If you love to travel, you will almost certainly be hoping to be able to have a long trip at some point. Traveling for an extended period of time is obviously especially exciting, and usually it gives you the chance to see even more of the world than you might have hoped for. But such long trips, as exciting and enthralling as they are, do require a great deal of planning if they are to go well, and that is something that you will need to try and prepare yourself for.
As long as you do plan for it well enough, you should find that you are going to enjoy it and make much more of it, but it varies so much from a normal holiday abroad that you will need to make sure you are focused on getting it right. In this post, we will look at some of the things to consider in order to make sure that you are prepared for your next long journey abroad.
Perfect Your Itinerary
Even on shorter trips, it can prove important to have some kind of a plan in place, so it is hardly surprising to say that you might want to do so on such a longer journey too. In fact, you will probably find that there needs to be a pretty detailed itinerary if you are to travel for a long time, as it is likely to prove useful for a number of reasons. Most of all, it will mean that you can hope to know exactly what it going to happen and when, and having that information to hand can make everything about travelling so much easier. It will also mean that you can give a copy to your loved ones back home, so that they know where you are and when. Apart from anything else, that can be quite a useful safety thing, so it’s a good idea to make sure that you are doing this.
Many travellers baulk at the idea of such intensive planning. You might feel that the fun of a trip like that is to simply see where the wind takes you, and there is some truth to that. But the best way might be something of a compromise: you could, for instance, make a general overall plan, but within that plan allow plenty of room to move around and do what you want. One of the great things about a long trip is that you can do exactly that: by spending a lot of time in each place you visit, you can hope to see much more of them and to make it a little more leisurely, but you can still think about planning it on the whole. However you approach this, it is definitely wise to have some kind of itinerary in place at the very least, if you are to ensure that you can make the most of your trip abroad.
Keep Safe
Safety is always something of a concern, and obviously the longer you travel the more that you have to think about this. Keeping safe is easy enough in most parts of the world as long as you make a point of keeping your wits about you, but that is something which you are going to have to make sure that you do, especially on such a long journey. There are a lot of things to consider with regard to keeping yourself safe, and it’s worth taking a look at this in some detail to ensure that you are not going to suffer any unfortunate incidents while you are travelling.
One of the most important things to consider is that you should generally travel with at least one other person. There is a lot of fun to be had in solo travel, and you might want to do that, but it is just much less safer than travelling with someone else, and you should bear that in mind if you want to really take care of yourself. As long as you are with someone, you have numbers, and that means you are safer from many different kinds of safety issues and attacks. This might be especially important if you are someone who might be viewed as easy prey, whether that is because you are young, female or slight in build – or whatever it might be, such as being a certain race in a part of the world with a lot of racial tension. These are all the things you need to be aware of too, if you hope to remain safe.
Beyond that, make a point of not advertising any valuable belongings you might have on you; in fact, it is going to be better if you simply don’t have anything valuable with you as you travel. You’ll also need to make sure that you have some kind of basic self-defence knowledge, and it would genuinely be with learning that before you go anywhere. The more prepared you feel with regard to your personal safety, the more likely it is that you will be able to enjoy yourself while travelling for a long period of time. Your safety is paramount, so make sure that you are considering this as best as you can. See https://travelaware.campaign.gov.uk/ for information on safety abroad.
Keep In Touch
Travelling for such a long time also means that you are probably going to want to find a good way to keep in touch with people back home. This is likely to prove important for your own sanity and safety, and it will keep your friends and family happy too. There are actually plenty of ways in which you can hope to keep in touch, and you should make sure that you are doing so as often and as best as you can. You might want to make it easy by merely posting updates on social media and contacting people on the messaging services they provide. But occasionally you will almost certainly want to call or text someone, and you should make sure that you have the ability to do so whenever you need to.
For that reason, you should make a point before you go away of getting hold of a decent contract for your mobile phone. If you look at https://www.smarty.co.uk you will see an example of a particularly simple approach which might work for you. Depending on where you are going and where you’re coming from, you might need to think about roaming and whether your contract allows for that, or whether you are going to have to pay extra. Make sure you sort all that stuff out first of all, so that you can keep in touch with people back home much more easily and effectively. That will be very helpful when it comes to those times when you get a little homesick, or just want to chat with someone.
Plan Your Travel Money and Expenses
There’s no argument that a longer trip means spending more, but you can do plenty to make sure that you are not spending too much regardless, and that is absolutely something that you will want to look into as early as you can. There are many ways to make sure that you don’t overspend, and one of the best is to budget yourself out day by day. If you do that, you will find it surprisingly easy to keep on top of your money, and you can also make this much easier by paying for as much of your accommodation and travel upfront as you possibly can. That will make it much easier, and will help to keep your money intact throughout.
