Ideas for a flight-free gap year

Jen Tomlinson fills us in on gap year options available to the more climate-conscious traveller.

''The most obvious option is the original overland trip - inter-railing around Europe.'' ''Dubbed ‘the greatest adventure in the world’, the Mongol Rally is the most extreme car challenge on earth'' ''Habitat for Humanity is just one organisation that offers both short and long-term placements building a simple place for families to live.''

With essay deadlines looming the idea of stopping the world and getting off is an increasingly popular idea. Lonely Planet estimates that at present there are around 50,000 gappers who have done just that, and are now living their dream.

Sound too good to be true? The problem is that 2 per cent of the world’s carbon emissions are produced by air travel, with the average passenger plane guzzling around 12,788 litres of fuel each hour. In a recent poll fewer than 4 per cent of young people said that climate change didn’t concern them, while 70 per cent said they felt they should be doing more to combat it.

So what options are available to those of us who want to take a gap year without ballooning our carbon footprints in the process?

The most obvious option is the original overland trip - inter-railing around Europe. To date, more than 6.8 million people have used the inter-rail scheme, and it’s not hard to see why - it’s great value and allows you to visit up to 30 countries.

Although there are shorter and cheaper options that cover 1 or 2 of the 8 zones, a one-month global pass, which allows second-class travel throughout Europe, costs just £285 for under-26s. The pass can be bought by anyone resident in one of the countries covered by the scheme, which in 2005 was expanded to include the former Bosnia-Herzegovina.

If the idea of inter-railing seems too tame, then it’s possible you’ll fit into the category of gappers who choose to take the overland trip one step further. These adventurous people set themselves the challenge of reaching destinations such as Cape Town or Mongolia without ever setting foot on a plane.

Dubbed ‘the greatest adventure in the world’, the Mongol Rally is the most extreme car challenge on earth, and involves an 8,000-mile dash in a cheap old car, a quarter of the way round the world. It’s all in the name of charity and the foundation has already raised £43,000 for the Send a Cow charity. With no set route, the Mongol Rally provides the more intrepid traveller with a gap-year experience impossible to capture without going flight-free.

Last, but certainly not least, is the new buzzword, ‘Voluntourism,’ which does exactly what it says on the packet, and combines volunteer work with travel. A quick internet search will provide more options than any gap year student could wave their passport at. The good news is that there’s a wide selection that don’t require flying, meaning that you can help to save the world in more ways than one.

Habitat for Humanity is just one organisation that offers both short and long-term placements building a simple place for families to live. It runs the Global Village Project, which has numerous opportunities throughout Central and Eastern Europe to live alongside local people. No skills are required for any of the placements - just a desire to make a difference and have fun while you’re doing it.

Whatever you want to do on your gap year - be it teaching orphans English, chilling in the Gobi, or getting hopelessly lost in ancient cities, it may just be time to cash in your airline ticket, and go flight-free. Happy travels!