Planning a backpacking trip this year or next? These five top tips can be done way in advance to ensure your trip is well planned out and to hopefully avoid any bumps in the road (though don’t get your hopes up – there will still be many bumps). I made these tips specifically for a backpacking trip, but if you’re planning a short holiday, hopefully you can still take something from them.
MAKE A LOOSE PLAN
My first top tip is something I’d really advise on as being the huge planner that I am, I think this really helped my travels run smoothly. Research as much as you can while you have all that spare time at home, to save you having to sit and plan things when you’re already away, eating into precious exploring time. The trick to planning a backpacking trip is to do as much research as you can to then make at least a rough plan of the places in each country you’d like to visit, along with a few things to do in each place, yet not making the plan too solid by including dates and booking internal flights etc, way in advance. By making the plan loose and flexible, you can change things around if you have to - and trust me, sometimes you will have to, for one reason or another. You can’t know if you’re going to love or hate a place until you get there. So if you’ve already booked a week in a city, but you end up hating it or running out of things to do, you’re unfortunately stuck there for the week – whereas if you book your next destination for just a couple of nights, if you like it and want to stay longer, you can extend your stay. Another common example of why you might not want to stick with your plans is if you make some good friends (which you definitely will do at least a few times) and you want to tag along with them for a few weeks if they’ve got a fun route planned.
START YOUR PACKING LIST EARLY
Another good piece of advice from a planner is to start writing your packing list months before you go and keep adding to it whenever you think of something. That way, you’ll no doubt be able to pack everything you need when it comes to it. If you stay tuned to Em Wanders, I’ll be posting a video very shortly of me unpacking from my six months away and discussing whether each item actually came in handy or not. As well as this, I’m also going to write out an organised packing list soon, with categories and everything, for anyone who just wants to print out a pre-made list from someone with experience.
VISAS AND OUTWARD FLIGHTS
A very important tip is to check on https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice to see whether you need a visa or something similar to gain entry into each of your desired countries. Lots of countries don’t require a visa, but instead you must have booked an outward flight already, to prove you’re not intending to stay in the country for longer than allowed. For example, in order to check in for a flight to the Philippines, you must be able to show your ticket for a flight out of the country within three weeks, because you’re only allowed to be there for 21 days. Some allowances are much longer however, like to get into New Zealand, you just have to prove you won’t be there for longer than six months (you need a visa for New Zealand as well as this, although usually it’s one or the other).
VACCINATIONS
This is something you need to check preferably a few months before leaving for your travels because some vaccinations, like rabies or hepatitis B, involve more than one dose spread over a number of weeks or months. You can check which vaccinations are recommended for each country here: https://travelhealthpro.org.uk/countries. Vaccinations are so important, especially when backpacking, because you’re going to be exposing yourself to worse hygiene standards than you’re used to. Lots of food like salad is washed (if washed at all) in dirty water and contamination can be common in less developed areas. You must also check if any country you’re visiting has a high risk of malaria, in that case you’ll need to take malaria pills out with you.
PLAN OUTFITS
My final top tip would be to match up and plan your outfits when the time comes to pack your clothes. Avoid bringing items of clothing that don’t go with the others because you’ll simply never wear them and they’ll be wasting valuable space in your backpack. Blacks and whites are smart colour choices because they tend to go with anything, however black attracts the heat so you don’t want to be wearing it on a hot day, and white clothes WILL come back discoloured and stained. Just a warning.
So there’s my top travel tips for before you go away. As I said, it was specifically made for a backpacking trip but hopefully those of you planning a short holiday can take something from this too. Let me know by commenting below if you found any of my tips helpful!
Safe travels!
Em Wanders x
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