Oh, and in a bathtub in Bali.

This summer, my husband and I, both well past backpacker age, traveled around the world in 29 days. That's an average of less than four days in each of the eight countries we visited. It was exhilarating, exhausting, and, of course, the trip of a lifetime.

I could drone on about the splendor of the Taj Mahal at dawn, the sensory assault of Tokyo's Shinjuku district at night, and the welcoming off-hours ambience of that dim heavy-metal bar in Barcelona. But don't worry. I know what you really want to know: How did we plan this? And what did we pack?

We learned a notebook's worth of lessons: Fly east to west, don't take a trip like this unless your marriage is strong, and, perhaps most important, yes, it's possible to travel around the world even when, like most Americans, your vacation time is scarce.

Lesson No. 1

Not surprisingly, we cooked up the idea of traveling around the world over a pitcher of beer.

Late last year, we were trying to agree on a really spectacular vacation to commemorate, among other things, a milestone birthday. Southeast Asia? The European Grand Tour? As we sat in our corner bar, we kept adding possibilities, making things more and more complicated, until my husband brought up the big one: Why not around the world?

Yeah, sure. Who has the time for that? Or the money?

Nonetheless, I began reading books and trawling Web sites. There is an accepted template for what's called RTW travel. You must do it slowly - say, at least six months or a year. You must get off the beaten path, disdaining all those things that regular tourists are there to see, such as renowned museums or the Great Pyramids. You should probably carry a backpack, stay in the cheapest place in town, and wash your clothes in the sink.

And you absolutely, positively must go to Thailand.

This didn't work for us. We had jobs we couldn't leave for long. And we didn't see the appeal in sharing cold-water showers in a $10-a-night hostel.

But, we could take four weeks. And we actually did have quite a bit of cash saved. If you traveled for a month instead of six months, the hotels could at least have private baths with hot showers. We mapped out dream routes and must-do's until we convinced ourselves that, with some tight scheduling, we could pull it off. There wouldn't be time to immerse ourselves in any culture for too long or to get too far off the beaten path.

But guess what? We're city people. We wanted to see the skyscrapers of Hong Kong and the masterpieces of the Prado. Call us shallow, but we wanted to see the Taj Mahal.

To buy a RTW ticket, you can work through consolidators - those travel agencies that buy the tiny newspaper ads with the teeny print. Some have established Web operations aimed at independent travelers. You can book prearranged group tours and spectacularly expensive RTW cruises.

The international airline alliances - Oneworld, Star Alliance and SkyTeam - also sell RTW tickets, each with its own complex rules. I talked with the consolidators, but I also fiddled, sometimes for hours, with the cool Web scheduling tools that Oneworld and Star Alliance provide.

By March, we had it pinned down: an 11-flight, culture-clash-filled itinerary, stopping only in places new to both of us. There were beaches in Hawaii and Bali, ancient wonders in Egypt and Jordan, city stays in Tokyo and Hong Kong. We jammed in the Taj Mahal and left almost a week for Spain. We actually stretched it a hair beyond four weeks - that one extra day made the Delhi-to-Amman connection work, at least on paper. And somehow, we did it without a stay in Thailand.

Lesson No. 2

Packing is important, but don't worry - they'll sell you stuff.

You can buy anything in Hong Kong. Good, because my husband was threatening to burn the denim skirt that I had worn every day for more than a week.