Constellation Journeys: Privately chartered jumbo jet tour where the cheapest seats are $19,500 a pop

The cheapest seats are $19,500 a pop while at the pointy end your spacious flat-bed seat with acres of leg room and Piper Heidsieck Rare Millesime 2002 will set you back a cool $78,000.

For this you get your own plane, your own crew, accommodation in four- and five-star hotels, all transfers, excursions, meals and drinks. Unless you're an inveterate shopper or can't resist that Che Guevara fridge magnet, you needn't put your hand in your pocket for the whole trip.

On top of this, the crew – all experienced Qantas personnel – add to the party atmosphere by appearing in country-related fancy dress at the end of every leg. Really, if you haven't seen a flight attendant dressed in a home-made prawn rice-paper roll costume then you haven't lived.

Or, as one passenger put it later in the trip: "Their happiness is contagious. Every boarding is like coming back to family."

So we settle in, buckle up and get ready to blast off on what customer service manager Lucas Gibson announces over the PA is "the greatest show you'll ever be on".

We're in Hanoi for two days and three nights. The pointy end passengers head off to whatever gold-plated hotel they're in while the rest of us doss down in the merely-five-star Pan Pacific hotel just a dumpling's throw from West Lake where, as every local guide loves to point out, Senator John McCain was shot down in the Vietnam War. There are tai chi classes in the park on the first two mornings as well as cyclo tours, museum visits, cooking classes and a day trip to Ha Long Bay.

There's a drinks party on our hotel roof on our first night and, on the second night, the basic tenor of the trip is set when we are all bussed out to the Imperial Citadel of Thang Long where a Hanoi street market has been recreated in a large lantern-lit courtyard.

Along both sides of this makeshift "street" are stalls groaning with a cornucopia of help-yourself foodstuffs. Here there are banana blossom salads and barbecue pork and pho alongside more European fare such as braised beef and mashed potato. This is Hanoi street food for people chary of actual street food.

It's a magical, colourful evening full of beer, fine wine, good food and live entertainment from musicians who switch from traditional Vietnamese music to Waltzing Matilda at the drop of a non la. Special mention must go to the flute player's rendition of The Carpenters' song Top of the World.

In India we tick sunrise at the Taj Mahal off the bucket list and enjoy an al fresco buffet breakfast replete with Indian singers, dancers and musicians with that most famous monument to love as the backdrop. The last-night grand moghul dinner is held in the luxurious ITC Mughal hotel's huge ballroom and features traditional dancers, a puppet show and more curry than you can poke a stick at.

At Kilimanjaro Airport we leave our "Queen of the Skies", as the captain calls it, in 13 specific groups – all the better to expedite the flights into the Serengeti. It's quite a sight to see 13 small-engined aircraft lined up on the apron like toys next to our jumbo.

The great annual migration has been delayed by the lack of rain so the promised sweeping plains awash with a sea of zebras, wildebeest and the like are, well, mere sweeping plains. We manage to fit in three game drives, though, and tick off elephants, hippo, leopards, baboons, cheetahs, lions, giraffe, black-faced monkeys and all manner of birdlife and antelope.

As we leave on the final morning we even get to witness two impala going, quite literally, head to head over a herd of females, the crack of their horns clashing echoing over the flat plains and the classic flat-topped acacia trees.

A nine-hour flight from Kilimanjaro (with crew member Ray Galea dressed as Tarzan and another in a giraffe onesie) sees us touching down in Morocco in the early evening and heading straight to the sumptuously gorgeous Sofitel Marrakech.

I should point out that once you check your bags in at Sydney airport pretty much the only time you see them after that is in your hotel room, thanks to the Constellation Journeys team (nicknamed the Blue Heelers because of their signature bright blue shirts). On the night before we leave each destination we are advised what time to put our bags outside the room and they are whisked off by, I dunno, gremlins or hobbits or something.

Marrakech is a swirling, crazy, neat, modern city where wide French-style boulevards rub shoulders with Islamic and Moorish architecture. The small streets and bustling alleyways of the souks are a sensory overload. In the main square here, the Djemaa el Fna, you will find snake charmers, musicians, falconers and, in my case, a young man who tries to persuade me to let him shine my shoes. You have to admire his chutzpah – I am wearing Converse sneakers.

Our farewell dinner is a triumph, held as it is in an open field covered in red carpets and dotted with fortune tellers, dancers and a small brigade of traditionally dressed, armed men on magnificent white horses.

In New York, from our beautifully situated hotel, the Parker, on 56th street, we head out to take a bite out of the Big Apple. There are baseball games (Go Yankees!), Broadway shows, city tours and a final night wining, dining and dancing on a three-hour cruise around the Hudson and the Statue of Liberty.

Beautiful, crumbling, vibrant, musical, brilliant Cuba is just a three-hour flight from New York but it's also a world away. We stay at the striking Kempinski La Habana Hotel, originally built between 1894 and 1917 and recently refurbished to top international standards. If it was anywhere else I'd have stayed in the hotel and spent the day around the rooftop pool with its panoramic views of the skyline but, well, Havana awaits.

There are walking tours, a coach tour to Hemingway's home in San Francisco de Paula, and rooftop dinner in a local paladar (an official privately run restaurant). On one memorable afternoon we head for the historic Grand Nacionale Hotel for mojitos on the lawn, and are taken back to our own hotel along the Malecon (a wide seaside boulevard) in a fleet of the famous and brightly coloured American cars from the 1950s.

After all this, Tahiti comes as a bit of light relief. There are 4WD tours to the mountainous interior and a 120-kilometre round-island tour but it's the bath-warm waters and the pool that entice.

As the final day approaches and the eight-hour flight back to our starting point looms, it's hard to get a grip on what just happened. Sometimes it feels as if we've only just begun and at others we've packed so much in that it feels as if we've been away for months.

While we are away the news comes through that Qantas has finally made the decision to mothball its dwindling fleet of 747s. Come 2020 "our" Queen of the Skies will be put out to pasture. Just time enough to squeeze a final trip of a lifetime in?

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TOUR

Upcoming Constellation Journeys tours include a 20-day trip from Moscow to Berlin in first-class compartments on a privately chartered train (departing June 2019) and an 18-day trip from Cape Town to Addis Ababa (departing April 2019) by privately chartered aircraft and the renowned Blue Train.

Prices for this tour ranged from $19,500 to $78,000, prices are not yet set for Constellation Journeys' next Around The World trip, but it will be in a 747 updated to an A380 interior, departing September 30, 2019, and visiting South Korea (Seoul), Israel (Jerusalem and Bethlehem), Malta, Spain (Barcelona); Colombia (Cartagena), Peru (Cuzco and Machu Picchu) and Easter Island. Phone 1300 992 339, see constellationjourneys.com.au

Keith Austin was a guest of Constellation Journeys.