What's this round the world trip thing about anyway?

Most of my close friends already know that I am leaving Switzerland for a couple of months to travel around the globe. Eventually, they have been very helpful in buying most of my legacy electronic gadgets and thus partially financed this trip.

What's the motivation?

Some of the round the world travellers seem to have a motto, as it is the case for most of the blogs that I have read in the past few weeks to get up to speed in planning: Worldbiker: "a bike ride in search of fish", Technotrekker: "Someday I'll find a home", Me-Go: "Around-the-World". Finding a motto seems to be also finding the reason why going on such an extensive trip. Now, this is my problem: I solely enjoy seeing the world, meeting people and enjoy different cultures and food. There is no spiritual reason for this, nor do I have a strange hobby which requires me to travel to remote places. And there are a lot of places I always wanted to see (Samarkand, Siberia, Mount Everest, Lhasa, Vietnam, New Zealand, Easter Island, Patagonia and Terre de Feu).

There are even some places, which simply won't fit into the journey (namely Petra, Khor Virap, Zvartnots, Baku) - for this time. So, maybe one day I'll come up with a motto. Until then, I'll simply be roaming as most of the Nomads do. And I'll be enjoying every minute of it.

So what is the plan - and for how long does this journey last?

• Leaving Switzerland towards Austria, Moscow, then south to the Silk Road, heading back north to Siberia, Mongolia and China will be the first leg of the journey. I'm expecting this to happen until August.
• The second leg will take me south to the Pacific area to New Zealand, where I'll be double-checking my budget. This should happen by the end of October.
• If everything checks out fine, then I should be heading for South America by the start of December and come back to Europe earliest by March 2009. Look for the little map icon at the right, to monitor updates to the planning.

If things go well regarding Internet access, I should be able to update this blog once or twice a month (maybe even more).

Departure will be in April. Until then, I'll have to figure out quite some organizational stuff. If time permits, I'll be posting this fun part of the journey as well.