Gap year for grown-ups

Changing rooms
A home exchange lets you holiday anywhere in the world for just the cost of getting there. As well as experiencing a different house, you'll also experience a different life - plugging into a local community with the help of the owners' friends and neighbours. It gives you a far better feel for a country than conventional accommodation allows. Apart from the money you save, the house or flat you occupy will have far more space than a hotel bedroom and come fully equipped for living in - as opposed to merely staying in - often including a car and even membership of the local golf, sailing or country club. At the same time, your own property will be lived in and looked after while you are away.

Several agencies specialise in linking swappers. Most offer short lets, but some have long-term options - especially in Australia and New Zealand - or can arrange back-to-back stays in different places.

● Home Base Holidays (020 8886 8752; www.homebase-hols.com) and HomeLink International (01962 886882; www.homelink.org) offer home swaps. If you prefer to rent, you'll get a great deal if you book a holiday villa off-season.
● CV Travel (020 7401 1035; www.cvtravel.co.uk), for example, has a restored farmhouse on the Portuguese Algarve that costs £5,266 for two weeks in August (it sleeps six). To rent it for four months from November until the end of February, you'd pay £12,000.

Time to teach
Concerned you may need to work abroad in order to fund your travels? Teaching English is one of the most popular options, and you don't need to have previous experience in UK schools or colleges. The most widely recognised qualification is a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language).

● A company called i-to-i (0871 423 9942; www.i-to-i.com/tefl) offers a variety of TEFL study courses, some as short as 20-hour ‘weekends', which can be supplemented with online study. It also offers a placement service to help you locate jobs abroad. 

Epic journeys
Those who want to go far but prefer to travel in company should look into one of the long overland trips offered by specialists such as Dragoman (01728 861133; www.dragoman.com). Currently on offer is a 48½-week itinerary that starts in Helsinki on 19 April 2009, finishes in Cape Town on 23 March 2010 and travels through Russia, Kazakhstan, Siberia, Mongolia and into China, where there is a layover of two weeks in Beijing before continuing west along the Silk Route to Istanbul. The journey, by specially converted Mercedes truck, continues through Syria, Jordan and Egypt, then south through Khartoum, Addis, the game parks of East Africa, Zanzibar, Victoria Falls, the Okavango Delta of Botswana and the deserts and dunes of Namibia before following the west coast of South Africa into Cape Town.

● The trip costs £9,400 plus contributions of around £4,000 to a kitty (flights extra). 

World voyages
If you're tempted by a long ocean voyage, consider a trip by cargo ship. Unlike conventional cruises, cargo vessels carry no more than a dozen passengers at one time and don't offer any ‘entertainment'. You won't have to swab the decks or sleep in a hammock, but you will enjoy
a comfortable en-suite cabin and decent food shared with the ship's officers.

Specialist Strand Travel offers a choice of 80 voyages to more or less anywhere in the world and at any time of year. A regular (roughly twice monthly) round-the-world sailing on a ship belonging to the German Rickmers-Linie company from Hamburg, for example, calls at Genoa, the Suez Canal, Jakarta, Singapore, Ho Chi Minh City, Hong Kong and other ports in China, Masan in South Korea, Kobe and Yokohama in Japan, the Panama Canal, Houston, New Orleans, Newport News, Philadelphia and Antwerp before heading back to Hamburg,

● A 126-day cargo ship voyage with Strand Travel costs around £7,750
per person (just over £60 a day), including all meals. (020 7010 7990; www.strandtravel.co.uk). Also try Andrew Weir Shipping (020 7575 6480; www.aws.co.uk)
If you prefer a more social experience with lots more shore time, you'd be better off travelling on a conventional cruise ship. Several ships will offer complete circumnavigations of the globe starting early next year, with voyage times of around three months.
● Fred Olsen's newest cruise ship, the Balmoral, sets off on its 106-night world cruise from Dover on 5 January 2010. Prices start from £9,977 per person, which is just over £94 per day (01473 742424; www.fredolsencruises.com). P&O Cruises (0845 358 4444; www.pocruises.com) also has two world cruises next year, on board Arcadia and Aurora. For other ideas, visit www.discover-cruises.co.uk.

Flying high
To see the world with more time on land, consider a round-the-world air ticket. Only one airline currently circumnavigates the globe - Air New Zealand flies from Heathrow to New Zealand via Hong Kong in one direction and Los Angeles in the other - but it's now easier than ever to buy a global ticket that stitches together different airlines. Tickets can cost £1,000 per person, including taxes - and be valid for up to a year from the date of your first flight - but prices vary hugely, depending on your route and date of travel.

Plan your ideal itinerary and take it to one of the round-the-world flight experts such as Trailfinders (0845 058 5858; www.trailfinders.com) or Travelbag (0800 804 8911; travelbag.co.uk) to discuss practical feasibilities as well as prices. You'll probably want to include some overland journeys as well - they're not only possible but also likely to save you money.

● Trailfinders offers ‘off the peg' routes as well as tailored itineraries to suit individual travellers. A sample route: flights from London to Jo'burg, Singapore, Bali and Brisbane, then overland to Melbourne followed by flights to Auckland, the Cook Islands and LA, then overland to New York for your homeward hop to London would start at around £1,450 per person with taxes.

Cultural immersion
An interesting way to get under the skin of a country is to learn the language, enrolling on a course while you stay with a local family - where you simply have to talk or go hungry!

As well as arranging courses in EU countries, Languages Abroad (01509 211612; www.languagesabroad.co.uk) also offers Russian in Moscow or St Petersburg, Japanese in Tokyo, Chinese in Beijing and Shanghai, and Arabic in Cairo, all with the option to live with a local host family. You can learn Spanish not only in Spain, but in Central and South America as well.

● You could spend anything from one week to eight months, for example, in the Spanish colonial town of Antigua in Guatemala. The longest course offered by Languages Abroad costs £2,914, or £4,564 including full-board accommodation with a family. 

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