My upcoming trip has a lot of moving parts. I’m going to dozens of different places over a period of three weeks. I’m going from country A to country B to country C, then back to country B. I’m travelling by public transport, visiting wineries, hiking along remote trails, seeing off-the-beaten-path communities. Oh, and two of these countries are kind of at war with each other.
Yesterday I discovered that a key route I needed to take was now no longer possible to undertake due to the border suddenly closing (it had been open in the direction I was going, now it’s entirely shut). Here’s what I did:
Despair
Independent travel can be monumentally frustrating. Plans that require many, many hours of research unexpectedly come undone due to one small cog falling off. When this occasionally happens to me my first feeling is one of despair.
Despair at myself for not just taking an easy organised trip. Despair at lack of information on the internet (it’s amazing, when planning independent travel, you soon realise how limited the internet is (which is why I put together travel plans that hopefully help others)). Despair at geopolitics and the petty nature of many politicians.
Once I’ve allowed myself a little despair I then become determined. It’s time to pull out all the stops, starting with some favourites.
Skyscanner, Wikipedia
Because I try my best to travel responsibly I prefer to travel overland using public transport. Only when that method is totally shut off to me do I look at flights. My favourite tool for quickly looking at flight possibilities is Skyscanner, which is why they’re one of my affiliates.
Taking the place I was planning to be in as a starting point I head to Skyscanner and see if I can fly from there to the destination I was hoping to get to. Not possible? Find the next nearest city. Not possible? Look at indirect routes. Not possible? Look at the Wikipedia pages for these airports to see which airlines fly from them, checking each airlines’ website in case Skyscanner has missed anything (95% of the time it hasn’t).
Inevitably there is a flight route which can get me to where I wanted to be. Sadly that route can often be incredibly expensive and/or incredibly inconvenient. Case in point: I needed to get from a city in Northern Azerbaijan to Tbilisi. Due to needing to fly within ten days the seats had sold out and the only alternative was to fly a long way west to Istanbul, then fly a long way back east to Tbilisi at a cost of over one third of what I was paying for the entire trip. Time for another plan.
Locals, Wikitravel
As well as being limited in information, the internet is famously good at disinformation. Was that border I need to cross actually shut? Yes, but it seems only at the point where I wanted to cross, another crossing point may still be open in the direction I need to travel.
Wikitravel has “Get Out” and “Get In” sections, which often have contact details for local transport operators. Here I found the number of a bus driver that took passengers across the allegedly-closed border point. Unfortunately he, and the hotel I was due to stay at, confirmed that the border was closed.
Asking locals can be both a blessing and a curse. They should be the best informed people. Often this is a great source for accurate information, but that information can come with a hyper-local angle or even an agenda. It’s worth trying tourist boards but, in my experience, they’re not always particularly helpful. So, who else may be using the border?
Tour operators, social media
There are some excellent group tour operators around. I’ve travelled with some in the past, and as an independent traveller I use them to plan my own travels. If they have a tour following the route you wish to follow then they probably have a very good idea about what’s happening along it. Be a bit cheeky and pretend you’re interested in the tour, asking if, for example, the rumours are true that the border is actually closed.
This is how I found out that one crossing point is, probably, still open. The tour operator confirmed that they have been crossing the border at this particular point. This was verified when I put the question out on social media, by someone who had recently taken this route. At last, some hope. Now to make new plans.
Plans C and D
My new plan, Plan C, now necessitated me cancelling the hotel I was due to stay at, telling myself that it was better to not visit that particular town/national park in order to actually continue the rest of my journey. I’m an obsessive planner, but this is one of the times where I realise that I need to rock up at a place without any accommodation booked, in case plans change again.
In fact, Plan C has opened up new opportunities. If it works out then I get to visit a well-known wine region and travel through some spectacular scenery. I’m also now extremely wary about the status of the new border crossing point, hence not booking any accommodation in case I need to implement Plan D (which would involve flying to Tbilisi via Istanbul from another airport). I will only know for sure when I get there…
A Plan To Go 