. Remember, this list is ongoing so you can add to it at anytime if you need more time to work on your list, pause the video here. Okay, now, take a look at your list. You might have 10 or more places. That's a great start. Let's narrow it down. Circle or underline the ones that are heavy contenders for your epic adventure. So maybe circle a total of three. I'm going to circle Japan because I've been thinking about Japan for a long time. It's on my shortlist. Now, Italy and Croatia, those two countries are basically right next door to each other. So that may be part of the same adventure. I'll connect them like this. The same could be said for hungry and Prague. So if you have anything else like that, go ahead and make the connection. So those are three that I think that might be good options for me. Now go ahead and circle two or three for yourself, and then meet me in the next video to pick one destination that is inspiring you the most. 3. WHERE will you go?: Hi everyone. I'm Alexis, I'm on location in Mexico. This is epic adventure design. Now, I'm a nomad and I've traveled quite a bit. I have a fairly simple multi-step process for designing adventures that I've perfected over the years. In this class, I'm going to explain the process and walk you through some examples. As we go along, you will have the opportunity to practice this process with your own epic destination. Now, this is a creative process involving brainstorming research and honestly, a little bit of soul searching class. You'll feel your adventure coming together and have a clear picture of the parameters of your trip. We will answer the big questions where, when, how long, and how much. Now we're going to start by creating a bucket list. So I have an ongoing bucket list of destinations that is always evolving. Usually I get my best ideas from other travelers. But also YouTube and travel blogs. Don't feel like your list needs to be set in stone mind certainly isn't. It's always growing. I mean, you don't ever want to run out of destinations. So in a notebook or on the back of an envelope, whatever you happen to have nearby, you're going to jot down some of the places that you would love to visit. This doesn't need to be in any particular order, just whatever comes to mind. These places could be cities, countries, regions, continents. There are no rules, just any place that you think would make a great destination. Even if you already have a destination in mind for your epic adventure, this is a great exercise for any adventurous type. So here goes. Now I have a couple here that are particularly popular, so I'll just give a shout out to Iceland, very popular, also very expensive northern lights, geothermal springs, volcanoes, what's not to love? Croatia, miles of coastline, great beaches, fairy tale cancels National Park Zagreb. Does this down. Good. Feel free to add these to your list. Portugal, outstanding wine, amazing pastry. I think I gained five pounds there. New Zealand, never been, but I hear it's beautiful. Okay. If any of these places sound intriguing, add them to your list. Remember, this list is ongoing so you can add to it at anytime if you need more time to work on your list, pause the video here. Okay, now, take a look at your list. You might have 10 or more places. That's a great start. Let's narrow it down. Circle or underline the ones that are heavy contenders for your epic adventure. So maybe circle a total of three. I'm going to circle Japan because I've been thinking about Japan for a long time. It's on my shortlist. Now, Italy and Croatia, those two countries are basically right next door to each other. So that may be part of the same adventure. I'll connect them like this. The same could be said for hungry and Prague. So if you have anything else like that, go ahead and make the connection. So those are three that I think that might be good options for me. Now go ahead and circle two or three for yourself, and then meet me in the next video to pick one destination that is inspiring you the most. 4. FIND inspiration: Now it's time to get inspired. A beautiful photo should do the trick. Go online and find a photograph that will encapsulate your destination. Now, I'm working on Japan. I might find a photo of a Japanese temple or the famous bamboo forest near Kyoto, or a map of Japan. Find something and the keyword here is inspirational online and this is important. Upload it to your project as the cover image. I will personally comment on every single photo. I'll let you know if I've been to your destination and if I've blogged about it, I'll share the link to my post. If you have a printer nearby, you could even make a paper copy like this to post on your refrigerator. I will quickly walk you through this process. So I'm searching for photos of Japan. And I find something I like. Click on the image, right-click and choose save image. And of course it's important to remember where you saved it. Then I'm going to navigate to my project for this class. Click on cover image and find where I saved that photo. Publish and you're done. 5. HOW LONG do you have? Need?: We're making great progress. Next, we're going to figure out how long you have for this epic adventure. So do you have vacation time? Can you work remotely? Are you between jobs? Are you self employed? Are you planning a sabbatical? Are you retired? Maybe you don't fall into any of these categories and you don't have time right now, but hope that sometime in the future a break will present itself. Great. Let's figure out how much time you have or how much time you will need for this epic adventure. Now this is an important note. If you are traveling internationally, Of course, every country has restrictions and limitations depending on your passport. So make sure you figure out the details before you get too far into the planning stage. Japan, for example, US citizens are allowed 90 days on essentially a tourist visa. But there are some details that you need to look in. And of course it's different for every country and different for every passport. So generally, and I guess this is a surprise to many people. The more time you have, the cheaper your adventure will be per day. This is especially true if you travel slowly. Now by traveling slowly, I mean, spending 28 days in one place. I know what you're thinking. 28 days. But hear me out. When someone asks me and they often do, how do you travel so cheaply, I say, I travel slowly. And you could too. If you take away only one thing from this class, it probably should be with regards to travel. Slow down. So here's my strategy. There are lots of ways to book accommodations, but let's just take a look at Airbnb. If you book 28 days at one place, you save roughly 30 percent. This is huge. That's like getting eight days free. And of course you can take day trips or even weekend trips to nearby destinations. Now, if you're on a tight budget like IM I tried to stay under 20000 dollars US a year. I'm focusing on 28 days. So if I had a month in a city, I book an Airbnb for 28 days, take some day trips with my tiny backpack leaving most of my junk at my Airbnb. It's a huge bonus to not have to look everything with you. I call this the 28 day rule. Almost every trip I make is based on a minimum of 28 days, three months in Spain, 3, 28 days days, Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, for example. Now renting an apartment like on Airbnb With a Kitchen also allows you to shop grocery stores and make meals at home, saving more money. So recently a friend was telling me about his three-week tour of the Greek island. Ticket price, roughly 6 thousand US dollars. We were having lunch and I nearly choked on my falafel sandwich because for that kind of money, I could travel to Spain for three months. And I have, here are some of my blog posts from that amazing time. Now, if you are independently wealthy, none of this matters, but if you're trying to operate within a modest budget, consider my 28-day recommendation. There are lots of cities around the world where you could spend 28 days and never get bored. Now please update your project page with the duration of your adventure, 30 days, 90 days, one year. And then join me in the next video where we will discuss what time of year is best for your destination. 6. WHEN will you go?: This epic adventure is really starting to take shape. Next, we'll figure out what time is best to visit your destination. By best time, I mean, maybe the best month to visit your destination or the best season to visit your destination. Now some things that I take into consideration are whether this is very important to me as I prefer warmer weather, I also consider high season, low season, and shoulder for my destination. This impacts the cost of a trip as well as how crowded it will be. And personally, I like to avoid the hordes of travelers that descend on popular destinations during high season. Now if your destination is October Fest in Munich, you are kind of locked into being there in September, October when the festival is going on. So there's no need to strategize. For the rest of you. We're going to dive into the weather and travel seasons for your destinations. So let's take travels seasons first. So high season is the busiest time of the year and the most expensive. And low season sees the fewest tourists. And there's a season in between those two, which is called shoulder. And that's usually when I try to go. Here's what I do. I go to Google and figure out when high season is for my destination? In this particular instance, I'll use Kyoto, Japan. Because of the places I'm going to visit in Japan, Kyoto is probably the biggest tourist destination. Hi season in Kyoto is March through May, and then again September through November in the spring when the cherry blossoms bloom and in the fall for fall foliage. And there's also a golden week, which is for national holidays that occur late April and early May. And honestly, it would probably be best to avoid those times, even though that's when the cherry blossoms will be bloomin. Low season is June, July, August, and also December, January and February, but I don't want to go in the winter. So I would probably consider something that incorporated a little bit of May, June, and maybe July. Now unfortunately for me, Kyoto doesn't have much of a shoulder seasons, so I'm going to have to sort of make my own by doing a little bit of high and a little bit of low season. Hopefully your destination will have a shoulder season because that's a nice time to travel. Now let's talk about whether I'm gonna go back to my notebook. Now. Maybe you only have time to go in the summer, but if I have a choice, here's how I sketch it out. High temps and rainy days. I should point out that if you like cold weather or snow, you can travel to a lot of places in certain times and basically have the whole place to yourself. So I'm going to write down the highs for the months that I'm thinking about. So maybe I'll start with april 68, may 77, June 82, and July eating nine and August 92, you can see it starts to get quite hot in August. Now, I'm using Fahrenheit degrees here, but feel free to use whatever you are the most comfortable with. Now let's talk about rainy days. April 9, May, June 11 days too, I 12 and August eight days. There's no right or wrong answer here. It's all about personal preference. And because I tend to like warmer weather, I'm thinking that sometime maybe the first or second week, second week in May till mid August, whatever gives me 90 days. So now go ahead and do the exact same thing for your destination. Sketch out the months of the year, high season, low season, shoulder season. And then get some idea about what the weather will be like so that you can choose the best time to visit your destination and then add that information to your project page. Like so. And don't forget to publish. And if you're making a paper copy, add it there also, don't worry about mistakes. This is a work in progress. Next, we will answer the burning question. How much will it all cost? 7. HOW MUCH will it cost?: Congratulations, you've made it to the final step where we will figure out how much your epic adventure will cost. So here's the plan. We are not going to list every expenditure and add up 1000 columns. No, this is going to be a rough estimate. I'll explain my process then we'll tackle a few examples. The math here is in US dollars, but if you work in another currency, use your currency. First, I figure out the cost of my housing. Next, I figured out transportation, for example, round-trip ticket to your destination. And finally, I plug these numbers into this very simple equation, 2 times my housing plus my transportation. And then I have a little option where I can have a separate line for anything special. For example, I might take a Spanish class, a cooking class. This gives me a good, solid, rough estimate that is a minimum. Now I've developed this equation because I usually spend about as much on food and miscellaneous expenses as I do on my housing. So 2 times housing covers that. Now I'm going to give you a rough idea what my month in, uh, he he Mexico has looked like. My Airbnb was $600. And if you multiply that by 2, I've got 1200. Now, I bought a one-way ticket from Chicago to Guadalajara. But if I had purchased a round-trip ticket, it would have been about $300. So let's use that for our calculation. I add that all up and it comes to $1500. And that includes flights, accommodation, food and more. I have a nice apartment. I go out for coffee, I go out for lunch and dinner sometimes. And I needed to buy a couple of sweaters because it's cooler here at night. And that's all included in the $1500. Now the beauty of this equation is that it's scalable to your personal standards. It works for budget travelers, first-class travelers, and anyone in between. So one month in Amsterdam could be calculated as $2 thousand for someone on a tight budget by choosing a budget flight and budget accommodations. But a first-class traveler would choose first-class flight and high-end accommodations. So their price tag would be higher, maybe $6 thousand. So if you want to calculate your flight for a future adventure, I go to Google Flights or I go to sky scanner to see what the flight will cost. I like to purchase international flights about 45 days out. So I'm going to demo this with my trip to Japan. I'm looking for a flight from Chicago to Tokyo. I have toyed with the idea of going to Hawaii first. And I have also considered by a one-way ticket to Japan and then going to Taiwan after, instead of returning to the United States, it's good to have some options and remain open-minded. And it looks like the flights are going to cost between seven hundred and fifteen hundred dollars depending on if there's if it's going to be a direct flight or if there's going to be one stop. Now I'm headed to Airbnb to see what 28 days will cost in Kyoto in the month of May. Now, I'm looking at Kyoto because I believe that's going to be my first destination. Okay. So I don't know exactly what my dates are going to be, so I'm going to put in May 15th to June 12th, that's 28 days. And I'm going to adjust the price to around $1400. And then I'm going to look for a super host. Super hosts tend to have more experience and great ratings. And especially when I'm staying someplace for a month, I like to book with the stupor host. You can choose to rent an entire home. Or you can also choose to just have a private room in someone else's house. And they will probably be there too. So you'll have a room and you'll either have a shared bathroom or you'll have a private room and a private bath. And it looks like there are quite a few studios under a $1000 a month. Now, take a look at this one. This apartment is a real possibility and I think I could get away with using $1000 a month as an estimate for the dates of May 15th to June 12. 8. EXAMPLE: 1 month/3 months in Japan: Now you have a general idea about how I budget for my trips. Two times housing plus transportation. And then another line for anything extra. In the last video, we estimated the class of accommodation in Kyoto, Japan in May at a $1000 US a month. And I estimated my flight add $1500 on the high side. So now let's look at three examples. The first two will be using the numbers for Japan will at one month in Japan and three months in Japan. So if I were to estimate one month in Japan, I might consider 28 days in Kyoto, and that's two times the housing plus transportation to 0, two times $1000 US plus $1500 for the flight. $2 thousand plus $1500. We're looking at 3500 dollars. Now. I'd probably need to spend one night in Tokyo and then take the train to Kyoto the next day. And at the end of the trip, I'll probably need to do the same, go to Tokyo the at least the night before and fly from Tokyo. So I'll probably need two nights in Tokyo, and in addition, I'll need to budget the train from Kyoto to Tokyo. So when I'm only booking one or two nights in a place, I skip Airbnb and look for a hotel because it's a lot easier to check in and check out of a hotel because they're open 24 hours a day. So I'm on Booking.com and I'm seeing that there are quite a few things for under a $100. Now, these are pandemic numbers. I mean, I'm looking at them during a pandemic. And so there is a possibility that when the pandemic is over, if the pandemic is ever over, that these prices may go up. The train from Tokyo to Kyoto is, runs about a $100, maybe a $125, depending on when you purchase your ticket. So I'm going to budget $325 for a night in Tokyo. And my train ticket grand total here, $4,150. Remember, Japan is not cheap. Now maybe you don't want to spend a 28 days in Kyoto. That's no problem. You could divide your trip up differently. You might do two weeks in Kyoto, one week in Osaka, in one week in Hiroshima. Now, keep in mind that if you're only booking one week on Airbnb, that the discount is less, roughly 10 percent. Now this does not include dining at Michelin star restaurants, and this also does not include consuming a case of champagne every night. If you have that kind of lifestyle, you need to add a line item for fine dining and whatever else you need. And I would just like to emphasize here, no judgment. Now, a couple of things to keep in mind. The first is you do not have to stay at Airbnb. Although that's mostly what I do because I like having a kitchen and most times it's cheaper than a hotel for lung stays. Also, the price of things will vary depending on the time of year. So if you're going someplace in May, don't check the price for January or December, these will be different. Now, of course, if you're traveling with a partner or if you're traveling with a friend, you may be able to save on accommodations if you are going to divide the price by two or more people. Another thing to keep in mind is a price for everything can change overnight and there is no guarantee that when you go back to book your flight or your hotel or your Airbnb months from now, the price will be the same. This is sad, but it's true. It's not a bad idea to give yourself a 20 percent cushion. Now let's talk about three months in Japan. Of course, you're going to have the same cost for a flight. And you're going to have the same caused for spending a night in Tokyo. We already have that figured out. The train travel to and from Kyoto. We've already figured that out. What I would usually do is figure one month or 28 days and Kyoto and then one month in Osaka. And sometimes what I do when I'm traveling is I leave my last month, open. It figure out approximately what it's going to cost. But that last month, I can plan when I'm on the ground, I might decide I love Kyoto, so I'm going to go back to Kyoto and spend another month there. I might decide, oh, I'd really like to go to three other places that I've heard about while I'm on the ground, each of those places for a week. Or really I needed more time to explore Tokyo. Whatever it might be is nice to have a little flexibility in your planning. And the way to budget that is to just guess based on what you're seeing on Airbnb. And that last month, I'm figuring will cause me about $1500 times two for our equation. And that comes to 3000 dollars. And the reason I put a little bit more money in there is because I'm might do for one week stays, those will always be more expensive. And then I'm going to need train travel between these places in, in Japan, the trains are fairly expensive, so I've budgeted $600 for that grand total. We're looking at $10 thousand, basically us plus or minus 20%. Now this isn't going to be an extravagant vacation. This is an opportunity to live like a local street food, grocery shopping, cooking at home. You get the idea. Now for me, that's a pretty pricey trip. And so at this point I would start to consider maybe some other options. One option that's sort of floating around in my head is that I could attempts to get a job in Japan teaching English as a foreign language. 9. EXAMPLE: 1 year in South America: Now we're going to talk about one year in South America. Now of course, the more you move, the more complicated it is to calculate because you have different destinations with different costs, you have more transportation. Now I have been to South America four times for a total of about two years. Most of my time was in Colombia, Ecuador, Argentina, and Chile. And most recently I spent one whole year of the pandemic in managing Columbia. Now you have a general idea about how I budget for my trips. Two times housing plus transportation. And then another line for anything extra. Now, this is a big continent, so it's good to have a strategy. You might want to start at the top, maybe Carta Hannah, and go around one side and back up the other side with an eye to the weather. There is some extreme weather to be avoided. Now I think if I were planning a one-year trip to South America, I would choose six to 12 destinations to spend one month. So of course, it totally depends on where you go. If you are going to budget this, write a list of places where you might want to spend a longer amount of time and look up Airbnb, but I'm trying to chosen one more expensive city, Bogota, Colombia, and one cheaper City, La Paz, Bolivia. And then I'm going to take an average of those two. So Bogota runs about 8, $900 a month maybe. And lipase is closer to three or $400 a month. So I might use five or $600 as my average. We've already used this equation twice, so you should be getting the hang of it. So a flight to cart a Hanna from the United States will set you back about $300 round trip 12 months. If you decided to stay in 12 different places for a month, I would estimate that at $600 times two for our equation comes to 14,400. And then I think you would need transportation. And I would guess that this would be a combination of buses and trains, not trains, planes, buses and planes. I've never seen a train in South America. And from my experience, I think $4 thousand would probably cut it. I'd say 20 thousand US dollars is a good estimate for a year in South America. So let's say you want to move around a little bit more. And you want to move, let's say every weekend instead of 12 destinations, you want to have 52 destinations. You're going to need a little bit more money for that. I would say you're going to need $200 to $300 a week. So let's say 250. That comes to $13 thousand for the year because there are 52 weeks in a year. So then you're going to multiply that by two, that's 26 thousand and your flights the same 300. And I think for in-country transportation, I would bump that number up to $6 thousand. Now you can see this is a pretty rough estimate, right? But that's closer to 32000 us. So you wanted to do something in between 12 places and 52 places. I say 25000 dollars, right? For a year. This is really, really rough, but it gives you a good idea what it would cost to run around South America at your own pace. So word to the wise, these numbers do change. And it's best to do your own research for your own trip. Even if you're planning on going to the same destination that we have discussed here. 10. WRAP UP: Well, congratulations are in order. I truly hope you have a clear picture of your epic adventure. I am looking forward to seeing your projects. Don't forget to post your paper project on your refrigerator or somewhere where you'll see it every day. Drop me a line, send me a postcard. I'd love to get your thoughts on my process and this class. Feel free to follow my near daily posts on Instagram. Free range CIC, that's not one, not two, but three underscores, free, underscore, range, underscore, chick underscore. And feel free to follow my blog of the same name, free range chick. I generally write opposed to every time I'm in a new destination. And by the way, I'm currently working on a few more classes for adventure travel, including one about planning and one about creative ways to fund your trip. Stay tuned and I hope to see you soon.