A Round-the-world trip in numbers

About ten days after coming back home, I thought statistic fans would like to put some numbers on the experience I lived.

First, including the day I left and the one I got back, the trip will have lasted six months, or 183 days.

Chance was on my side, since I estimate the number of days lost because of the rain to three. Clouds broke more often, especially since I was in south-east Asia during the rain season, but it never stopped me from visiting. Chance being on my side, bad weather usually appeared while I was traveling from a city to another one. Sun or not, it wouldn't change anything.

The only time I saw snow was on top of mount Tangariro, in New Zealand, but it was in the southern hemisphere summer.

I crossed the border of 20 countries (USA, New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, Macao, China, Japan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Jordan, Greece, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Portugal, Brazil, Argentina and Cuba), excluding Canada, to reach the objective I set at first. That means taking 28 different planes, which brought me in five more countries (Fidji, Taiwan, Egypt, Czeck Republik and Panama) where I only got down of the plane for a transfer. I will have needed seven visas to be allowed in the same amount of countries.

I had to cross two countries from my list (Uruguay and Paraguay) because of some unforseen events, deleted three more (Sweden, Denmark and The Netherlands) because I ran out of time, but got in two I didn't expect to visit (Greece and Cuba).

I estimate to 72 the number of cities I stopped in, slept in 58 hostel/hotels, most in nice enough conditions, and took more than 16 500 pictures. I learned and spoke few words in at least seven languages. But don't ask me to remember them all. I used 16 different currencies and I probably have some coins left from most of them.

My Facebook account has about 115 new friends. It seems impossible to keep in touch with all of them, but I wish the links I built stay as strong as possible. And there are those who don't have a Facebook account.

I will have gone all the way with only one pair of shoes and a pair of flip flops. But I used six pairs of sunglasses and four pairs of headphones for my iPod.

In the same order of business, I broke two cameras, the third one, which I bought after a lot of efforts, survived by the skin of its teeth (!). I also learned to use carefully my second razor, trying not to break it, after I killed the first one. I bought a good old hand razor to make sure I wouldn't have problem with the 220 V power.

My luggages got lost once, but ended up coming back to me.

I visited two hospitals, took at least six different kinds of medicine, and have been traveling on three different animals (horse, camel and elephant).

I rented a car, a motorcycle and an ATV, driving on the wrong side once with the car and having broken breaks on the ATV.

I missed home once, thought about restaurants from home between five and ten times, lost about 10 kilos, celebrated a birthday and got nostalgic for at least a whole week toward the end.

I took 31 trains, 7 of them at night, at least 8 boats and an incalculable number of buses and metros.

I published 12 articles about my trip in the local newspaper.

Clothes wise, I kept everything I brought from the start but I was forced to buy two pairs of shorts, a t-shirt and some underwears. Thanks lost luggages.

I published at least a hundred posts on this blog, wrote more than 230 pages on my computer in a very short summary of my trip. 

About the amount of kilometres I traveled, I have no idea. Same for the money spent. I estimate I must have spent at least 20 000 $. But the experience was worth any amount of money. And what I take out of it will stay for me longer than anything I could have bought.