Route notes
Why this routing works
This 44-week round-the-world itinerary starts in Shanghai, moves west to Cairo, Helsinki, and London, then continues across the Atlantic to Bogota and Mexico City before stepping through multiple U.S. stops and returning to Shanghai. The sequence keeps the trip moving in one broad direction, linking Europe first, then Latin America, then North America before the final transpacific return.
The stop lengths are weighted toward longer stays in Cairo (15 nights), Helsinki (10), London (20), Bogota (8), Mexico City (8), Charlotte (9), El Paso (4), and Portland (6). That pacing suits a trip built around fewer flight days and longer ground time, which is useful on a business-class RTW ticket where the value comes from covering multiple long-haul sectors in a single framework.
Within the U.S., the itinerary includes an intentional overland break between Portland and San Francisco, shown by the double slash in the routing. That means the ticketed flights pause in Portland and resume from San Francisco, giving flexibility for surface travel without using an extra flight segment. The final ticketed legs then continue San Francisco to Los Angeles and Los Angeles back to Shanghai.
With a January departure and jan-mar season window, this routing is set up as a long-duration RTW rather than a tight circle. The mix of intercontinental flights and shorter regional sectors makes sequencing important: long-haul crossings are handled first, while the later U.S. portion is broken into manageable stages before the return to China.