If you're traveling as a simple passenger, likely you can get the travel down to a much more reasonable time frame. I'd say 2 or 3 months. There probably exists some sort of travel agency that plans your route for you. Just think of it like taking a plane today. You catch connecting flights and it speeds your journey considerably.
So you talk to your travel agent on New Samarkand, and she works out how long its going to take. And she's got info on regular jump routes where ships are going back and forth. If it's just you and your buddies, it shouldn't be too hard to reserve some beds on a cargo dropship. Your travel agent wouldn't book you the most direct way, she'd book you the fastest way. You're probably going to be switching dropships quite frequently. You probably get a bunch of layovers at weird places. But as long as everybody stays on schedule, you should be able to make it fairly quickly. It will still be expensive though, no way getting around that.
If you are bringing heavy equipment with you, like mechs, then it gets a whole lot more complicated. You can't just hitch a ride on some dropship with an empty broom closet you could hang a hammock in. Every ship you take has to have space for your stuff. Then you're probably looking at seven months to a year, depending.