Wanting to travel for the longest time, but clueless on where to start? Well, let me tell you, you’re not alone. I’ve been there, everyone’s been there.
Though, now it hardly even feels like a task, when I was beginning to travel, planning out the entire journey did bring a lot of confusion, chaos, and nervousness in me and of course, the time it consumed was humongous.
So, I thought I’d rule out a beginner’s guide & come up with 10 Tips To Know Before Travel Solo and I’m going to list down everything I did right and the mistakes I made which might help you in the dos and don’ts of planning your first trip.
1. DESTINATION
The first thing that needs to get checked off, is where you exactly want to go. I follow travel pages, read blogs, follow travel bloggers, and when a place catches my attention, I save it and when I sit to plan a trip, I pick from one of the locations that allured me in the first place. Now for a beginner, I would suggest places that already have an influx of travelers, so the chances of you meeting people or even finding good cafes, and affordable stays are higher since the location is already accustomed to serving tourists. If you mark an offbeat destination, you will have fun, but the affordability or the facilities might not be as much as that of a ‘touristy’ place.
2. DURATION
Almost everything in planning your trip is interlinked and I don’t adhere to a step-by-step procedure.
Now, say you’ve chosen Meghalaya as your travel destination and you’re from Guwahati and you have 4 days leave/holiday, so it’s viable. But if you’re traveling from Kerala, 4 days for Meghalaya can never be enough. So, decide the duration you’re going to vacay and include travel to and fro time, and then pick on a destination accordingly.
3. YOUR CREW
Another factor is, your crew, who are you going with. If you’re traveling solo, then the safety, feasibility of travel, and conveyance of everything come into the picture. Say you’re traveling to a place where the spots you wanna visit, or the activities you wanna dig a massive hole in your pocket, and public means of travel to the spots you wanna go are not available, so it would not be wise to travel to that place alone. Likewise, when you’re with a group, aligning to the interests of everyone is a to do, while planning your trip
4. BUDGET
Now comes another extremely crucial part of planning your trip, your budget. If you want to go on a shoestring budget, you will have to find out if the place you’re heading to actually provides amenities within a specific budget, and well, cutting down costs is always in your hand if you ask me. Traveling is not expensive, comfort is, so it’s a tradeoff, that you decide.
5. BOOK FLIGHTS/TRAIN/BUS
Now that the four most important pillars of planning a trip have been done and you have a robust foundation for yourself, the following quick action that you need to take is to book your flights, trains, or whatever the means of transport that will deport you right to your vacay mode 😉
6. STAY
The next step to climb is, booking your stay. If this is a long stay that you’re doing, then what I would suggest is, to book the first couple of days in any place convenient and then actually go and find a better place to stay which is affordable too. This applies if it’s an off-season. If you’re going on a long weekend,
or during peak season, the chances of good stays being booked are extremely high, so do not take this risk. When booking a stay, I search for the location on Instagram, google and always come across properties that people have just lived in, or hostel world, booking.com if the former don’t work. I either talk to the people who have stayed one on one or read reviews and voila! another major patch of planning a trip, covered.
7. ITINERARY
Ironic how so many things come before actually drawing out an itinerary, innit?
So once you’re done with all of the above, now is the time, you start extensive research on the things to do. If I am going to a place for a short duration, I do the same. But if the stay is longer, I don’t make an itinerary, I love going to a place and exploring it on my own. To plan your itinerary, blogs/vlogs are the best and the easiest thing to do. Read multiple pieces and list down the things that interest you. The places you want to see, the spots you want to visit, the hike you want to take, and make a rough plan ready.
8. START BOOKING
Now that you have a rough itinerary in your hand, start making your bookings if there’s any activity you wanna do, or you want to go for a hike and need a guide for the same, make the booking beforehand.
9. DON’T OVERDO
This was the biggest mistake I made as a beginner, there were so many things I wanted to do, and so many places I wanted to ‘cover’ so I always made a very tight itinerary, and that always brought disappointments. Don’t hop between destinations just for the heck of covering a place, there’s a reason why it’s called exploring, take your time out to do the same. Give yourself enough time in between activities and always keep space for flexible plans. Once you reach your destination, you will always find people recommending you better things to do, so there might be changes and if you’re in a position to accommodate it, it’s always better.
10. ENJOY
Now that I’ve broken down everything, you might be thinking ‘God there’s so much to do’/’Itni mehnat kaun kare’, but like I always say, Travelling is not easy, its not always pretty too, but, it’s worth it. So, now that you’ve actually done everything and you’re off to your vacation, just enjoy as much as you can and have the time of your life 🙂
