Tips for planning your next Holiday

One of the most common questions asked to me is - how do you plan your travel? do you go on your own or with someone? how do you manage your costs? Well, this post will help you find answers to some of these questions.




The very first thing to identify is "where to go" and "how long to go" - while it may seem easy to choose a country, it does take time to identify your destination and then plan the key places. Let's take it one at a time.

How Long to go:
The first big thing, especially for Indians, is how long. The planning should start about 2 months in advance. Check your long weekends and official commitments. Check with your spouse if the same time works for him/her. Do not worry about the budget right now. Apply for leaves and get it approved from your boss well in advance! If it is a smaller country like Singapore, Hongkong or Dubai - 5 days are enough. If you wish to do one European country 7-9 days are sufficient and for more than 1 country aim for a 2 week travel. Once you have locked down the time, its time to identify which is the best place in this season.

When & Where to go: I generally identify the destination based on what we "feel" like doing - do you want be on a beach or in snow, do you want history or landscapes? These will help you narrow down your choices between likes of Thailand or Italy. You would still be left with the question of Thailand vs Malaysia or Italy vs France. One key decision for this is what is the weather like - do your research else you may end up at a good place on the wrong time.

Book your flight tickets now - Base location to destination and return to get good deals. Do not worry about internal travel or hotels at this stage.

Getting your Visa: Most countries would ask you for confirmed round trip flight tickets and hotel stay. Book indicative hotels using sites like booking.com that gives you 100% free cancellation. Apply for your visa through self or agent.

Where to Visit:
While your visa is being processed, take time to plan your trip. Start your research on the internet and start gathering the key places that suites your pallate - cities, towns, villages. The best way I have found to do this is through Google Maps. Just start plotting all the cities / places that comes up for that country over a google map. You would be swamped with choices on what to visit and cancel based on the time you have. But you should end up with a route from port of entry to exit - it may be a circular route where you come back to same city at the end or  a linear one where you exit from your last destination. Identify what needs a stopover or can be done enroute as a day trip.

Where to Stay:
A signifcantly large amount which is in your complete control (unlike flights) is the expense on stay. I'm an ardent fan of AirBnB, not because it is cheap but it provides you experiences that are so much richer than hotels. Select your AirBnB wisely - with private bathroom, access to kitchen but most importantly access to public transport. Be adventourous - select one of the offbeat places, a villa, a castle, a wineyard for truly memorable experiences.

How to travel Locally:
Internet and Lonely Planet will only help you as much. Throughout, I loved my experiences to understand the city with "Free Walking Tours". Not only you get to know about key sites and history and low cost, but also way around for reaming of your stay. Take the local transport - metro & bus pass for few days. A must have for me is to download offline google map for every city to help me navigate. Book your local train or bus or flight for inter-city travel in advance to steal some good deals.

Despite all your planning you would have some hic-cups - either on travel, stay or sites but that's the adventure to remember, Here's to travelling smart and wise - salut!