Disclaimer: my CV has often been a horrendous mess of 3-6 month "gaps" (during which time I learned many of my most valuable life lessons) and it never cost me more than a month of training myself up, networking, and interviewing.
Another disclaimer: I've always been of the habit of saving my money so that long gaps feel stress-free and I don't have to take the first job I'm offered.
If they ask for details, then list all the places you went, and then if they're curious about any individual one give them more details about what you did there. If they don't ask for any details about travel, then they don't care, and you're not wasting time with irrelevant information by going into detail on travel from the beginning.
yes, they've been collecting this since the 70's/80's.
I consider this a self-reflective question on the interviewer's part. If your interview can't sniff out the gap in their experience, then there are two possibilities.
A) The most likely one: your interview sucks and you're not as good as you think you are
B) The gap doesn't matter.
I'm frankly confused as to why a resume gap would be relevant to anyone. If anything, my resume gap cleared up my head and I've dabbled in some things I don't usually touch so it made me a better employee, if we want to use that language.
This just seems like a cultural holdover and one we could eliminate with more people taking breaks.
I took six months off after being fired(!) (four months truly off, ~6 weeks prepping, looking for new role and interviewing). During my time off, I traveled, got healthy after years of neglect, created a couple of mildly interesting side projects, read oodles, and generally was just a man about town.
I told recruiters in month one that I was taking some time off but that I'd love to speak to them around month four. When the time came, I still had very good choices and landed a fairly coveted position.
I did have one particular worry that I guess aligns with what you're saying. I felt that if the three or four good companies I'd hit snooze on in month one all fell through and I had the explain the six month gap after the fact rather than prior to, the onus would have been on me to prove that I hadn't just been applying everywhere for six months with no takers.
What I see a lot around me are people quitting their job to join the new one on the following week. I never understood that either. Besides retirement it's probably the only time in their life where they can take long holidays.
Overlap it with public holidays, and you can get 17 or 18 days off in a row for 10 vacation days - 10 weekdays, three weekends and a public holiday or two. But it's usually better to plan a public holiday somewhere in the middle because of the extra traffic.
As terminology though it's not a sabbatical either. 6 weeks off sounds more like a gap between jobs with gardening leave or travel or some other project that wouldn't fit in a work vacation.
Jokes aside, that's a really admirable - and in my experience, rare - thing you're doing. Your employees are really lucky.
This guy has a biography online about what he did so screw that. Just post a link to this article if you re-enter the work force. But you'll have something to put there anyway.