How To Take A Gap Year
In my senior year of college, I was confused. While the rest of my peers were picking careers and preparing to enter either into the work or post-graduate worlds, I was drifting in a career haze with only a vague idea of what I might, eventually, at some point, perhaps want to do. My dilemma pervaded my daily thoughts and infiltrated my dreams. One night, I dreamt I held a magic eight ball in my hands and shook it to see what my future held. A message appeared in silver lettering. “Keep up the foreign travel thing,” it said.
“Wow! This thing knows what it’s talking about!” I thought, shaking it again to see what else this sage device knew.
“Your wife is cheating on you and you may have meningitis.”
I took the prophecy to heart- well, one part of it. A month after graduation, I boarded a plane to London and embarked on a year of adventure. I worked in London for five months, traveling the UK and Ireland while I was there, and then backpacked around first Europe, then Asia, and finally Australasia for two and a half months in each region. By the time I returned home, I was happier, freer, and more focused. Never had I gotten such good advice from an eight ball.
A gap year trip doesn’t have to cost $50,000. For students and young people under thirty, there are many different organizations offering discount tickets and travel deals as well as many work abroad programs to make traveling and cultural integration a financially viable possibility.
Everyone’s gap year should be designed to best fit his or her own personality and budget. After studying abroad in London in 2005, I knew I wanted to return to work and live again in the city, and then do nothing but travel. My friend Vanessa preferred volunteer work in India and China and traveling in between, while my friend Rosie is planning to hole up somewhere exotic to paint and my friend Arthi wants to flamenco dance her way through Spain. Here are some tips for organizing a gap year that’s right for you.
Work
Working abroad is an interesting and easy way to integrate into a culture, make new friends, establish a support network and fund a year of traveling. Some countries are more relaxed than others about issuing work visas, but the more developed the country you want to work in, the more difficulty you’ll find in obtaining a work visa on your own. An easier bet is to get a visa through a work abroad program. For a fee that you should soon make back while working, these companies do the nitty gritty visa work and help you find both work and housing once you arrive. Below are links to just a few companies that arrange work visas for young people:
BUNAC: www.bunac.org
Inter-Exchange: http://www.workingabroad.org/about-interexchange.html
Working Abroad: workingabroad.com
Further opportunities are listed on travel websites like:
In addition to using these resources, also rely on the same techniques you would use at home. Websites like Craigslist also operate in foreign countries and list many good work opportunities, though you’ll still have to arrange a travel visa on your own or through an outside company. Make sure to get word of your job search out to your friends and family. You never know who knows whom in any given place in the world. If you’re flexible and open to many different kinds of experiences, you’re sure to find a job that suits you.
Volunteer
Many of the organizations listed for work experience also arrange volunteer adventures, while other organizations focus primarily on volunteering. Most travel companies geared at young people arrange volunteer opportunities:
The website www.volunteerabroad.com also lists a number of good volunteer opportunities.
If volunteering is a passion for you, check out individual websites of your favorite charities. Any good international non-profit organization will have opportunities abroad.
Lastly, don’t forget the most traditional means for travel experiences- fellowships, awards and programs. These are often hard to get and require stellar project proposals, close work with your university and recommendations, but receiving one alleviates most financial burdens.
Fulbright: www.iie.org/
Watson: www.watsonfellowship.org
Peace corps: www.peacecorps.gov
Transportation- Worldwide
If you’re looking to do a round the world trip, your best bet is to buy a round the world ticket. These tickets rely on airline alliances and sell at a significantly discounted price. Each ticket is different and should be well-researched before purchase. My round the world ticket was misquoted in the States, so I purchased mine through STA Travel in London. STA arranged the ticket through Qantas One World Alliance and in one package sold me ten flights from London to London for £1500, approximately $3,000 at the time of purchase. To put this into perspective, this is a little more than one round trip from New York to Sydney. Other tickets through the same scheme included half as many flights for half the price and still flew the traveler around the entire world.
My ticket had few restrictions. It had to be used within a year after purchase, but I could travel in any direction I chose, though, since it was based on number of miles, it made little sense to backtrack. Other round the world tickets are based on number of destinations or continents visited. Different tickets are more economical for different types of trips, and some airlines may have cheaper deals in one continent than in another. The entry on round the world tickets on Wikipedia lists the benefits and detriments of each type of ticket (http://wikitravel.org/en/Round_the_world_flights). Many airlines can arrange a round the world trip directly, though you may want to find a travel agent to help you decide which sort of ticket is best for you and to help you sort through the many administrative hassles involved in booking one.
Transportation- Regional
Not surprisingly, regional transport depends on the region. If you’re planning on backpacking around Europe, the two cheapest options are bus and rail. Companies like Bus About sell hop on/hop off tickets with an allotted number of stops that the traveler can use as he or she pleases. Benefits of bus services like this are that they are cheap and are often filled with like-minded young travelers. Detriments are that buses run more infrequently than trains and that, well, you have to travel by bus.
The trains are also an economical, fast and clean means of transport within Europe and are by far the most popular with backpackers. Most travelers on extended tours purchase Eurail passes, which come with a variety of different options, each specifically designed for different sorts of trip. On my tour of Europe, I chose a two-month youth Flexipass, which allowed me fifteen rides in most European countries over that two-month period. Each slot on my ticket represented one travel day, during which I could travel either ten minutes down the line or across the whole of Europe. One of my friends, Shannon, who was only traveling for three weeks, purchased an unlimited three week pass, which allowed her to ride as many trains as she wanted within that time. Both of our passes provided us with the flexibility to leave our plans open. We could wake up in Europe in the morning and say, “Eh, I’m sick of Paris!” and in the afternoon we’d be in Amsterdam. That kind of freedom was as much a part of the trip as any of the places we went.
Eurail also sells passes for specific individual countries or blocks of countries, which can be more or less economical depending on the country and the region. For instance, traveling three hours on the train in ultra-modern Germany could cost more than €100, while a journey of the same length on the local trains in Italy could cost only €20. As such, if you were traveling extensively in Germany, a Eurail pass would save you a lot of money, while in Italy it might not be such a cost cutter. Eurail passes must be purchased within your home country, so really research your trip before you go, even if that means deciding you’d like a flexible pass to keep your options open.
Transport within Asia varies significantly based on the country. In some countries, western tourists aren’t even allowed to ride in the cheaper, less aesthetically pleasing trains with locals. Each country has different rules and different levels of organization. India is complete chaos while Japan is a well-oiled machine.
Transport in Australia and New Zealand is as modern, familiar and as easy to use as that in America. In Australia, most backpackers opt either to take the Greyhound buses or the Oz Experience. The Greyhounds sell unlimited 6-month passes for the various backpacking routes within Australia, much like a basic version of the Eurail pass and the buses are mostly filled with like-minded young travelers. The Oz Experience is mid-way between a tour and a regular bus company, transporting travelers along the main routes while providing commentary, and arranging activities and accommodation, none of which are included in the price of the pass. OE is a good way for single travelers to make friends and allows the traveler to choose when they’d like to go where, though buses are often too full to accommodate everyone’s wishes. Renting a camper van is a cheap option allowing for greater amounts of freedom, though this option is better for groups of travelers rather than singles.
The options in New Zealand are similar to those in Australia with the bus system, Kiwi Experience and Stray buses. Stray caters towards a slightly older crowd. The Experience buses also operate in Fiji.
Accommodation
Accommodation in Europe and Australasia’s hostels runs from $10 to $30, depending on region and quality. I got a soft bed with a duvet in a clean hostel in Krakow for $10, but could only manage a run-down one in Amsterdam for $25. In general, hostels in Europe are upgrading from stark, boring YMCAs to clean, fun hostels with fluffy couches, recreation rooms and bars. Paying $24 rather than $20 can make all the difference.
Hostels in Australia and New Zealand are starting to upgrade, but are more like what European hostels used to be. Australian hostels in particular have a rampant bed bug problem that cheap owners refuse to do much about.
Accommodation in Asia can be dirt cheap in hostels, and just plain cheap in hotels. You can save a lot of money in Asia by staying in places for $1 a night, but you can also pay $10 and not pick up diseases.
Tours
The word “tour” can be a very dirty term amongst independent travelers. There’s nothing more annoying than a group of idiot tourists bumbling after a verbose tour guide and refusing to integrate or embrace the local culture, but tours don’t have to be (and often aren’t) antagonistic with the local culture. A whole host of modern tour companies run trips for independent travelers, allowing the traveler to choose both comfort and interaction level based on their own needs, desires and budget. On the tours I took through the travel company Intrepid (www.intrepidtravel.com), the guide was there to ease our transportation woes and to arrange trips to remote destinations way off the beaten track. Once we got to that destination, we could utilize the tour guide as little or as much as we liked. This kind of tour allowed me to feel like an independent traveler, even though I was on a tour, and it also enabled me to let down my guard, something I probably wouldn’t have been able to do as a western woman traveling on my own.
Tours are often a great way to orient yourself in a foreign and entirely new culture. I had only ever traveled with Europe and was completely unprepared when I entered India for the first time. I was so overwhelmed with new sites, sounds, smells and experiences that I could barely walk down the street. Even figuring out how to find an ATM made me want to cry. Traveling on a tour let me sit back and slowly become acquainted with a new country and its strange, fascinating ways without feeling threatened by everything that was different. Oftentimes a tour like the one I took is a good way to find your feet in a new place before launching off on your own.
My year traveling was the most valuable and formative experience in my life so far. I now know far more about myself and my personal goals than I ever did in college. You can spend as little or as much as you like on a gap year, but it is possible for you to do it.