Do you know the price you could fly 30.000+ km for?
.
.
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Exactly €317!

I was blowing my horn with this number on march 2016, as I had found an offer which had made my jaw hitting the floor. €317 was the tickets price for the Rome – Addis Ababa – Johannesburg, Durban – Dubai – Bangkok – Addis Ababa – Rome flights.
Caught at expedia.de, probably a transactional error, someone kind enough put it on a travelling website I am subscribed to, with an annotation to hurry with purchasing.
I would sin if I didn’t go for it, so I booked.. 5 tickets 😉

Why 5? First – it’s an occasion, second – I imagined all those “why didn’t you tell me about it?” faces.

So, I started with telling it to my friends..

Due to the fact that we are two (me + my Magda, the constant companion of my trips) I sought for another reasonable couple or 2 women. Luckily, immediately after broadcast, I got a response from Melka, who had travelled with us around Lebanon and whom we liked to travel with – she wanted to join us with her boyfriend, Janek. And so immediately we agreed.
Finally, my sister also joined the party. She had been pushing me for some time to take her with me, so I couldn’t refuse now 😉
I guess I will take my mom for another journey, as she will be the only one from my closest relatives with no pleasure to travel with me yet 😉

There is one big disadvantage of this offer: we will do all these flights in 2 weeks only.
Matching the mileage and time it seems like we will have hell of a run. Quid pro quo, I guess, something for something. Besides, my days off are not rubber made, they are limited yearly.

Edges were set: we leave on 19th of January and come back on 2nd of February.

Regarding the detailed plan, it was limited by these dates and the mid-flights. We had to fill out the spare times between the particular legs: 6 night/7 days in South Africa, 6 hrs in Dubai (enough to see something and not get bored there), 4 days in Thailand and 18 hrs in Addis Ababa.

What to do then?

It was nearly obvious that we will go to do safari at Kruger Park in South Africa. It’s well-known, recommended and it’s close. This will take 2-3 days, the rest of our stay there is still to be filled.

Dubai, 6 hours, space for maximum 1 attraction. First thought – Burj Khalifa.

4 days for Thailand is not enough. Too long for Bangkok (however possible when doing also Bangkok’s neighbourhood), too short for beaching. Melka and Janek have already planned a trip there, I was there in 2013, so why not to skip Thailand and go do Cambodia? In 2013, I was one day short to go and visit Angkor Wat and I so unhappy with that. Now it was the perfect moment – 3 days to go to Siem Reap, see Angkor and comeback and spend one day in BKK. Awesome.

Least but not last – Ethiopia’s capitol. Since this country show its beauty outside Addis Ababa, I treated this 18 hours long visit as to get acquainted with the area, maybe to get some connections as the base for future visits.

At such a state I left the subject alone. In the meantime we did the motorcycle trip we had called “The Smallest Countries in Europe”, where I had loads of work with organizing everything.

And then Melka announced that she and Janek don’t go.
Reason? Funny (and serious at the same time). They just thought they could work over a baby, you know, noncommittally and… they succeeded at first attempt! What follows, in the period of our trip they will be finishing 2nd trimester of the pregnancy. Adding that it will be summer in RSA, that we go to the Kruger Park where a malaria threat is present they decided they will not expose nobody to the risk.
It’s a pity, from one side, that they miss the adventure, on the other hand I understand their fears.

So, only three of us go.

In the meantime I was observing the flight prices to Rome – our kicking ass offer started there, so we had to get to Italy somehow. It was a bit of concern, as money you had to pay for the round ticket with checked luggage were at least €125 (yeah, compare it with our €317 and you’ll see my issue:). So I waited, hoping for an occasion. Until I reached the point I felt I couldn’t wait any longer. But then an offer, let’s say, came from Wizzair. For round tickets for two people and one checked suitcase (we decided we’d fit in it, it’s only 2 weeks) we paid ~€150. Still, a lot of money, but affordable. There was one minus – on the way back we had a 10 hours stopover in Rome and it costed me additional day-off at work. Quid pro quo again.

I kept pushing away planning the missing parts of our trip as much as I could. I repeated myself I still have time.
And then Christmas arrived and I felt this is really the last bell. Less than a month left.
So I knuckled down, absolutely prepared for plenty of work and… I really surprised myself. I did nearly everything in 2 days, including planning the detailed budget! I also managed (which made me so happy) to book 4 nights at people from Couchsurfing, all in RSA. This will let us save a few hundreds, which we would now be able to spend at Burj Khalifa, for instance. Amazing, comparing to my recent struggle when trying to couchsurf in Malta.

So, our plan looks really amazing now!

After I put all pieces together and read the plan in whole, I really smiled to myself!

In short:
On Jan/19, around noon we fly to Rome. Then, shortly before midnight we depart to Addis Ababa. Then a 1,5 hr stopover and another flight to Johannesburg, where we arrive around 1 PM local time. We rent a car and head towards Kruger Park, where we sleep nearby.
Next 2 days we drive around the park and watch, photograph and shoot (with camera) all the elephants, lions, giraffes, rhinos, games, Pumbas, Simbas and other warthogs. Every day until the sunset.
After these 2 days, when we are full of gems, we go to see views in Drakensberg mountains and to Swaziland, to send postcards from there. On the same day, in the evening we will hit another plane and fly to Cape Town.
There, in two days we want to make selfies with penguins, to see Cape Point from the top of the Table Mountain and wash our legs in cold water on the Cape itself.
Then, on Jan/25 evening we will fly to Durban, where, on the next day morning we want to do the main hook of the trip – underwater safari with sharks, with no cage.
If we are still amongst the living ones after that, we will finish our South African stage and spend the night on the plane to Dubai. There, having 6 hours only, we will try to go up the Burj Khalifa. I used the “try” word on purpose – it’s not sure yet if we go there. This shit is expensive, min. €40 per person and we don’t know yet if it’s worth such money.
No matter what decision we’ll take, minutes before local noon we will enter another plane to land a few hours later in Bangkok.
This will also be a short stay, a few hours only, as early morning, with the train or bus, we will go for a battle with border guards on the Thai/Cambodia crossing in Poi Pet. Having that won we will somehow travel to Siem Reap to check-in to the first and only hotel (not hostel) on our trip.
Plan for next day is to sleep well, hire a tuktuk and wander around Angkor Wat for the whole day. Evening for relaxation, shopping and going to bed early, to be able to get up around 4 AM, to mix with hordes of other tourists that, just like us, will want to see sunrise at the Angkor. However, I assume our jet-lag will make us sleepy only after the event, when we are in the bus back to Bangkok.

Jan/31 is a day for Thai capitol. I managed to book a nice and cheap hostel, around 1,5 km from the Grand Palace, so we will not lose time for transportation and we’ll be able to leave our luggage there, after the check-out.
Then the airport again and another flight to Addis Ababa. We arrive there in the morning and, with a little help from the locals, we want to feel a bit more of African climate, maybe taste it as well.

And that would be all of our trip

as the same day evening we will fly back to Rome, where, as mentioned above, we will have to wait around 10 hours to get back to Warsaw. We’ll see the situation then plus money we have left and decide, if we can/want to go and see the city a bit.

Summarizing, we will visit 7 countries and make over 38000 km. It will be definitely the longest in distance trip I have ever made. It will even cap the the Transsib.

Full budget, including all flights and attractions, per person, shouldn’t exceed 1,3 k€. In case I am mistaken, we will organize a quick crowdfunding event, to be able to comeback home 😉

Keep your thumbs for our luggage not to get lost, our cars not to get broken and for we are bitten only by mosquitoes without malaria.