Planning your plan: Trip Preparation
It doesn’t matter if you’re planning a vacation, a trek, a round-the-world trip, or a weekend getaway; whatever the scope of your adventure, a little planning is essential and can be almost as enjoyable as the trip itself. If you start early, keep your options open, and don your explorer’s hat, you won’t be disappointed.
In the past few years I’ve struck a nice balance between work and travel. The rotation pattern typically goes: work for 9-18 months, travel 3-6 months. I like this arrangement because no matter how much we love to travel, downtime and a home base are necessary from time to time. And home base is the best place to enjoy my second favorite hobby, trip planning.
At present, I am in the middle of planning my second large trip of the year, set to start in late March. For those of you in the planning stages, or others with extensive trip experience, I’d love to hear your insights. Here’s what I do:
I. Where to go?
1. Explore your options. This will require some research, but thankfully this is getting easier all the time for the independent minded traveler, especially if you have an Internet connection with a little speed. iTunes podcasts are an excellent way to get a flavor of a place in a short amount of time. In the time it takes you to drive to work you can find out how often the boat runs to Tristan de Cunha, where to find a cheap hotel in St. Petersburg, or what the Kyrgyz sport of horse back goat-ball is all about. Frommer’s, Lonely Planet, Rick Steves, National Geographic, and an assortment of independent expats all offer podcasts that may spark an interest in a place you hadn’t thought of going.
Once you’ve settled on a few possible destinations, put your library card to work. I usually start with books that include the post-script: A short history, and branch off from there based on my interests. Brushing up on the history and culture of a place always increases my excitement as the destination begins to open up, its foreign mystique slowly unravels to expose a more understandable, and therefore more accessible place to explore.
2. Keep your options open. Just when you think you’ve settled on the perfect travel spot, some other country, mountain, trail, or continent sweeps in out of nowhere and captures your imagination. This can be great, but when planning with others, runs the risk of frustrating the troops. I’m often guilty of this. If you’re prone to travel mood swings, wait to put out the call for travel partners until you’re in the later stages of planning, or get on the same page with your cohorts from the start.
3. When choosing a place to travel, you are only restricted by the limits of your imagination and sense of adventure. While people’s interests in regions, countries, and cultures of the world may be diverse, when it comes time to choose a destination, the choices narrow. Your “average Joe” finds it increasingly challenging to actually picture himself in more exotic locales. If you settle on reading books and becoming a literary traveler, that’s fine. But for the adventurous, the first challenge is breaking free from the confines of our often ill-founded, over-hyped, or even propaganda inspired notions of safe, enjoyable travel. This point is particularly salient in the age of terrorism. To cross destinations off the itinerary for reasons such as poverty, communist history, or Islam is to deprive yourself of some potentially amazing experiences. War, genocide, and famine are obvious exceptions to this rule.
Ten years ago, Asia seemed like a strange, inaccessible maze of unreadable signs and back alleys. I couldn’t imagine myself in the forefront of such a picture. As of now, I’ve lived in Japan for two years, spent time in three other Asian countries, and am currently planning a trip that will take me to 5-7 more in the coming year. Anything is possible. You can go anywhere.
II. Planning your trip
Okay, you’ve settled on the perfect place to go. You’ve looked into tickets, leafed through a couple of guide books, and planned a possible route or two. This is where it gets really fun.
1. Draw a map. If your only artistic inclination is the occasional doodle on your napkin, this will suffice. You are about to embark on an adventure, and all the great adventurers throughout history drew maps. Of course they were often drawing the first maps, mind you, but this exercise works wonders for getting you in the travel mood. It also becomes a useful tool as you start to budget time and transportation expenses, especially for those who are visual learners. Hang your map on the wall, pick up some sticky tab post-its, and go to town. I find this to be a much more interactive way to budget, rather than slumped over some excel spreadsheet. \
2. Over plan. This is the stage where guide books come in handy, primarily for budgeting purposes. Don’t use the guide to book a mid-range hotel room in Beijing, use it to find out how much mid-range hotels in Beijing generally cost. The same goes for tourist attractions, temples, tours, flights, trains, and taxis. The guide gives you a fiscal flavor of the destination, but your itinerary shouldn’t rely solely on the gospel of Lonely Planet. I pour over numerous guide books while planning a trip. Most of the popular publishers are available for free from the library, saving you the burden of these expensive, heavy, and quickly outdated books. Chances are that you won’t be seeing everything in a given country anyway, so just photocopy the sections you’ll use. Much lighter, you’ll find.
After you do your meticulous guide book research, head to the computer. Once again, Internet 2.0 has been amazing for the effortless communication of all you plugged-in travelers. Powered by Google, the numerous independent travel forums that have sprouted up over the past several years (including the site that hosts this blog) have become a powerful tool in trip planning. Travelers can talk to travelers, spreading the good word on hot spots around the world. But why should you follow the recommendation of some stranger, you ask? Well isn’t that exactly what you’re doing with the guide book? Travel writers come in all shapes and forms. Some have lived in the area for years, and some are on whirlwind tours of country X at break-neck speed. The rooted types probably have some great recommendations, while the sprinters are more suspect. It’s difficult to judge. I take the hotel or restaurant recommendations of those who veritably slept and ate at the places, opposed to a writer who might have peaked in an open room and glanced at prices on a menu.
Use the Internet! It’s always there, it’s reasonably current, and you can even ask it questions.
3. Learn the language! This is the point where the eyes start rolling. I don’t mean learn the language, but learn the essential get-around-town sayings. Questions words, this and that, counting, and greetings are a great place to start. Once again, podcasts are wonderful, and for the time being the majority of them are still free. I’ve subscribed to podcasts for Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Russian, and Spanish. I’m downloading like crazy because I have the sneaking suspicion that they’re going to jack up the price from free to something in the near future. There are also hundreds of free language sites out there that can give you the quick and dirty on basic grammar, verb use, noun forms, and pronunciation. The world’s languages are just a Google away.
Don’t dwell on the idea that you’re studying a language to eventually communicate. This will likely not be the case at first. You’re studying to make the place open up to you. Local people love the fact that visitors to their country are making an effort to learn their language. Make a fumbled effort to order food or ask directions and you may very likely make a fast friend. You can talk for hours with someone that doesn’t share your language with only a pen and piece of paper. I’ve found that anyone can learn how to count in any language by playing slap for an hour or two. Find a deck of cards, a smoky bar, and start mispronouncing numbers. Ask the locals how to improve your tone issues. Invite them to play. I played this for hours in China with a Swede, a Japanese guy, an Israeli, and a Romanian. We went around the table learning how to count over and over again. It was a blast, and I still remember the Romanian (girl).
These six points have guided my trips well, but more importantly have made my pre-departure time an integral part of the entire journey. Some of these points have been buzzing around the independent travel blogs for some time, a testament to their effectiveness. I hope these ideas show people how to step into foreign places more seamlessly, and minimize the sore-thumb tourist effect. Planning doesn’t just need to be about logistics and packing your suitcase, it can be a process of mental preparation. The more thoroughly we plan our minds for the adventure, the more we’ll gain.
Tags: Trip preparation/departure
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