Where to Go?

At one time I put together lists of various countries and what you could do there, how difficult they were, and how long it might take to explore them. But this information is so subjective, and quickly goes out of date, so I'm going to leave the individual destinations to you and your guide books and travel agent, and focus on some general guidelines about making a travel itinerary.

My first recommendation is to limit yourself to one area; this could be one country, one part of a country, or one part of the world, depending on how much time you have. A round-the-world trip is fine if you have a year or more, (two years might be adequate!) but you're going to be passing through dozens of different cultures -- and learning less about each one than you might hope. The similarities between adjacent countries make them easier to visit, and their differences make them more exciting.

The Andean countries of South America -- Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia -- are fairly similar (yet different) and you could easily spend three or four months seeing all four.  Trying to see most of South America in that amount of time would be much more difficult (and grueling) than it looks. You could spend a year in Asia alone, or three months in South East Asia, or a month in Thailand. India and Pakistan share a great deal of history and culture, but are dramatically different places to visit; exploring both of them could take from six weeks to five months. Some people spend three weeks in the Provence area of France, others visit twelve countries in the same time.

Pick Your Spots

My next recommendation is to spend "quality time" in a few selected spots, instead of planning to spend only a day or two in every possible place of interest. This is not only to get the most out of the culture, but to save you from running yourself into the ground! The most exciting part of traveling is being in motion, but the most pleasant (and rewarding) part is standing still for awhile. My rule of thumb is to (almost) never spend less than two nights in any town.

Do your homework and select several places in each country that for you would be worth spending at least four or five days in; hopefully some are worth even more. If you have months of time and really like the country, you can see absolutely all of it this way (lucky you!), but most of us make trade-offs with time and choosing your spots carefully can greatly enhance your experience, in my opinion. Along the way, you can stop over in other sites of interest, and you'll probably learn of a few more that you hadn't planned on. When possible, use one central location as a base for side trips. If you're going to visit ten hotels in ten towns in twelve days, then you might as well be on a guided tour where they make it much easier for you.

So -- pick a few countries, and within those countries select a few good areas to focus on -- where the size of "few" depends on the amount of time you have. One of the drawbacks of traveling through numerous countries in a short time is that you never have time to really learn the mechanics of living there; and each country -- no matter how similar to its neighbor -- is completely different in many ways. It takes time to get to know a country and how it works, and the better you know it, the safer, cheaper, more enriching and enjoyable experience you will have. When you stay for more than a couple of weeks in a country you learn not only the local money and how much it is worth, but what the going prices are for many kinds of goods and services. You will learn how the bus and train systems work, what kind of shops sell toilet paper and when they close.

You also learn how trustworthy the people can be. You know when you can let your guard down and when you must be very vigilant. You will pick up a few phrases of the language, so you can make yourself understood when you want to buy something or get a hotel room, or ask directions, or just to get the bus driver to let you off! You learn the local standards for hotels and restaurants, where to find them, what is available, how much they cost, if you must bargain or always count your change, what kind of food is available and what dishes you like and don't like.

This knowledge and real familiarity with the local ways of doing things takes about two weeks to acquire. And then, just when you have become a traveling expert on how to get along easily in that particular country, you pack up and head off into a new country where you are completely at sea. You must start all over again! But it's after that initial couple of weeks that you really start enjoying your trip in that country at ease, as a seasoned "local", at home on the Road.

Check out "At Home" under Glimpses of the Road, back on Randy's Travel Page.


Some of you will not heed this. You will plan one month to see Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore or Burma. Like most all travelers, you will have a great time. But you will spend too much of your time traveling, you will be in too big of a hurry, miss some places you would like to see, "wish you could have stayed longer" in most others, wear yourself out, and come home with lots of photos but not enough memories of real local people. That's okay, because you will still have a great trip. And the next time you go traveling, you will probably plan to see fewer places in more time.  Good on ya'.

Advance Research

How much do you need to know about a country in order to plan an itinerary there? The short answer is, enough to make a rough guess of the places you will want to visit, and the amount of time you will want to spend there. How much do you need to know ahead of time in order to enjoy your stay there? Well, if you've picked the right places to start with, you can probably get along with a few maps and some hotel names to get started with. But guide books will give you lots of other useful stuff like transport routes, closing times, festival days and such. Much of the rest you can find out for yourself by exploring and asking other travelers.

Guide Books

One of the games you can play when reading a guide book is trying to guess if the authors actually visited the places or used the services they are recommending to you. No one can visit every town, hotel, or cafe. Some are reasonably straight forward about this by adding the tip-off words, "reportedly", "apparently", or just "some people say".

Sometimes you must read very carefully and note that there are many specific details about one town or hotel, and very vague information about another. For example, one town has maps, street addresses, and vivid descriptions, while another just has the names of a few hotels.

In that case you need more information before deciding whether such places will really be of interest to you. Read some other guide books, get your information from other travelers along the way, or you may just have to go there to find out for yourself. If you find far too much vague or second-hand information, you should look for a better guide book.

Try to get a feel for the point of view of the authors. We all have our likes and dislikes. If you find that the author is leading you to all of the obscure ruins or cathedrals in the country, this is fantastic information if you are into these things, but a waste of time if you are not. They may be steering you away from any hotel that does not have hot water, or any restaurant without vegetarian food.

This is not intentional deception. Travel writers are travelers too, and they are not going to spend weeks investigating obscure ruins if it is not interesting for them. Once you get a feel for the authors' point of view in relation to your own, you will better be able to interpret the information they are giving, even if it is not focused on your style of travel.

You can also gauge the value of the information as you visit some of the places you have read about, and compare your impressions to the information in the guide books. If you find all the "great" hotels to be too grotty (or perhaps too expensive) for your taste, you need to try reading between the lines of the descriptions of other hotels to see if they might better suit your needs. Alternatively, start using a different guide, or better yet, depend on information from other travelers who have tastes similar to yours. I don't care too much for travel advice that goes something like this:

"Timbukthree is a great place! You must go there. Take the 6 am. bus on Tuesday from Termite Mound (get a seat on the right a third of the way back) so you arrive before the market begins. Go directly to the Notel Hotel, ask for Abdul, and bargain like hell. Get the room on the southwest corner of the third floor, it's the best. Eat at Porky's around the corner, they have the best Sloppy-Joe's!"

In other words, the way they did it is exactly the way everyone else should do it.  Why?  Well, they don't often go into details, unless you are really dying for a great Sloppy-Joe.

Guide Books as Planning Aids

I often read a guide book very thoroughly before I go to a country (or even before deciding if I want to go there), for the express purpose of getting an idea of which places I will want to visit, and about how much time I will want to spend in the country. It helps me greatly in planning a trip; is this a three-week country, or a two-month country?  This is especially necessary in large countries like India, China, or Brazil, where there are literally hundreds of places you might visit, but no way you can visit them all. I may or may not decide to take the guide book along to help me after I get there; you can't take 'em all.

When doing this kind of planning I look for the places in a country which will definitely be interesting to me, and a few out of the way spots which just may have some potential, but are not yet very well known (or described). I may decide to try three relatively unvisited ("untouristed") places in hopes that at least one of them will be a good 'find'.  (Of course, these 'experimental explorations' are the luxury of a traveler with too much time.)  Once in the country, you can get plenty of information from travelers about a few places that are not yet in any guide books.

Although we value impartiality in journalism, for this kind of planning I am looking for some kind of broad value judgments in the guide that will help me decide if a place is really pleasant or just another traveler's grind. The kind of value judgments I like the best are:  "Almost everyone has a wonderful time in Shangri-La, although a few people are put off by the constant harp music."  "Most people find Hell Hole a decidedly unpleasant town, although I met one devil who stayed there for a week exploring the interesting guano caves out of town."  If guano caves are your main hobby, you will probably have a ball as the only tourist in Hell Hole.

Choosing a Guidebook

If a publisher has a series of guide books, look into one about a particular place that you already know well. Did they mention the places you stayed at and visited? How well did they describe the places and conditions that you are familiar with. Alternatively, compare similar descriptions of the same place in different guide books. Which one comes closest to describing what you experienced, and lists the kinds of hotels and cafes that you used? While you're at it, check the copyright date (not the printing date) to see how old their information is. If you find one publisher that seems to accurately portray what you experienced in one country, you can hope to rely on them to guide you into a new country or two.

Individual guide books are written by individual people, even if they are all published by the same company; they vary in usefulness. I have read a couple of traveler's guides written by people living in the country, which did not have the traveler's view at all. They told you about the places, but they clearly went by private car, stayed in the better places, and recommended stopping over at a great bar miles out in the country. Read the book carefully for details that you will want to have when you get there.

Once you get on the road, don't depend too heavily on your guidebooks. If you do, you will only go to all the same places that other travelers frequent. Or you could spend hours looking for a hotel that no longer exists or has become a brothel. Get what recent information you can from other travelers, and go to the guide book and local information agencies for the rest.

Planning Your Itinerary

Once you have made a list of the places you want to see, give them some priority. First, the places and activities you definitely don't want to miss on this trip, then places you would like to see, and some places that may be interesting. Remember, your list will only grow longer as you travel! Then give priorities to entire countries or regions. If time or money runs out, what is the last (or first) country you would give up visiting?

Plan a convenient route that does not jump around. Flying back and forth to catch festivals or seasons adds unnecessary complexity, expense, and time constraints. It also breaks the continuity of your travels, plunging you into new cultures without preparation.

If you have specific time limits and you will be making schedules, you should definitely consider the following. Have options for side trips. If you run out of time, you can cancel a side trip without changing your itinerary. Have options for short cuts. If you run out of time you can leave out one loop of your itinerary and still get back to your departure point on time. Don't be caught too far away from your flight home.

Here are some rules of thumb to use when you have several possible ways of arranging your trip. They are not, of course, essential to having a good time.


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