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You might have heard the phrase “around the world tour” and thought that the idea sounded like a great one. Traveling around the world on one trip and seeing multiple destinations at once can be eye opening and invigorating. But how, exactly, does one go about booking such a trip and what really constitutes as an “around the world tour?”

For starters, unfortunately you can’t just go to Expedia and book an around the world flight. On the other hand, you also don’t have to purchase 15 different one way flights, either. Still, it’s not as complicated as you might think it is. It’s also probably not as expensive as you might think, either. In fact, some people are able to score tickets for less than $2,000, depending on their destinations.

The most expensive way of traveling around the world is to purchase the tickets as you go

Since there isn’t one airline that covers all destinations around the world, you will have to fly on partner airlines, or what they term “alliances.” The largest alliances are One World, Star Alliance, and Sky Team. If you visit their websites and purchase your tickets there, you might not save money, but you might end up with a ticket that has better flexibility.

So why is flexibility important?

Well, let’s say that you are visiting Bombay and you planned on staying a week. However, once you get there it’s not quite what you expected and after 3 days you’re ready to move on. Flexibility in your ticket can help you do this. Likewise, if you are visiting Sydney and you decide that you want to stay an extra 3 days, you might be able to do that, too.

If you really just want to save money, then you can try some of the larger online travel agencies such as Circle the Planet and Airtreks which both sell around the world tickets. These consolidators buy airline tickets in bulk and then sell them to customers at discounted prices. They might also be able to get you on a more direct route to the destination that you want to visit.

Be prepared, however, that these tickets might be more direct, but they will also probably have higher change fees, too, and possibly more restrictions. In other words, you might just be stuck in Bombay for your original amount of time and have to make the best of it.

So what might be a good journey? The following is an around the world ticket, put together on Airtreks’ website.

New York city-London-Athens-Bombay-Bangkok-Singapore-Sydney-Lima-Los Angeles. The cost for the ticket was $3500. However, they also gave an alternative route which consisted of: New York-London-Athens-Cairo-Bombay-Madras-Bangkok-Singapore-Sydney-Auckland-Santiago-Lima-Los Angeles for only $4,000.

One trick that some people use is to only fly into large cities and then to use those cities as “bases” to explore surrounding areas, instead of flying into smaller airports that might be more expensive.

The most expensive way of traveling around the world is to purchase the tickets as you go. However, this would definitely offer you the most flexibility and you might get lucky and find some incredible deals once you are already in the country. Then again, you might not.