Don't fly, travel overland, that's the most interesting part of the trip, especially the remote areas near borders...

The worst is to book this round-the-world ticket, where you have to decide in advance how long you'll stay at each point. We travelled around the world for 1 year and ended up staying as much as one month in one place where we'd planned to stay 1 day, or literally flee out of countries like Malaysia after 2 days.