While travel planning is one of my favorite activities, it might feel overwhelming for most of us. I plan my own travel for multiple reasons- saving money, getting familiar with geography/ cities, having the ability to customize basis preference, and coming up with backup options if some places are closed. Travel research for a good itinerary is an art and needs persistence!
Every trip for us involves planning 6 months in advance, while one can start even a month before for places that are not too far away. This helps spread out the effort over many months, making it feasible to do it over weekends. This also ensures sufficient room for visa application, consulate visits and processing time. Reinforcement over multiple months ingrains the names of places, most visited attractions, distances, making the place real in your head like the ones you have already been to. Although this takes the surprise element away, I prefer predictability and choice over surprise
The country choice is based on the season at destination during which I can get leaves, budget, visa requirements and landscapes that are different from ones that we have been to before. The timing typically happens to be between march to May, September- October and December. We have a running list of 3 sets of countries per year for next 3-5 years. We also see if it a neighboring country can be added in the duration without compromising on spots within either. Clubbing countries help optimize travel since some countries are not well connected to go standalone. For example, Bolivia is best covered while visiting Peru than standalone
Once the country is finalized, we look at itineraries across travel agencies like Veena world, bloggers, Wikitravel to shortlist the places we want to go to. We start making sample itineraries slotting places across days to get a broad sense of the plan
Apply for visa as soon as the window opens to account for delays, queries on documents. Some countries need confirmed bookings, so book your flights. Hotels can be dummy booked on booking.com. Purchase travel insurance even if there is no requirement for a visa
Read multiple travel blogs to get different perspectives on each country and place. Some people like cities, others hate them, giving different viewpoints. Select what makes sense for your taste. We never book anything without looking at reviews across Tripadvisor, Google, Reddit. While the star counts are important, look at how many reviews exist. Take feedback with <100 reviews with a pinch of salt since these would be written by friends and relatives. 1k+ is solid and dependable. The content also helps you be prepared. We take kettles where there are no coffee/ tea making facilities, buy essential from supermarkets when facilities are limited
Prioritize must have factors among price, quality, facilities, and distance before booking hotels. We are ok to let go of facilities first, distance as second, price as third and quality as fourth among comparable- this will look different for you.
We always book refundable portions of the itinerary first. This gives us a sense of bottlenecks and changes required which might not be visible during planning at a high level. We have ended up cancelling hotels many times as we realize that we have transit time of a few hours only based on actual flights booked
Once the places are finalized, we plan each day by mapping out distances among prominent attractions to see what is doable in a day. We have back up options if something is closed and droppable list if we are short on time for any reason
Although GenAI has made planning faster, I still enjoy the process of discovering a place, reading more about it, having a dry run of the itinerary. AI planned itineraries can be the starting point, but never complete or accurate. We have seen times where practical constraints like starting times of public transport or waiting times are not considered
Keep a journal of your travel for regular reminiscence. I post daily on Instagram, Youtube in an unnamed account, for months after coming back from travel, sometimes even from previous trips so that they remain fresh in my memory
You get much more knowledge about geography by doing it on your own, in addition to lesser uncertainty last minute on where to go next. Believe me, names of place in countries like Iceland can only be remembered if you have planned it yourself!
Few helpful resources
Read more details in a separate post here on essential tools and tips for travel, while we share most important ones here
Wikivoyage: For general overview
Atlys : For visa requirements
Skyscanner : For knowing flight routes and fare comparison
Booking.com: For knowing hotels, locations, fares
Google maps: For ensuring
Custom GPT: For building first cut plan