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Thursday 24th September 2009 - On the Road Expenses

Before setting out for this trip, one of our biggest concerns was how much was it going to cost us on the road. We had a good idea how much we would spend in advance, and our final pre-trip expenses were just what we thought, but we had very little idea how much we would end up spending on the road. And although the web was full of almost all the other information we needed, we found very rare comments on the actual on the road expenses.

So to give people who follow in our footsteps a better idea than we had, we have tried to keep a very close eye on our budget and record the details in excel. This is published below, and I will update the spreadsheet periodically.

 

Expenses


The Spreadsheet of Knowledge

Almost every penny (cent, som, rupee etc) we spend is written down in a notebook that we keep in the front of the landie or in our hotel room. Once a week or so I update this to the spreadsheet, breaking the data down into various groups such as accommodation, eating out or diesel. The catch all is shopping, which is where anything that is not catorgorised is recorded. I would estimate that we record at least 95% of our spendings, if not more, as I get a kick out of watching the stats grow. I know I am sad, as Jenny reminds me almost every day. although I think she secretly likes it too.

The only things missing from our one the road expenses are very few minor bank charges that we don't know about, and some small DDs still coming out of our bank at home.

It must be noted that we have saved hard for a long time on our trip and we know that we could have easily lived on half of what we have, if we had camped more or cooked for ourselves more, but the truth is we like a nice night out with a decent meal and a nice drink, and so have made sure we have enjoyed ourselves so far. We have camped about half the time, and when we camp you can assume we have cooked most of our own meals. At the same time we have stayed in one £100/night hotel and had several other luxuries to keep our trip on an even keel. Hence, please don't think this is the cheapest you could do it, we are just providing it to give others in the throws of planning a rough idea. We hope it helps someone.

I have also added some basic graphs and number crunching to try and make sense of the data that is recorded. I will most likely add more analysis at a later date too. Don't forget to have a look at all the tabs on the excel sheet.

Feel free to give feedback, and perhaps I can explain some of the data, or start recording other details.

Signed, Ollie the excel geek.

LAST UPDATED: 26/11/2009

(Updated with India and Pakistan - note by this time we knew Jenny was pregnant, and hence our attitude changed a little)

Download Spreadsheet

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Dino

Last Updated

November 26, 2009->