Map 1: Defining "Less Traded"

This map should provide a quick outline showing the countries we plan to visit, and what I mean by "Less Traded" relative to "Most Traded", "Least Traded", and "Not Traded". (Posted as a "page" on my other blog - but worth repeating here in a post)

Blue are the "Most Traded" countries, basically the G10, plus the rest of the Eurozone, and major financial centers in the rest of Asia Pacific like Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Australia. These are covered by financial measures such as the S&P 500, EuroStoxx, Nikkei, EUR/USD and USD/JPY exchange rates, and quite simply the most liquid interest rate, credit, equity, currency, etc. financial markets in the world, not to mention an uninterupted list of at least the top 5 cities in the world where someone with an advanced degree in finance (as I have) is likely to work.

Green refers to the countries we plan to visit on the Road "Less Traded", which we hope will cover a large percentage of the "emerging market" countries I worked with and could roughly sub-categorize as: 1.) 3/4 of the "BRIC" countries - an easy majority of the truly emerging market volume I have seen over the past 5 years, as well as the three who had economies centrally controlled around "Five Year Plans" in the 20th Century; 2.) The three most traded Eastern European countries, covered by the CECE Traded Index and three of the most liquid currency pairs with the Euro; 3.) The former Soviet states of Ukraine and the Baltics, plus the former Soviet ally of Mongolia, which I only looked at indirectly; 4.) Finland and Slovakia, both of which are now part of the Eurozone and Finland is definitely "First World" (hence the slightly darker color), but both made sense to pass through to avoid difficult visa situations (Belarus), bus rides (Estonia), or flights; 5.) Turkey, which was probably the strongest US ally during the Cold War and mostly a front according to James Bond in From Russia with Love, but is definitely still an "emerging market" as far as trading and investing go; and 6.) Southeast Asia, of which: a.) Singapore is really a "First world" country, b.) Thailand and Malaysia are the most traded of the emerging ones, c.) Vietnam had a booming stock market 2-3 years ago and is uniquely interesting as a communist state that was a hot spot of the Cold War and a fascinating historical relationship with the economies of the French and Chinese empires, and d.) Laos and Cambodia, which would both still qualify as "Not traded" countries (hence the slightly more yellow color) but are convenient to pass through and should provide a good comparison for how these two other heirs of French Indochina developed differently from Vietnam.

Yellow countries are the most traded emerging markets, each of which I had encountered on the trading desk at least as much as most of the green countries. These are basically "Less Traded" countries that are simply not on the Road Less Traded, mostly because there is no direct rail or short boat connection to make a continuous route with the green countries, but also because these are the major emerging markets that were not as intimately related to the theme of the "Second World", "Cold War", or "Former Soviet Sphere".

Red is my attempt to capture the remaining countries I could recall encountering at work at one time or another, and hope to visit in the near future, but the actual ability to trade them was so limited and the interest so rare that I classify them as "Least Traded".

It may be worth emphasising that the choice of (or lack of) color of any one country is in no way a judgement of how developed or aligned any given country is, but rather a purely subjective account from my own memory of about how often I encountered these countries when trading equity, currency, interest rate, or credit derivatives over the past five years.

Many thanks to this SVG map template for helping make the creation of this map as easy as adding a few two-letter country codes to a text file (plus of course the difficulty of deciding how to categorize the countries).

Another slight inspiration: Morgan Spurlock

Last night we watched Where in the World is Osama bin Laden by Morgan Spurlock (the producer of Super Size Me and 30 Days.

While we do not plan on taking survival training, much of his tour from Egypt to Pakistan did have some interesting comparisons and contrasts with our plan, starting with the vaccinations. I still can not figure out why he got the yellow fever shot unless he was planning to go to Sudan or somewhere else that was not on the film.

A nice reassuring point is that a long trip can be more rewarded when planned around a theme, and having some sort of continuity in what one looks for from one place to the next. I was a bit amused to observed that he was a white guy traveling through a good section of the Arab world and two "-stan"s, while I am the Arab planning to travel to most of non-Arab, non"-stan" Asia :).

Thankfully we plan to stay on a far less dangerous, easier to travel route (kept in check by sticking to rail lines), and will try to be as good at taking notes, pictures, and asking questions of the locals, but unfortunately we do not have a video crew and will probably not have the gall (or the slip of tongue/lack of local custome) to ask improper questions and get thrown out of places...

Packing "dry run"

Today we are going to try a "dry run" of three things: 1.) packing our furniture, seasonal, and large items into a storage unit, 2.) packing big bags for the first leg to India, and 3.) packing "light" for the long train trip.

The last point, even being the theoretically "smallest" job, still seems the most daunting. While we have both traveled extensively, even with a child between the ages of 4-15 months, we have never done a trip quite so extensive, nor been quite as concerned before about things like clean water and theft / bag slashing.

The solution for me seems simple: carry a large backpack (or less likely, a duffel) large enough for most of the volume the three of us will need to pack, though perhaps not quite enough given that I need to pack a suit (something I have never put in a backpack before), and in addition to that, perhaps one side/day back large enough for an SLR camera, some books, and small random items. I should be able to handle the backpack, side bag, and a toddler on my front a good portion of the time.

Hopefully we'll see later today how all this fits and is likely to work...

Revisions to itinerary plan

No, the itinerary is not caught in an "analysis paralysis" phase, but a few revisions and a cleaner way of displaying it have come to mind, and thought it would be better to just have a clean new post of the plan (apologies for the redundance):

9 April: Fly from JFK to India, lose the 10th via connection in Brussels, time zones, etc.
11 April: Spend the day with a layover in Chennai (Madras), then fly to Kochi in the evening.
16 - 30 April: Probably still planning a trip around India, but still not sure where or when exactly. Still thinking of Bombay, Pune, Pondicherry, and perhaps Leh or Simla up north.
5 May: Fly to Istanbul, Turkey - Plan is for this to be the last flight until at least China, perhaps even Singapore or Indonesia.
9-13 May: Perhaps an excursion out of Istanbul to either the western (Aegean) coast, or down to Capadocia.
14-16 May: Take a 37-hour ferry from Istanbul to Odessa, Ukraine
17 May: Take an overnight train to Kiev, Ukraine
20 May: Take an overnight train to Lvov, Ukraine
23 May: Take an overnight train to Budapest, Hungary
29 May: Arrive in Brno, and then Trebic, Czech Republic
31 May: Take the 3-hour train from Brno to Prague, Czech Republic
1-22 June: From Prague, take trains up to Krakow, Warsaw (Poland), Vilnius (Lithuania), Riga (Latvia), Tallinn (Estonia), and eventually the fast boat to Helsinki, Finland (which I will explain in another post was a necessary cheat from the "2nd world"/"road less traded" countries), spending 1-4 nights in each.
22 June: Take the 6-hour train from Helsinki into St. Petersburg, Russia
25 June: Take the overnight train to Moscow
30 June: Begin the Trans-siberian railway with an overnight train to Kazan.
1-21 July: From Kazan, take mostly overnight trains to Ekaterinburg, Omsk, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk, maybe Irkutsk, and definitely Ulan-Ude, spending 1-2 nights in each. From Irkutsk or Ulan-Ude we would need to plan any excursions to lake Baikal and get the Mongolian visa. As of now, we are applying for Russian visas we hope will expire no earlier than 21 July. The major change is that it looks like it will be a bit of a rush to get to Vladivostok on current plans.

Then:

Late July: pass through Mongolia, most likely with a few days in Ulaanbaatar or a nearby Ger

Early August - Late September: Travel through China for about two months or as long as our visas allow. Most likely we would start in Datong, then go to Beijing and perhaps Shanyang, and from there down into the Shandong province, perhaps into Shanghai, and then down to Guilin.

October - November: Hopefully cross from China into Laos (otherwise cut straight to Vietnam). After the hopeful few days in Laos, cross into Vietnam and see Dien Bien Phu, then head to Hanoi. From Hanoi, take the reunification express down to Hue and then Saigon. From Saigon, cross Cambodia somehow, and once in Thailand, start again by train from Bangkok down the peninsula, through peninsular Malaysia, to hopefully arrive in Singapore by November.

Checkpoint: Based on the "Singapore by November" goal, from Singapore decide whether the tour of the "2nd world"/"Road less traded" was a good enough survey to start getting back to work, or continue traveling.

Possible follow-ons: Assuming we don't go straight back to work after the checkpoint, the main thoughts (one presented in a previous post) would be:

1. Continue on through the Indonesian islands, then find a boat to Australia. Drive around Australia to either Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, or Perth, and catch a flight to Cape Town, South Africa. From there, travel overland "Cape Town to Cairo", most likely through Botswana, Rhodesia, Tanzania, Kenya, and Ethiopia. From there, cross the Red Sea to Saudi Arabia, cross over to Kuwait or the Persian Gulf into Iran, then up to Azerbaijan, across the Caspian Sea to Turkmenistan, then tour Central Asia with the secondary goal of reaching either Almaty or Astana (Kazakhstan) by July 2010. Central Asia would be a re-entry into the "2nd world"/"Road less traded", while Australia and Africa arguably fit on either side of the graph.

2. Try Antarctica, given the timing would put us there right at the southern summer, but the economics of this (both in terms of cost and in terms of my "Road Less Traded" survey) are far more dubious.

Anyways, apologies again for the repeat of the itinerary, but the "Blogabond" widget doesn't seem as easy to update as I once thought, and I felt this cleaning update might even be a better way to clearly post plans going forward...

What I am likely to miss (or even not miss) about home / NYC

Having never lived in one place in my entire life longer than about six years, and New York being the 11th place since childhood memory I have called "home" (and had reason to miss), I should be pretty well experienced in knowing how to rebuild a comfortable "home" feeling in a new place and what I am likely to miss (or not miss) about the old place. This can be a check between what I think I value about a place and am likely to miss on the road versus what I probably take for granted. This will be one of those less refined, brain-dump posts, so I am likely to remember something shortly after posting this something I missed saying I'll miss.

Over the past three days, the only thing I know for sure I WILL NOT miss about New York and the US in general is how sales tax is added to prices here. I can not understand why it has become such accepted custom that even an item listed as a dollar will come up to $1.08, leaving me with a mess of change on one end or the other that makes the simple-looking price seem difficult and dishonest. The inconvenience part goes away when paying by credit card, but why is the US the only country I can recall visiting where the price listed has to not include several percent of the price one pays, as though that extra $0.08 I will actually have to shell out, not the inconvenience of an un-round price, is what might stop me from buying the item. The more world-renown practice of saying $9.99 instead of $10 is far more acceptable to me, since it is easier to add a penny than multiply by 1.0825, but still seems complicating and slightly dishonest.

The fact that I can hardly think of anything else I will definitely not miss about the US speaks worlds about how good I have it here. One thing I definitely did not miss about California was the lack of meaningful public transit and the need to take cars through traffic practically everywhere, but that was because (and a main reason why) I was coming to New York, so there is not much I expect to miss or not miss about the subway or lack thereof on places like the road less traded (if I were moving to Munich or Chennai, I would of course have entire extreme points about it). Over all though, it is hard for me to imagine what I might NOT miss about the US when traveling through emerging markets for several months.

A random, almost certainly incomplete list of things I definitely will miss and do not expect to find on the road less traded include:
1. First, of course are all my friends here, which should go without saying
2. Easy access to Florida cave diving (hope to find some in China, Vietnam, or Thailand though)
3. Sushi (not going to Japan, and not sure when we can get some good Japanese food again)
4. New York fashion
5. Bagels
6. Getting to use my phone number all the time (there might be a way to bring it along?)
7. New York pizza
8. My apartment, of course, it is the nicest, best located one I have ever had as an adult, and don't think I will find one as nice again, either in another city or back in New York
9. Easy mail order
10. The fact that many things like computers and sporting goods are probably significantly cheaper here than in most places abroad
11. Fine cheese, hence my recent binge on 4-year-old Gouda, aged parmagianno, sheep's milk brie, bucheron, and Australian blue.
12. Being the host rather than the guest
13. Martinis (mine and Roosie's, although Russia and Ukraine might impress me?)
14. The New York Public library
15. Good mexican food
16. Easy access to some of my favorite shows on DVD via Blockbuster.com
17. Tie (this list is not in order, but this doesn't deserve two bullets): steak tartare or grass-fed beef good enough to eat blue - I expect to carefully limit any meat I eat on the road, especially since I don't see the point of eating it overcooked, but will try any local dish once.
18. Having all my suits handy, rather than just one for the road.
19. The items of my dive gear that would be too heavy to travel with (pretty much all of it)
20. Silk products and my high fiber cereals

Strangely enough I don't list little things like being able to read signs or understanding how to do things or get around, since those are among the main things that excite me about the trip.

Quick answer to "what's next?"

I always love asking "what's next?" because the question by its very nature can never be completely answered, and realizing this forces me to both appreciate "what's now", and "what else" (meaning planning for contingencies, making alternate plans, etc.

As of now, assuming we arrive in Singapore by late October / early November, we would pause there a while to consider what opportunities there may be in financial markets in the eastern hemisphere at the time. I half-jokingly summarize "If the S&P 500 is closer to to 500, we keep traveling, if it is above 1,000 then we stop and get to work", but of course there are many other factors, not least because I've always prided myself at being prepared for and able to thrive in "bad" markets.

If we do choose to continue traveling, the current thinking is to spend November hopping the Indonesian islands by ferry and either passing by Phillipines / PNG, or continuing straight on to Australia, preferably whichever way could get us to Darwin, Australia by sea. I haven't done any reasonable calculation about how long a road trip around Australia would take, but it would be the first "non-emerging market" destination on the itinerary as well as the planned end of the part where we could get around mostly by train and boat. Then from either Melbourne, Adelaide, or Perth, we could fly to Cape Town, South Africa, and start a "Cape Town to Cairo" route overland. From Egypt, we might then look for a way to cross the Red Sea into Saudi Arabia, up through Kuwait and Iran and into Armenia and Azerbaijan, then across the Caspian Sea by boat from Baku to Turkmenbashi to meet all the "-stans" of Central Asia, which sometime between June and September 2010 would have us arrive in Kazakhstan, from where we will probably either fly or pass through Urumqi on our way to wherever our next home may be.

Of course, I would say it that by the time we get to Singapore this November, it is quite likely a good stopping point to settle down and trade some financial instruments from one place for a while :-D ...

Rough answer to the question "how much will it cost?"

Not long after announcing "let's take off for 8 months and go half-way around the developing world by train" should one expect to ask or be asked: "OK, how much money will that cost / what would be a reasonable budget?".

My first answer tries to be as simple and straightforward about it as possible: for a 200-day trip, is it fair to say US$100-200/day is modest to conservative for a family of three, on average, given most of the countries on the itinerary?  If so, that would put an overall budget for the 200-day trip somewhere between twenty and fifty thousand US dollars, including a fudge factor for random one-time expenses like travel insurance, a possible hot-air balloon ride or wreck dive, or the unforeseen change in plans (but not including the cost of a sailboat to get around Indonesia).  It seems possible on paper to keep the daily expenses at the lower end of the range, especially given the use of overnight trains for a significant amount of travel over those days, but then other excursions and days in very expensive cities like Moscow would make it difficult to tighten or lower the range.

So far, we have a one-way ticket to India for just over $1,000 for all three of us, and another one-way flight ticket from India to Istanbul for just over $800 for the three of us, including all taxes and fees.  Visas for the first countries on the itinerary through Russia (and especially Russia) seem to be totaling up to right around $1,000.

OK, so it might be about as much if not a little bit more expensive than living in Manhattan, which was my benchmark for expenses / comparable cost of doing something else like staying here in NYC.  Of course, the biggest cost may or may not be the opportunity cost of not working this year, and whether this trips eventually pays off as well as a year in graduate school is a reflection for another blog post on ROI...

The plan so far

It might be worth starting with what the plan is so far, and see how much it changes even before taking off on the first flight:

April 9th-11th: Fly to Kochi, India
April 15-30th: Go travel somewhere in India by train
May 5th: Fly to Istanbul, Turkey via Doha, Qatar
May 6th-14th: Loop from Istanbul down to Try and Izmir back to Istanbul
May 14th-16th: Take the ferry to Odessa, Ukraine (originally planned train through Bulgaria and Romania, but this route should mean one less visa)
May 16th-22nd: Tour Ukraine via Kiev and Lviv, plus perhaps Yalta if there is time.
May 22nd-29th: Take the train to Budapest, then hop through Bratislava and arrive in Trebic, Czech Republic.
June 1st-10th: Travel by train through Krakow, Warsaw in Poland; Vilnius, Lithuania; and Riga, Latvia, then arrive in Tallinn, Estonia.
June 10th-15th: Find either a ferry (perhaps via Helsinki), bus, or train to St. Petersburg, Russia.
June 15th-July 7th: After a few days each in St. Petersburg and Moscow, take the train to Vladivostok, with possible break stops in Kazan, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk/Tomsk, Krasnoyarsk, Ulan-Ude/Baikal, and Khabarovsk.
July 10th - September 10th: Enter China via train to Harbin or Shenyang, then take time traveling down China with possible stops in Datong, Shandong/Taishan, and Guilin.
September 10th - September 30th: Cross the border into Vietnam, starting with a bus or train to Hanoi and perhaps Dien Bien Phu. Take the reunification express down through Hue and arrive in Saigon.
October 1st-30th: Get through or around Cambodia and into Thailand, then take the train down the peninsula through Malaysia and arrive in Singapore.
November 1st-30th: Hop down to Indonesia and figure some way of seeing as many islands as possible in a month.
December 1st - January 15th: Fly to Darwin, Australia, and try to hire a car to drive over to the East Coast, past Whitsunday Island, try diving the Great Barrier Reef, then cruise down along the coast to Melbourne. If there is time, continue to Adelaide and look up the cave diving there.
January 15th: Even by now I am assuming way to many things could change, not the least of which being that I might find an opportunity in the market to get back to work and start applying what I learned in Eurasia. If the S&P 500 has continued its current trend and is still below 400-600, this might be a good time to fly to India, drop off the then-2-year-old, then hop down to Capetown and work our way overland to Cairo, making it there by northern summer to go back and meet the points we missed in Central Asia.

Yesterday I started with the "consulate run" up Madison avenue stopping in consulates of some of this countries to find out about Visas. So far the most challenging one still seems to be Russia, and the fact that China and beyond will have to be applied for on the road...

One month until starting on "The Road Less Traded"

Welcome to "The Road Less Traded". This is one of two blogs on which I hope to document one "trip of a lifetime", currently planned a mostly overland (mostly rail and boat) trip through many of the countries whose markets I have been trading from computer terminals and phones in New York, London, Tokyo, and Hong Kong over the past 5 years, but where I felt this year would be an especially good time to go see "on the ground" and get an idea of how life is really like in these places, how things work differently in these "emerging markets".

Compared with the other blog on this planned trip, I plan to use this one more for day-to-day details of the plan, traveling, and experiences, including e-mail updates, while the other one is planned at first to be more reflective. That is, this will be more the "what/how/where/when" blog, while the other will be more of the "why" of the trip.

I have been somewhat influenced to do this trip by Jim Rogers' Adventure Capitalist and Investment Biker, but foresee several key differences that should make this trip more valuable to me and those that know me than just reading these books:
1. I am far younger and less financially secure than Jim was on either of those trips.
2. My trip is also planned as mostly overground, but Jim used a motorbike and later a modified yellow Mercedes, while I plan to use mostly "public" transportation (trains, ferries, buses mostly).
3. Jim's trips were 2-year all the way around the world, while for now most of my plans start out only 3-9 months, entirely in Eurasia until about December. This is largely to stick to places with well-traveled rail lines and infrastructure, and for now is limited to "emerging" rather than "frontier" markets.
4. I am traveling with a family of three, including a spouse with an Indian passport (read: more excitement applying for many more visas) and the youngest passenger starting the trip at 1 1/2 years of age.
5. Of course the biggest difference is that I will be taking the trip myself and plan to see these places and experiences with my own eyes - hopefully to come out a different and better person, and a uniquely experienced practitioner of quantitative global finance.

Please stay tuned and feel free to comment on details of the plan and trip.