Daichovo

Just finished buying last few flights of a year's worth of travel.
I am still new to credit, don't qualify for miles-earning cards yet, so earned what I used the old fashioned way, butt in seat, or promos. A lot of the UA miles I used VDB certs to pay for.

$1639 out of pocket to go to places I WANTED to go. Some of which weren't super deals but oh well. I also used 12k Lufthansa, 20k AA, and 80K UA. I earned about 15k on Alitalia, around 6k AA, and some scattered other miles/points.

I made a map and it looked kinda redunculous but I thought I'd share. Maybe someone else can get some inspiration.


Countries:
Hungary, Austria, Czech Republic, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Fiji, Japan, China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Nepal, India, Israel, Egypt, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Italy, Spain, the US. Also had long layovers in New Zealand and UAE that were/will be enough time to have a look around.


**Thanks emailkid for doing the insert img, I am slow with that kind of stuff.

MightyTravels

What did you do for the more exotic places like VLI, NOU and NAN? Must have been miles...

Yoshi212

If you wouldn't mind I'd love to see the routing and how you acquired it. Miles/Cash/Voucher.

hscottm

Congrats!!

RustyC

What, no South America? And only Cairo for Africa?

ULN is good if you can catch it in Naadam, and TVU is probably good to see while you still can.

With airlines getting bad about awarding RDMs for flying (but still doing so many for other things), the future might be in hopping between LCC hubs and fanning out from there.

I know how labored these things can get, so congrats!

Daichovo

Yeah, I was in ULN for Naadam. Actually I heard the provincial naadams were cooler. Though I did get to shake hands with the president twice, that was cool, went to some crazy parties too. Mongolia was definitely a highlight and a month was barely scratching the surface IMO.

I dunno, coming from the US, South and Central America isn't so exotic, yeah? I was in LA the last couple years, one neighborhood I lived in was heavily Brazilian, another had a lot of people from El Salvador. Another time, I just wasn't feeling it. Africa is hella expensive, I couldn't afford it. Was hoping a volunteer thing would work out in Zanzibar but then they changed the program and now want a couple hundred per week to do it, that's way out of my budget. And it's not JUST Cairo, I'll be travelling around Egypt a bit- Sharm, St Catherine's/Mt Sinai, Luxor, Aswan, Abu Simbel, maybe Alexandria, etc. Hopefully can do a felucca trip for a couple days if I find something cheap.

Daichovo

Here's more than you ever wanted to know about how I booked these, upon special request from Yoshi212

LAX-JFK-FCO-BUD//PRG-AMS-NRT (DL,AZ,OK,KL) $315
This was that 2/3 RTW fare, I got in on the end of it. I was super excited since I missed the PRG-AMS flight and they put me on Czech Air instead, and asked if that was OK. Get it?!?!?!

NRT-SYD-AKL-NOU//NAN-AKL-PVG-NRT 25K UA + $171 (JL, EK, NZ, NH)
The first bit was supposed to route through PVG but it was delayed a few hrs so they put me on JL/EK. That was great since I never flew them before and I got to credit the miles.
I won't even get into how difficult and time consuming it was to book this, but by the time I got them to price at correct Japan to Oceania rate, I gave up trying to figure out a stopover in NZ in between. Availability to Oceania sucks, book LONG in advance.

NOU-VLI, VLI-NAN, TVU-NAN (SB, FJ) $378
Three different but unavoidable cash tickets. Fairly expensive, ouch!
TVU-NAN was incredibly scenic, I'd dare say worth the $150.

NRT-KIX, KIX-CTS $79 (MM)
MMmmm Peach.

CTS-PVG $153 (9C)
This airline is awesome because they make you do stretching and simple QiGong before landing. Every airline should do this, I'm really serious! Plane was pretty new. It was cheapest way for me to get to China from Hokkaido.

I took trains from Shanghai to Ulan Bataar. Then I needed to go to Almaty to meet some people. Overland would have been super cool but it would have taken too much time, maybe even money depending on how it played out. My Russian also sucks. Compromised with the following redemption and a direct bus Urumqi-Almaty

ULN-PEK-URC 15K UA + $20 (CA)
Cash tickets to Western China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan were a few hundred smackers, so saved a lot with this.

FRU-OSS-FRU $67 (PC)
This route can be had under $20 one way. Don't even think about doing this by land, it sucks. The rest of my Central Asia travel was via marshrutka, (shared) private jeep, bus, and train. Don't fly, you will miss landscapes. Only route I'd recommend is from
Khorog to Dushanbe but the flight was sold out when we got there (the guys I was with didn't want to book ahead). Scenery was incredible along the Panj but super bumpy and the driver insisted on only folk music from Badakshan. Like this: AWESOME, but without dancing? For 15 hrs on a bumpy road? OMG-------d. Even I don't love ethnic music THAT much.

FRU-DEL-KTM $0 (PC, 6E)
Covered by volunteering, but cash were $160 and $80 respectively.

I used trains and buses to get around India and Nepal.

MAA-BKK-IST-TLV
TLV-IST-SSH
CAI-BKK-MAA (shhhhhh)
$86 + 40k UA (TG, TK, MS)
A sweet spot in the UA chart, it priced as about $5000 cash. This routing lets me fly as much TK as possible
PS I'm leaving for this tonight, anyone want to hook me up with lounge access in MAA or in IST tomorrow?

DMK-DPS, CGK-SIN, SIN-LGK, KUL-COK $138 (AK)
Four cash tix.

COK-AUH-FCO 20K AA + $5 (EY)
I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to get from SEA to Europe where I was staying with a friend for a while. I was thinking I'd use the 20K AA miles (mostly leftover from US Air) to get back but that involved me actually flying AA. You can see a recent post I did in that forum to see why I preferred avoiding that. Then I saw this, found a mistake fare $12 KUL-COK (btw MightyTravels, you guys didn't hat tip me like you promised), and decided to book this.

Mixed feelings as the cash fare was like $300 but this was my thinking:

India to Europe w/cash= around $300 + Europe to US 20k AA + $90 taxes
India to Europe w/miles= 20K + $5 + Europe to US $200.

Yeah, I'm that cheap. Went ahead and booked it as I've not flown EY either and to Rome because, what the heck? I basically am doing the Eat Pray Love route in reverse. Maybe that means I'll score a husband in Indonesia or whatevs. By the way, that book is pretty terrible.

FCO-BCN $22 (FR)
I never flew RyanAir before. Seeing a trend here?

BCN-LGW-LAX $199 (DY)
I saved $50 by booking through the Norwegian site instead of the US one.

Will visit friends and spend the rest of my time cooking and dehydrating meals for my Appalachian Trail thru hike. Which, I'm also travel hacking.

LAX-SFO-PHL 12K Lufthansa + $6
I stashed a bunch through promos and holiday check. Visitin folks, preparing mail drops of food, and doing Easter gigs for a little extra cash.

PHL-IAH-ATL 10K UA + $6

Hiking the AT. Actually I cancelled this (reflected in original post now) and am unsure if I will fly or train it. I'm pretty sure a relative has a bunch of amtrak points he doesn't know what to do with. The flight routing is kinda retarded too, my options were either IAH or ORD. I also might apply for Delta card, my credit history might be long enough then to get it.

Total minus that last bit of miles since I might not use 'em:
80K UA, 20K AA, 12K Lufthansa
$1639 ($925 of this was paid while travelling, the rest I bought before I left)

I've spent a bit under $7000 (including the $925) so far which is pretty good considering some expensive places like Japan and Central Asia (some of the cool stuff there is unfortunately on private tours which are between $30-50/day)

briannaalice

Hello, Im totally new to travel hacking so I was wondering what platforms you used? My main source currently is ITA matrix but it doesnt work for RTW tickets. How are you able to do the 2/3 rtw tickets without completing the trip (going back to the original destination). When I try to do it through the alliance websites it makes me "complete the itinerary" and the fares I'm getting are nowhere close to these.

Any advice? Best tools you used to book this incredible trip?

TOMFORD

This is crazy

RustyC

I can't answer on behalf of the OP but would just say that you can do a "poor man's RTW" out of the U.S. by getting an Asia award ticket over the Atlantic allowing useful stopover(s) en route.

I had to book such a thing once or twice years ago on SQ with DL miles to get around DL's summer "brick wall of unavailability" for lowest-cost awards. 70K to BKK with a stopover in AMS, which was really great in that it was June. Other carriers may have more possibilities or let you buy more stopovers for $75 or $100 or so. The thing you have now that you didn't have then are carriers like Air Asia with some insanely low fares if you book ahead (I've walked away from tickets on them because the ticket value was far lower than the change fee). You could get to a lot of places out of KUL and even do it round-robin style. (I didn't have such advantages on my big sabbatical and actually had to take trains , use miles for *A awards intra-region or buy tickets out of Khao San Road in Bangkok).

I remember one case in trying to book a return over the Pacific in one of my over-the-Atlantic outbounds where they told me it'd cost 50K more miles to fly back over the Pacific (even though it was shorter), because then it'd count as a RTW and cost more miles .

Also, one of my tickets in the great Etihad mistake fare of last Christmas was IAD-AUH-MNL and v.v. EY would be a possible candidate for stopping in Europe and maybe AUH on the way to Asia, fanning out from each long stop. EK in DXB also could do it.

JDiver

Holy hamhocks!

This should be a FlyerTalk classic! Great strategic mind at work here. ^

Daichovo

Hey, sorry, been jaunting around Israel. I used skyscanner a lot, then momondo usually would save another buck or two once I knew when to search (the routes I flew often didn't show up in that best fare bar graphy thing there)

That first fare was on all the blogs, think I saw it on might travels first but it was on ft as well. Gotta be ready to jump on those, this one worked for me.

MojaveFlyer

Nice trip!

berrythekid

Best post I've ever read on FT. Unreal what you were able to put together. I need a mind like that!

giantreesemar

Just out of curiosity, how are you getting from SSH to CAI? Please don't tell me bus. That route overland is ridiculously dangerous at the moment and I would strongly discourage you from taking it. (I say this as a professional Mideast security researcher. )