Planning

Unfortunately a magic genie didn't appear and book our trip for us. There were lovely Visa Officials and train booking forms in foreign languages to keep us entertained. This page details how we booked our trip- riviting reading really.

Itinerary (and approximate dates)

• Dublin to London (April 9th...)
• London to Berlin via Paris
• Russia
• Mongolia
• China (May)
• Vietnam (June)
• Cambodia (July)
• Laos (Mid July)
• Thailand (Mid August)
• New Zealand (Mid September)
• Fiji (End October)
• Australia (Mid November)
• Peru (early January)
• Bolivia
• Argentina
• Brazil
• April - June: No plan...

See our Travel Map.

 Visas

This was the least fun part of planning the trip, in fact probably one of the least fun things to exist in life bar getting a hot iron in the face. To find out what visas we needed we bascially wrote a list of all the countries we wanted to visit and checked the embassy websites. We needed to organise visas in advance for:

• Belarus (Transit visa to get from Berlin to Moscow- basically an excuse to screw you out of 50 euro)
• Russia
• Mongolia
• China
• Vietnam
• Australia

For the Russian visa you have to get a letter of invitation to the country before you apply for your visa. We got ours from Trail Finders for €50 each and then filled out an online application form (very carefully and completely, which goes for all of the forms. Beaurocracy is rife!) which we filled in and printed out and brought to the Russian Embassy (and coughed up another €60 each). The whole process was simple enough but took two weeks to process. We didn't need to have anything booked in advance. The visa is issued for a month and the dates must be specified in advance. Most embassies don't take cash so you will need to get a postal order for the payment amount. 

There is no Belarusian or Mongolian embassy in Ireland. The closest for both are in London. So we sent our passports off by registered post to a travel agency in London called Real Russia (recommended by Man in Seat 61 who should be King of the World...or at least all the trains in the world) who sorted these out for us. The Mongolian visa was expensive at almost €120 each for the express service. At first we thought that we needed to book loads of stuff in order to get the Mongolian visa and were about to scrap it from the itinerary. However, the requirements have changed since the email explaining the requirements was written and we did not have to have anything booked in advance. The Mongolian visa is valid for three months from the date it is issued and it allows you to stay for a month. It allows you to be a bit more flexible with dates than the Russian visa. The Transit Visa for Belarus was about €50 each. We needed to have the Russian visa before we could apply for the Belarussian visa. The transit visa allows us to be in the country for 2 days with a one month period. We wont be getting off the train.

As we are not flying in or out of China I was worried about this visa. However, they were happy with booking confirmation for accomodation in our first two destinations and confirmation of our train into China. Be sure to bring printed copies though or it is a long walk home from Ballsbridge empty handed! The visa (single entry- you will need multiple entry if you plan on going to Hong Kong or Macau) was €40. The application form is available online.

The closest Vietnamese embassy for us is in London. We decided to use the express service and pick the visa up in London when we were there. It was a very good system actually. We faxed over the form a couple of days in advance and then showed up with our passports and they processed it on the spot. It saved us posting our passports over which is always a worry.

For EU citizens getting an Australian holiday visa is very straight forward. You just fill out a form for free online and bada bing bada boom you're done. You can find the form through the embassy website. There are a lotof clicks to find the correct one though.

There are several visas that we will get on entry ... We'll keep you updated on how these pan out! Many counties (all in South America and New Zealand) are just sound and let us in without hassle.

Booking the Trains

We booked the sail and rail from Dublin to London through Stena Line. We have travelled with them a few times and have always found them good. They have a free shuttle bus from Westmoreland street to the port.

We booked the journey from London to Moscow in three different legs based on the invaluable advice of Man in Seat 61. Check out his website for more information. He has this journey outlined in lots of detail and provides other stopover options. We will travel from London to Paris by Eurostar and then from Paris to Berlin on the City Night Line Sleeper. We booked both of these legs online. We will spend a night in Berlin cause it is uber cool yah. The final part of the journey from Berlin to Moscow cannot be booked online. We used an Irish travel agency ATTS (very nice people) who book German trains for Irish customers.

For the journey from Moscow to Beijing, we again relied on Man in Seat 61. We booked through Real Russia. We will stop over in Irktusk for a few days, then Ulanbatar in Mongolia and then onto Beijing. Real Russia have a Transsiberian planner on their website which allows you to see what trains are running on what days. It made the whole thing a lot simpler.

Shots

We got our shots from Travel Health Clinic on Dawson Street and found them great. They were cheaper than a lot of other places that we looked at and were lovely. We even got a lollypop. I had a lot of shots from a previous trip and only needed to get a Typhoid shot (and a dead arm). Emmet got Tetanus, Polio, Diphthera, Hep A, Typhoid and Yellow Fever. We didn't get Hep B as we don't plan on sleeping around or trying out heroin. We didn't get rabies either as it doesn't offer full protection. It gives you four days to get to a hospital instead of two and means you would need to get 2 or 3 shots instead of 5. However, it is expensive and requires repeat doctor visits. We won't be that far off the beaten track and will try and stay away from dogs...oh a puppy!

Budget

I found a few blog sites that showed how much they spent on their trip and found it useful for planning. We will do the same when we get back to give people an idea how much such a trip costs. The main costs are/will be:

Fixed Up Front Costs

• Visas
• Shots
• Insurance
• Sail and Rail to London
• Trains from London to Moscow
• Transmongolian train from Moscow to Beijing
• Flights

On the Road Costs

• Accomodation
• Food and Drink
• Sightseeing
• Entertainment
• Day to Day Transport
• Miscellaneous, eg communication, washing, etc

• Activities
• Long haul trains and buses