How I’ve Budgeted 5 Months of Travel (and how you can too)

I take a weird pleasure in budgets and crunching numbers, but I hated math in school. I love writing this blog and reflecting about my travels, but I hated all my English classes.  Imagine that.

If you know me at all, you’ll also know the sick joy I take in planning things. Really, it can be planning anything, but planning my own trip is obviously the most satisfying. (Go on all you ‘spontaneous travelers’, now is your time to click away.) So in an effort to calm my nerves from embarking on a five month trip, and to also assure myself I can finish it without being completely broke, I devised a strategy to get an estimated budget for it all.

It isn’t exact, it certainly isn’t perfect, and I’m sure when we are traveling things will change.  Still, I feel there is no reason to not be educated about the costs and interests of your trip. These numbers didn’t come over-night. As I researched, I took notes and slowly gathered info.  This way, it was never too overwhelming.

Additionally, after seeing all of this, you’ll probably think: (1) I have way too much time on my hands or (2) I’m a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic.  Call it what you like.  Hopefully, other travelers will find this helpful.

Where did I start?

I started planning the route to ultimately get a set amount of days in each country. This doesn’t mean each day is planned, but it does mean I came up with a specified amount of time in each country, within the time-frame of the entire trip. Though I’ll be travelling through the same region of the world, each country’s expenses need to be divided up.

Next, I came up with a list of expenses, which I looked at differently for each country.

1. Costing of the visas and the first flight: Research depending on your destination and nationality.

2. Daily budget (Accommodation and food only): Most backpackers like to round-off one number for their daily budget which includes accommodation, food, drinks, extras and transportation. Though some days this works, on others it will completely fail. If you know how you travel, an average of nightly accommodation and food should be decently easy to estimate with the help of other online resources. First, I found an estimate for budget accommodation in each country. Next I came up with a rough average of eating cheap and local food each day.

Tip: Over-estimate. Some days I know we can do this cheaper, some days I am sure we will go over.

3. Transportation: I split transportation into the areas of flights, trains, and buses. After having researched the route of the trip, one by one, I took note of where we would be taking long distance trains, where we would have to fly and where we would be relying on bus travel. I priced the long distance trains, I got an average for each flight within the season we will be travelling  and priced the bus and long overland border journeys. Some numbers will turn out to be pretty exact, but of course, some will fluctuate.

4. Tours and special trips: Luckily for me, I’ve read a lot of blogs and talked to a lot of people who have travelled through these countries. Simon and I have a pretty good idea of our “must-dos and must-sees”. These include: tiger safaris, camel safaris, boat tours, the Everest flight, etc. I made a list of all I could think of in each country, and googled their average costs.  For cooking classes, which I plan on doing as much as possible, I had a lot of trouble as the costs vary greatly.

Tip:  The majority of tours will be lower in price when in the country, or when booking in person via your hostel.  Online prices can at least give a decent idea but you should aim to pay less than this!

5. Alcohol/Shopping & Extras: Drinking and shopping could eat up an entire budget, no matter the country. Because of this, I left this section until after I had finished the rest of the budget.  I saw how much more we could afford to spend, considered the country and area we will be in, and assigned an amount.  If you are planning a vacation to Thailand for the Full Moon Party or to Los Angeles to shop, you might consider budgeting for this first. We will be travelling extensively, sometimes in rural areas, while blogging along the way (aka working for free ), so I considered it last.

6. Other travel expenses: Make a list of the things you will also need to budget for. For me, I still need to find travel insurance, booster vaccinations, a netbook (my brick computer would never survive this trip, let alone the next few months) and a new backpack suitable for this length of a trip. Do you have bills you will still need to cover at home?  Do you have medications you will need to stock up on?

Now, for my numbers:

Flight to Kochi, India from Seoul, Korea: $280.

Flight prices seem exuberant this year.  If you are curious on how we snagged this bargain, and why we are intentionally missing a flight during the journey, read here.

India

• Amount of days: 40
• Visa: $76
• Daily Budget (accommodation & food): $22 a day, $858 total
• Transportation (trains, planes and automobiles): $157
• Tours & Special Trips: $155
• Alcohol/Shopping/Extras: $135

Total: $1,381

Nepal

• Amount of days: 14
• Visa: $25
• Daily Budget (accommodation & food): $20 a day, $280 total
• Transportation (trains, planes and automobiles): $125
• Tours & Special Trips: $225
• Alcohol/Shopping/Extras: $75

Total: $730

Thailand (before and after Myanmar) :

• Amount of days: 12
• Visa: $0
• Daily Budget (accommodation & food): $25 in Bangkok, $20 in N. Thailand, $265 total
• Transportation (trains, planes and automobiles): $200 (flight from India, flight to Burma)
• Tours & Special Trips: $60
• Alcohol/Shopping/Extras: $125

Total: $650

Myanmar:

• Amount of days: 11
• Visa: $70 (online, cheaper at embassy)
• Daily Budget (accommodation & food): $22, total $242
• Transportation (trains, planes and automobiles): $125
• Tours & Special Trips:
• Alcohol/Shopping/Extras: $50

Total: $487

Laos:

• Amount of days: 24
• Visa: $30
• Daily Budget (accommodation & food): $20, $480
• Transportation (trains, planes and automobiles): $60
• Tours & Special Trips: $90
• Alcohol/Shopping/Extras: $80

Total: $720

Vietnam:

• Amount of days: 26
• Visa: $20
• Daily Budget (accommodation & food): $20, total $520
• Transportation (trains, planes and automobiles): $175 (includes estimate of motorcycle rental)
• Tours & Special Trips: $100
• Alcohol/Shopping/Extras: $85

Total: $900

Cambodia:

• Amount of days: about 16
• Visa: $20
• Daily Budget (accommodation & food): $20, $320
• Transportation (trains, planes and automobiles): $40
• Tours & Special Trips: ?
• Alcohol/Shopping/Extras: $50

Total: $430

5-month Asia trip estimate total: (Not including: Travel insurance, booster vaccinations, other pre-trip purchases and my flight to California at the end.)  $5,578

Not bad, right?  It goes to show, you don’t need a trust fund to travel the world.  All you need is to assess your priorities and have a determination to save. At the same time, traveling at this budget means the occasional: less-than clean guesthouse, noisy dorm-room hostel, and miserably long bus journey.   But personally, I wouldn’t trade it.

As we travel, I’ll be keeping track of my expenses (a first for me!) to see if I estimated well, or missed the mark completely.  Of course, I’ll post it here for anyone who is curious and as a resource for other travelers.

This will be my first trip where documenting the experience will be of big importance, instead of on the back-burner.  I enjoy creating my lifestyle around travel and building up this blog. I can’t wait to share it with everyone along the way.

If you like what you read, and want to support us, there will be many ways to do so, even if it is just through clicking that little blue ‘like’ button.

Have you recently backpacked through these countries? How do my numbers look to you?