Planning a trip is something of a daunting task. I’m going to walk through the process I took to plan my first trip, and give some pointers about what I might do differently, and what I suggest to those planning their first trips.
Just to be clear, I don’t consider myself an expert planner. I like to think that I have enough experience to judge a badly planned trip and the capacity to plan a trip well, but I didn’t start out that way.
My first attempt at planning a trip looked something like this :
To be clear, there are 307 points on that map I was determined to visit over the course of a 6 month backpacking tour.
I was 16 when I came up with this monster.
Needless to say, that’s not what I did.
Over the course of my last year in high school, I came up with a new plan. This one was much less complicated and extravagant, and it looked like this :
Only 43 points.
To complete over a course of 5 weeks.
I admire and laugh at the optimism of my past self.
My final plan, after much deliberation and editing, was narrowed down to 12 countries : 20 cities, and the flexibility of a steel post.
No wiggle-room. No extra time. Nothing.
All in all, a really bad plan.
But the only thing that made me realise this was when my passport was delayed and I had to scrap the first few stops in my trip.
When I started planning this trip, I sent my passport-renewal application in a month and a half before my tentative leaving, which is plenty of time… Until they sent the forms back because my signature didn’t match the one on my drivers license.
So I had to resend all the papers back in, and was then told that it would be arriving mid-November, nearly two weeks after my initial date to leave.
Luckily it didn’t take that long.
But the time frame I thought I had forced me to narrow down my destinations even more.
By the time I narrowed it down to 12 countries, I decided to change my tactic.
Instead of definitely planning out my trip, I ‘planned’ out my trip.
I came up with a list of places I wanted to go, and decided along the way where I was going to end up with a vague idea of how long I would be staying. This gave me the flexibility I desired, and the ability to go where I wanted to without worrying about deadlines.
Once I decided to do that, I figured out three days I absolutely had to be somewhere. It was a good grounding point, and gave me a vague time frame for me to work in.
Date number 1 : December 10th, My flight home. Manchester.
Date number 2 : December 1rst, Surprise my Nanny for her birthday. Liverpool.
Date number 3 : November 6th, FC Bayern Munich Game. Munich.
It wasn’t much, but it worked out alright for me.
After that, I came up with an idea of where I was going.
After Munich, I knew I either wanted to go to Vienna, Prague, or Krakow.
I chose Vienna, and stayed for a few days.
After Vienna, I decided to go to Prague.
And that was pretty much how the rest of my trip went.
I always had an idea of where I wanted to go next, and the people I met gave me urges to go to places I perhaps wouldn’t have if I had kept a very rigid schedule. And I have to say, it led me to some of the coolest places.
So, keep it simple and flexible, never go with your first plan, and keep in mind that plans can change. That’s the beauty of travelling solo.
Anna's Travelling Antics 