I travelled for most of the year, every year, for most of my 30's. It was every bit as good as you would expect. I'll second the advice I've seen here about m

I travelled for most of the year, every year, for most of my 30's. It was every bit as good as you would expect. I'll second the advice I've seen here about moving slowly. Never put dates on your calendar where you need to be somewhere. Certainly don't buy an entire Round-The-World ticket that forces you to commit to a bunch of flights in advance. You'll spend your whole year missing out on cool stuff so that you can rush to the next airport and catch the next flight. I would typically book a one-way flight to an interesting sounding place, then let my trip evolve from there. So I'd start in, say, Cape Town. That's one end of a big continent, and the plan is vaguely "work my way North". At some point in the next year, I would run out of Money, Motivation or Africa, at which point I'd book a flight home or elsewhere. As it happened, the thing that always failed first was motivation. I'm a software guy, and my brain starts to get annoyed when it's not thinking. After 9 months of dirtbagging around interesting parts of the world, I'd feel the need to work again, so I'd arrange a contract back in the 'States and book another one-way flight home (or round trip home from wherever I was so that I could pick up again a few months later). Go slow, stick to public transport, avoid touristy areas. There's a lot of good still out there to be discovered. Good luck!