Video by ex overlander Duncan Milligan, founder of adventure company ‘Tour De Force Adventure Logistics’ sharing his top travel tips for your Career Break or Sabbatical leave.



Click here for other videos from ex overlander Duncan Milligan



Things I wish I’d known before I went Travelling – part 1 – Filmed at the London Adventure Travel Show 2013

Things I wish I’d known before I went Travelling – part 2 – Filmed at the London Adventure Travel Show 2013

Things I wish I’d known before I went Travelling – part 3 – Filmed at the London Adventure Travel Show 2013

Things I wish I’d known before I went Travelling – part 4 – Filmed at the London Adventure Travel Show 2013

Things I wish I’d known Before I went Travelling – part 5 – Filmed at the London Adventure Travel Show 2013

Transcript of ex overlander Duncan Milligan from adventure company Tour De Force, Adventure Logistics

“Three pieces of advice that I think I would give to someone who is planning on taking a career break is do it, anyone can its really easy.

The planning of your Career break or Sabbatical leave is as much part of the adventure as the adventure itself. There are certain pieces of advice I’d give; like take half the clothes double the money; lay everything out on the bed or wherever you are and then get rid of half of it and go and get some more money, take as much time as you can in the places you are going to go to, don’t try and put too much of a really strict regimented timetable on what it is you want to do because you need the flexibility when you find that really nice place you want to hang out at stay there.

Anyone can do this; you don’t have to be ex SAS sort of big tough explorer. There are plenty of people out there doing their adventures their way, on their budget and their time scale and that’s what it’s all about.

You have to be aware that things will go wrong; it’s actually part of the experience. It’s not if it goes wrong; but when it goes wrong and it’s actually how you deal with those situations that’s going to make or break your adventure, because that’s what you’re doing, your putting yourself outside of your comfort zone and that’s why you’ve decided to do this, therefore if you feel yourself getting frustrated and annoyed or slightly worried or anxious, understand why that’s happening, it’s because you’ve decided to do this. Take a step back from that and go ‘oh this is OK, of course I’m feeling like this because I’ve never been in this position before’, and if you have that feeling it will make life an awful lot easier for you.

When you’ve travelling one of the things people are always worried about is police officialdom, border guards, that kind of stuff. The easiest way to think about it is, it’s a game and everyone’s there to play their part and your part of that game is to be the dumb tourist who’s actually very very nice and very smiley, confident in where they are, quite happy to be there but equally is not going to give that whatever, if someone’s asking for money, ‘what do you need that money for, I’m sorry I don’t understand, is there a receipt for this?’, all done in a very smiley fashion, and what happens is the police man for example, especially if you don’t speak the language, which you say in the nicest possible way is going to get bored, he’ll get bored of the game very very quickly at which point you can say ‘ I’m sorry I can’t help you, thank you very much, I’m off’, big wave, big smile and everyone’s happy. Don’t start throwing money straight out the window as soon as you get there, looking all anxious and nervous, never ever shout, don’t start pointing, jumping up and down, swearing, it is just a game, and if you think of it as a game it’s easy.”

Link to TourDeForce