I will be the first to admit that this trip may not be for the faint of heart. If you are a slow traveler, then what I am about to say may shock you and it is best to skip this post. However, if you are like me and want to see as much of the world as possible in the little time that you have to do it, then this may just be the post you are waiting for. This is how I managed to travel through 6 countries in 2 and a half weeks.
The trip planning all started when I found out the dates that I needed to be in Prague to defend my master’s thesis. Yes, I was one of the lucky people who got to call Prague home. I was an even luckier person when a job which combining my two biggest passions based in one of my favorite countries fell into my lap. Now, I call Delhi home. My thesis defense was left in the dust as I packed up my life and moved continents. However, I still wanted to finish my degree and finished my thesis remotely.
When the university first gave us a rough idea when our defense would be, round-trip tickets to Prague were around $550. As I eagerly awaited a final confirmation, I watched the prices slowly creep up. Eventually, they were up to $700. In the meantime, a German friend invited me to come stay with her and her boyfriend in Munich the weekend immediately after my defense. I can never pass up the opportunity for good beer so I knew I had to make it work.
Flights into Prague and out of Munich had some crazy layovers so I began to get a bit creative. A one way flight into Kiev (my favorite city in Europe) was sitting at $300. Knowing that I could easily make my way overland via Lviv and Krakow to get to Prague, I decided to bite the bullet and fly out a few days before. In the end, I traveled from Kiev to Prague for a grand total of $64 then on to Munich for $16.
From there, I started looking at flights from Munich back to Delhi. All of the cheapest flights flew via Istanbul with long layovers. Knowing that I had to buy a Turkish visa even to switch planes, I decided to make the most of it and visit Cappadocia, which had been on my bucket list for years. What sweetened the deal was that I was able to find a direct flight from Munich to Kayseri (one of the main access points to the region) on Sun Express Airlines for only 77 Euro.
Once I had secured that flight, I started looking at another bucket list destination, Iraqi Kurdistan. Many people don’t realize that there is a section of Iraq that is safe and has been safe throughout the entire Iraq war. ISIS got close but they weren’t able to penetrate the region. By playing with my dates a bit, I managed to find a flight to Erbil, the capital of Iraq Kurdistan, for just over $200 and then a flight from Sulaminyah (Iraqi Kurdistan’s 2nd city) to Delhi for $300.
Many people that a trip hitting so many diverse locations had to be extremely expensive. Instead, I spent approximately $200 more than what I already had to spend to get to Prague to visit one of my most favorite cities, eat pierogies in Poland, drink beer with friends in Munich, hike into the valleys of Cappadocia and experience the amazing hospitality of Iraq. Don’t be scared to play around with airports, cities or schedules. You may end up having the trip of a lifetime!
