Preparing for a Trip: Part I

As readers know, my big trip is barely a month away. It will be about three months and take me to a dozen countries, several breakaway regions, many conflicts and 4,000 miles overland. As you can imagine, preparing for a trip of this magnitude takes a great deal of planning. Where does one even start? I’d like to provide tips and organizational advice here for our readers. I invite both Curzon and Younghusband to leave theirs in the comment section (or write your own post?).

Maps

Your first step should be to download NASAWorldWind. With it, you can begin creating maps of your routes and/or potential routes. It will help make clear which routes are feasible and which are not, including where your best starting and ending points are. I recommend using a graphics program such as Fireworks to edit and enhance them.

Doing the research

The research is the biggest part of your preparation. In order to be as effective and efficient as possible, you should setup your own wiki for the trip. I recommend PMwiki with the plugin for tags. If you don’t already have your own domain, I recommend Godaddy because everyone can afford three dollars a month. From there you need to consider how you will organize your wiki before you begin adding information. I have the following:

• To Do List – With a list for before your trip and things you want to do during. e.g. buy s.th specific


• Itinerary – create a table with dates, you can fill in the location as your trip comes together


• Packing List – To list and organize everything you’ll bring.


• Route maps – from NASA, use multiple if visiting different regions


• Gear – for a list of, or pics of the gear you’re taking


• Political Events – interesting political events occurring when you’re in the countries


• Weather – self-explanatory, helps with packing list


• Travel stores – list of travel stores you can quickly use if looking for something


• News – a running list you update with copies of news articles relevant to your trip. When I see a related article, I create a new page on my wiki and copy it there.

After you’ve setup those pages, you’ll want to of course create a page for every country you’re visiting and from each pages, a page for every city and sometimes region. So once you’re wiki is organized, where do you get your content?

• Lonely Planet Thorntree – Great forums for travelers, you can meet people and get great help here.


• Blogs – Create a new category in your rss reader and start subscribing to any blog relevant to your trip


• Wikitravel.org – The website wikitravel.org can sometimes be helpful, though many third world places are barebones.


• Wikipedia – You can find lots of great information at wikipedia.


• CIA Factbook – For basic facts on every country go to the CIA Factbook.


• Amazon – Look for book lists, or recommendations. Amaznode is a GREAT tool for viewing groups of books as “networks” to see what people buy.


• News – Scour the internet for English-language news from the countries you’re visiting. Every country has at least one newspaper in English.


• Email – Email everyone you can: bloggers, embassies, travelers from the LP forums, travel agencies etc.

Now that you’ve got your wiki setup and are doing research, it’s time to talk about packing so stay tuned for part two on it.