Author: A Plan To Go

Our porters slipped away from camp before sunrise. We were left to wait in the dark before we could commence the final day of the Inca Trail. Why were we in this situation? Because the train operator had changed their schedules, and the porters needed to get to the nearest station earlier than they used to do.

When I did the Inca Trail in 2000 I didn’t have to endure this final-day early start, but it wasn’t ever an easy hike. The reward, though, was just as worth it almost 20 years later.

Machu Picchu – the reason most people come to Peru. There are two ways to get here; hiking various trails (the Inca Trail being the most popular), or taking the train from Ollantaytambo. All itineraries make use of the hugely expensive train from Machu Picchu. I’ve given Mid-range travellers a day-time ride to Puno (following the rave review from friends we travelled with) and Luxury travellers get to enjoy the additional journey towards Arequipa. Budget travellers? Well, they just get a bargain.

I was tear-gassed in Arequipa, but that’s because I managed to get between protestors and supporters during a presidential visit. It’s well-worth the detour though, and I’m sure you won’t have the same tear-inducing as I. Lima was also a much more enjoyable experience this time around, partly because this time we explored the old part of the city rather than just hang out in the bars of Miraflores, and partly because we were there at the same time as a ridiculously colourful festival.

With online bus and train schedules, this itinerary was easy to plan. Peru has also become much easier to travel around – although the Nazca Lines require long bus journeys to and from. There’s a certain hop-on hop-off bus operator that I haven’t recommended because, in my experience, they’re exploitative, and because the local bus operators do a great job.

Oh, here we go. Planning drive times in Canada? Easy. Planning public transport? Nightmare. Even Greyhound have severely reduced their services here. Although, following my experience of them, that’s no great loss.

It’s currently impossible to get a bus from Whistler to Jasper, and almost impossible to get a bus from Vancouver to Jasper. This is both a problem and an opportunity for budget travellers, as the alternative is the train which, whilst not cheap, does travel overnight and so doubles as both transport and accommodation (albeit not particularly comfortable). This is a train journey so spectacular that it acts as a little reward for those budget travellers who have to put up with dorms and coaches.

Getting from Jasper to Lake Louise/Banff is easy, visiting the Atahabasca glacier along the way is much more expensive but absolutely worth it if you have the budget. I have fond memories of staying at the HI hostels in Lake Louise and Banff and so was glad to see they’re still highly rated.

The Budget, Mid-range and Luxury itineraries are all quite different (I particularly like how the Luxury version includes a two-night stay on a ranch). Putting the last parts of a public transport journey together in a country as car-focused as this is as satisfying as putting in the last pieces of a puzzle.

New Zealand’s North Island feels surprisingly different to South Island. Where the South Island is full of immense mountains, wide and empty landscapes, deep fjords and pristine forest, North Island seems to have more picture-perfect volcanoes, buzzing cities, sunny beaches and geothermal activity. It’s also easier to get around by bus. Well, less difficult anyway.

Mount Taranaki is the volcanic pimple on the North Island’s nose. It sticks out on the south west side and requires quite a long diversion, whereas the other destinations in this itinerary are far more sequential. Figuring out how to get to and from here by bus, and then to and from the Tongariro Crossing took hours. Sadly it just wasn’t possible to get to Taranaki without wasting huge amounts of time.

Once again, the Department of Conservation proved super useful. Their ‘kia ora’ greeting on their correspondence made me pine for New Zealand. The Waitomo Caves were a little off route too, but having had one of the most incredible experiences of my life here, it just had to feature.

So, once again, the budget backpackers need to spend more time getting around the place. Once again, my advice for them (and anyone else who visits New Zealand) is; if you’re going to spend several weekes here (which you should) then consider buying a cheap campervan and, like us, finding a lovely German couple to buy it off you at the same price you paid for it. Nga mihi!

“You can all proceed, but he needs to stay here”

It was a gloriously warm and sunny day when we travelled up the Mekong and crossed into Cambodia from Vietnam. The boat was uncomfortable and we were already behind schedule. Our eVisa did, however, permit us easy entry. Sadly one of the other passengers wasn’t so lucky.

He was from a country which didn’t send many visitors here, and the grumpy border guards wanted to spend more time checking his application. This, we were told, could take a very long time. Unfortunately this border post was many miles from anywhere and the only way in or out was by the very occasional boat. We voted to stay as one group.

Having now made it into Cambodia, and without an abandoned fellow tourist on our conscience, we set out to explore Phnom Penh and then Siem Reap and Angkor Wat. In retrospect, we should have spent longer in Cambodia and visited the country’s beautiful but relatively undiscovered beaches.

On a very strict budget, we pedalled our way around the immense site of Angkor Wat on rickety bikes, comically holding up umbrellas whilst we balanced the handlebars with the other hand amidst a tropical downpour. Tuk-tuks, motorbikes and cars occasionally roared by, making us realise how wonderfully serene it was to see Angkor Wat by pedal power.

Putting together this itinerary was a breeze, thanks to the availability of an online bus booking system. Cambodia seems to have become much easier to plan since we visited. As with most of my itineraries, this one can be plugged in to another – treat Cambodia as a crossroads and enter Phnom Penh from Vietnam, visit Laos (for which I’ve yet to create an itinerary) or Thailand from Siem Reap and just keep going and going and going…

Fairytale castles and towns, vibrant cities and pristine forests and mountains – putting together the Germany itinerary made me want to drop everything and go back. Even better, thanks to Germany’s excellent rail and bus network, it was a breeze to plan.

So easy, in fact, was it to plan travel in this country that I decided to throw in the challenge of a Rhine cruise on day 5. Having once worked in the cruise industry, there was a temptation to make this a multi-day cruise, but that would have made for an entirely different holiday, and one which wouldn’t take much planning. The other challenge was finding well-rated budget accommodation, often in small towns – Germany is not a cheap destination.

Hiring a car isn’t necessarily possible for budget backpackers, and so finding a route through the Black Forest (which meant that travellers could experience the best bits) involved scrutinising local bus routes which, unfortunately, proved inadequate. And so the second night in Baden-Baden was swapped with picturesque Triberg and incorporated in to the onward journey.

Stick to currywurst, follow the recommended itinerary and hit those museums on a Sunday and you can have a relatively cheap German holiday. Or just splurge on some of the best accommodation that Europe can offer.

Jordan is the first itinerary I’ve created without actually having visited the country. Through a combination of studying various tour operator itineraries, researching the top sights and knowledge of what simply cannot be missed on a visit there, I hope that I’ve put together something which proves useful to visitors (all feedback welcome!)

Whilst it’s relatively easy to put together an itinerary for those with a larger budget, due to the availability of personal drivers, figuring out public transport for the other itineraries was more challenging. At first I was happy to see that there is a national coach operator (Jett), but then realised that their network was pretty limited. So, what to do?

More research, including contacting various local tourist boards, meant that I was able to eventually figure out how to get about. The answer was a rather vague one – something along the lines of ‘take one of the many minibuses that leave from this random bus station at indeterminate times’. Having obtained the best advice on how to determine those departure times I was able to progress to the next destination and, faced with the same issue, started again.

For a relatively short itinerary, Jordan took a long time to put together because of these challenges. But now there is a fully-detailed plan which should make a visit far simpler for any independent traveller.

France is one of those countries so packed full of amazing places to visit that it’s hard to know where to begin. Well, obviously Paris must feature, but beyond there it took a whole lot of research to get a taste of most of the regions. The amazing thing about France is that I could have chosen completely different destinations and it would still be a truly unforgettable journey.

Because of the shape of the country and location of the highlights, I planned this itinerary in a kind of wobbly ‘C’ shape, to make the most efficient use of time. Fortunately France has an excellent rail network, making getting about easy. As with all my itineraries, there are places you may wish to miss out and others you may wish to spend more time in – what I’ve done here is choose the sort of holiday I would want to do.

There are occasional surprising challenges when creating these itineraries. For this one the surprise was how hard it is to find a way to get from central Paris to Versailles. Eventually I discovered that the Paris Metro site was the best place to plan this. Blissfully more complex journeys were easier to plan, thanks to the excellent SNCF who can combine a few changes and a couple of different forms of transport to make a relatively simple hop from A to B to C to D.

There will inevitably be people’s favourite places that I miss out on this itinerary, but it’s designed as a flexible guide. Plus, with so many places to see and such little time, I’ve had to compromise on what is included. But this country, and this itinerary, has it all, from ancient cities to snowy mountains, from metropolitan Paris to Mediterranean beaches. Bon voyage!

We entered China in the dead of night, awoken by the wheels being removed from our train. This was to be expected – we were, after all, travelling from Russia where the rails have a different gauge. Thus began our 6-week visit to this immense and fascinating country.

One of the great things about using this itinerary is that you benefit from my hindsight. Yes, we saw many amazing places in China and yes, a lot of these feature in the China itinerary. But there were some places that we could have missed out on and others which we should really have gone to see.

What’s noticeable is how much easier it has become to travel around China by train, and to plan that travel (thank you trip.com). The rail network has dramatically improved and is now a fast, yet still cheap, way of seeing the country. I missed out on a couple of key sights last time I was there, but it’s good to have an excuse to go back.

There are two very different sides to Portugal; the perfect, Atlantic-facing beaches found in the country’s south, and the old, fascinating cities and towns from Évora northwards. I created the Portugal itinerary to focus on the latter – it doesn’t take much planning to book a week on the beach.

One of my many crackpot theories is that any city which has a tram system is a city worth visiting. This is especially true of Lisbon and I fondly recall riding the yellow and white trams up and down those steep streets. I also fondly recall the pasteis de nata and have yet to find one that tastes better than those I ate in Portugal.

Portugal has a great public transport system, which made it easy to create this itinerary. It has a cheap, yet relatively luxurious railway and so that features on the Luxury, Mid-range and Budget versions. A lot of organised tours seem to miss out Évora but, being so full of history as well as so close to Lisbon, I thought that it should definitely feature.

Being such a popular destination for tourists, the choice of accommodation of huge and this itinerary features everything from the 5* Hotel Avenida Palace in Lisbon to the highly rated Porto Spot Hostel. Something I’d love to do one day is take a multi-day cruise down the Douro River and so I of course mentioned this as an option for the Mid-range and Luxury versions.

You know those destinations where you feel as though you’re walking through the set of a film? Morocco felt like just such a destination, perhaps because it has featured in numerous films. Also, like what seems to be thousands of places worldwide, Morocco also features heavily as a backdrop in Game of Thrones.

The great thing about Morocco is that, whilst not at all far from Europe, it feels so exotic. People walking around in their hooded djellabas, intricate Moorish architecture, grunting camels – and that’s just the cities. Here starts the great Sahara desert, the immense Atlantic crashes along Morocco’s shores, snowy mountains sit above mud brick villages.

It was a challenge figuring out the itinerary for this country. It was easy to create the Luxury version – having your own driver makes travel simple. But public transport didn’t always connect in the places where I wanted it to (why is there no bus between Merzouga, Tinerhir and Ouarzate?!) – instead I had to use Marrakech as a base from which to explore the High Atlas and desert. Accommodation was also cheap enough that hostels could often be exchanged with interesting, great value riads.

Tours from Marrakech were the easiest and best value ways of getting to Ouarzazate and Zagora. Choosing one which included a night in a desert Berber camp was vital for the Budget and Mid-range versions, especially as they don’t go to the dunes at Merzouga. Amid all this medieval scenery, it was amazing to see that Morocco has a high speed rail line – a good example of how easy it is to see this incredible country.