Hi there,

In about two years I want to embark on my journey of a lifetime.
I want to travel the whole world (at least a big part of it) in a VW T4 Syncro.
Obviously there still is a lot of planning in front of me.
The route is roughly set and I’m here to show it to you and hopefully receive a lot of feedback and tips.

This is the global map and I will get into detail below.





Chapter 1
Europe

From Austria (home) I wanna go to Italy, Switzerland, France and so on. This part is pretty self explanatory. No visas needed.
A few ferries in the UK, Morocco and Finland and from Denmark I will take the big ferry to Iceland. (with a stop at Faroe Islands)
This chapter will end at home to do maintenance and make changes on the vehicle if necessary.





Chapter 2
North America

North America starts with a container to Canada (Halifax). I chose a container instead of RoRo because my van will have personal belongings in it and I just feel more secure that way.
The route is pretty straight forward again and I will take some flights to Hawaii, Cuba and Puerto Rico.
The “North America” chapter will end at the Darien Gap where I will get another container to cross it.





Chapter 3
South America

Arriving in Colombia I will follow the route until I arrive at the port in Montevideo. Also no visas needed for South America.
If everything goes according to plan and Africa is safe at that stage I will apply for African visas with a second passport and ship the van to South Africa (Cape Town).





Chapter 4
Africa

In Africa I will take the east route which ends in Alexandria (Egypt) and hopefully there will be ships going to Greece or Italy at that time.
It’s not easy to plan that far ahead with security issues and stuff like that so I’m not even trying right now.
From southern Europe I will drive home again for another maintenance stop.





Chapter 5
Middle East

I will follow the route and again it’s impossible to know now what the situation will be in two years.
Like the other chapters the route is still very rough but I know which countries I want to visit and I also have a pretty specific list of POIs.
I’m hoping that I will be able to go through Myanmar in two years. If not I will ship around.





Chapter 6
Asia and Australia

South East Asia I want to travel by car if possible. China, Philippines and Taiwan I will have to fly.
After some island hopping though Indonesia I will ship from Timor-Leste to Darwin in Australia. Container again for security reasons.
Australia to New Zealand with a container as well and then another one to Japan.





Chapter 7
Russia

Arrived in Japan I’ll do a ferry to South Korea and another one to Russia.
From there I will drive home along the Trans Siberian with a visit in Mongolia and Kazakhstan. Through the Ukraine and home.





This is pretty much it so far.
I wanted my trip to be relatively easy at the beginning (Europe and North America) and have the tricky countries at the end.
If worse comes to worst I can also cancel after Europe, South America or Africa. You never know what happens.

What’s next is to figure out durations for each continent, country.
And also make a plan of all the cost.
What bothers me the most right now is all the container shipping but I feel like there is no alternative.

And now I’m so excited to hear your feedback. Thanks a lot in advance.