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I guess one of the major decisions before planning a trip is where to go ? This may be influenced by where you have been before, how much time and money you have, what you are interested in e.g trekking, diving etc, stories from friends who have travelled, books, magazines, TV ... the list goes on. We had a general idea of where we wanted to travel so we bought a large map of the world and stared at it for hours on end with a few guidebooks from the library at hand. In the end we decided to miss out Africa (not enough time), South America as Gavin has already spent 4 months there and Europe - it's so close to home we can always go for short visit. I inter-railed round Europe in '95 with my friend Michelle and last year Gavin and I had an independent Greek Island Hopping holiday round the Cyclades. I'd highly recommend both and hope to visit all these places in Europe again some day, but not on this trip !
In the end we decided on the U.S.A, Fiji, New Zealand, Australia and South-East Asia. It's also worthwhile checking out the Travel Warnings and Consular Information sheets for information about countries you shouldn't visit.
Another major decision to make when planning a trip is your flight itinerary. Who to book it with ? What time of year to go with ? How many stop overs ? A one way flight or a return ? A lot of people decide to book a one way ticket to their destination and have the flexibility of deciding where and when to go to their next destination. This also has the advantage that you are not tied down to a particular route. You may arrive somewhere, hate it and want to get out as fast as you can, or alternatively you may love somewhere so much that you decide to stop there and hang out for who knows how long ? There are a few disadvantages to this choice as well. Immigration officers at certain countries may require to see a return ticket or proof that you can afford to leave the country. There is also a problem if your cash flow runs dry and you have no means of getting home !
We decided to go with the safer option of booking the majority of our flights prior to departure. We bought a British Airways/Qantas Global Explorer for £1200 (the price depends on the time of year). This ticket lasts up to 1 year and the price includes six stopovers, free flight time/date changes (as long as their are seats available) and one free ticket re-issue (i.e change of stopover destination). The only restrictions are that one stopover must be in Australia (no problem for us !) and you can't go zig-zagging tour way round the globe. For example we couldn't go Singapore -> Bejing -> Bankok as we would be going North, East, South-West. You have to keep going in the same direction towards your final destination.
This is something that you definately need when away travelling.
A few months ago I phoned up every travel insurance company
I could think of and got quotes ranging from £160 up
to £1000. I asked all of them
to send me details of the policy so I could see exactly
what I was getting for my money. I was looking for insurance
that included at least £2M medical cover (recommended £2M for
the U.S and £1M elsewhere) and cover for baggage, personal
liability, loss of money, documents/passport, personal
accident cancellation etc. It's a good idea to look at
the excesses and read all the small print to ensure you know
what is not covered. Some of the premiums charged included
baggage and dangerous sports, but for other policies an
extra cost was added on. In the end we went for Flexicover Ltd
costing £180 each with 10% discount if you buy two policies
at the same time. This covers the following (dangerous sports
cover costs extra).
No doubt you will want to shop around a bit for travel Insurance, so I've listed a few more companies in the U.K with cost per person for 1 year worldwide including baggage cover (unless stated). The prices vary a lot, but some policies include much more than others. You have to decide what you really need.
A couple of months ago I visited the practise nurse about vaccinations for travelling. Basically, the following injections were recommended.
For more detailed information on the recommended vaccinations and up to date health information visit some of the travel health sites listed on my Travel Links Page and go to a doctor or travel clinic.
While travelling we'll be staying in a mixture of hotels, motels and youth hostels depending on where we are and how much money we have in our pockets. I always find it more exciting when travelling to phone hotels/hostels the day we arrive somewhere or the night before or just turn up. From my experience the Lonely Planet Guide books are a good source of accomodation information for all budgets, although occasionally I've not agreed with their opinion of a place. In certain places it's a good idea to book quite far ahead e.g we've booked our B&B in Boston as we are arriving shortly before Labour Day and our Lodge at the Grand Canyon was booked over a month ago as accommodation is taken up in the park quite a few weeks in advance.
While travelling I hope to put information about all the places we have stayed with price, facilities, location and what we thought of it. So watch this space !
Packing for the trip is not one of the things I am looking forward to. I sometimes have problems when going away for a couple of weeks so I am not going to offer any handy tips in this department ! Maybe in six months time I'll have a few ideas. It's not too big a problem at the moment as we've shipped a box to New Zealand with work clothes and books in it and I only have to survive for six weeks from my rucksack before arriving there. After New Zealand we can ship everything home that we don't need and apply the "Pack everything, unpack and remove half of it" concept. For some tips on packing see my Travel Links Page and learn from the experience of the more experienced traveller !
A good guidebook is always useful and can save a lot of time when you first arrive in a new place. In the planning stage of the trip we used mainly library books then started buying them a few weeks before leaving. If you're visiting more than two or three countries, guidebooks can start to weigh you down so it's worth remembering that you can buy guidebooks in English in most foreign countries. We also found that it was easy to swap books with other travellers going in the opposite direction to us. I've listed all the guide books we used or happened to read bits of below, with comments (if I can remember what the book was like) and a link to Amazon(U.S) for more information or in case you want to buy it online. There's also a search box so you can search for books for a specific country. A lot of the books in Amazon have reviews written by readers so you can see if it's any good before buying.
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