Ask HN: If you had 15-20k to take a 2-4 week trip, solo, what would you do?

For $5K, my wife and I recently did a 4-week road trip, a combination of staying in hotels, cabins, and camping. We visited:

- Spokane WA, - Glacier National Park MT, - Waterton National Park AB, - Banff National Park AB, - Jasper National Park AB, - Kamloops BC, - Vancouver BC

I will highly recommend trip to national parks in North America.

Last year, for about $15K, my wife and I travelled to Japan and India for 3 months. While 15-20K is plenty of money, 2-4 weeks is not enough to travel to lot of different places (multiple countries), may be enough for a decent size country. If you are into nature and hiking, I will suggest Peru.

I think traveling and staying in 1 place or area is a great way to learn and immerse yourself in a new place. I don't think I'd need 15-20k to do it.

I'd spend all 4 weeks in an area where I don't fit in. Some South American country probably, perhaps Peru. As an Asian American, I think I'd feel too comfortable in any American, European, or Asian country. In South America I'd be able to challenge my comfort zone.

I'd use the money to take necessary precautions on necessary resources and safety, but otherwise, I'd go lean and rather push myself to do things and meet people there. I think 4 weeks is a good enough to time learn a new way of life and really change how you see things.

Sounds like lot of money and very little time. This means you should take opportunity to visit places that are otherwise expensive, you can travel to cheaper places like Asia, Africa, South America any other times ;). This will then boil down to options like destinations in Europe (example, Italy, Switzerland or France), Japan, Dubai or Galapagos. I would personally prefer Italy just because there is just too much to see and absorb there (Rome, Vatican, Venice, Florence, Milan and so many other little towns). This is assuming you want to do signtseeing + culture exploration. More rewarding form of travel is to learn something new and become expert at it while being in new place but it's hard to blow off 15-20K on that, may be unless you want to get jet fighter pilot training in Russia or learn to shoot arrows from horse in Japan.

Just for comparisons, about $25K is pretty good chunk of amount for a solo travel to go living around the world for entire year.

Personally? I'd take a One Year trip solo. That's the only way to spend that much money traveling.

I bet I could spend upwards of $2k in four weeks if I really tried, but honestly the places you'd have to stay and the things you'd have to spend your time doing would just be way too unpleasant. Think Cruise Ships, Hotels where people are wearing their Yachting Clothes, God forbid, Guided Tours.

It's just not worth it. Either save most of your money or find a way to get the rest of that year off, then go out and have some real fun

> as far west as Kenya

Not sure if you're being humorous but, from the west coast of the US, it's still a shorter distance to get to Kenya if you go east than it is if you go west.