Alternative adventure idea: Instead of travelling the world for a year, spend that year travelling within 50 miles of your home (or, if you're starting in Silicon Valley, like this author, anywhere that Bart reaches). Get to know the immigrant communities spread throughout your area (the Thai community, the Cambodian community, Peruvian, Bolivian, etc…) They are all there, practically in your back yard (maybe literally in your back yard—ask your gardener where he's from), living in ways that are culturally different from yours, and yet when you get to know them, hang with them, drink and dance with them, you'll learn that we're all people and we're all fundamentally the same living, loving, learning, lonely scared human beings.

You need only travel 1, 5, 10, 15 miles from wherever you are right now to find entire communities that are outside your techy echo chamber. Meet them, and you will get some perspective.

Best of all is with this alternative plan is what you won't do. You won't waste many many days (weeks? a month?) of your life either in airports, flying between airports, travelling to and from airports, or recovering from jet lag. Most importantly, in my opinion, you won't be burning 250 to 500 gallons of gasoline, and releasing 2.5 to 5 tons of carbon into the atmosphere.