Guides

While I don’t recommend basing your travel experience around a guidebook, they are still a great resource for maps, interesting activities, local history, and much more. Use it as a tool to help ease your stress about new places and to give yourself a better understanding of your environment. Just make sure to look up from the pages and explore on your own.

• Rough Guides
  • My favorite guidebook company. Always reliable with a focus on budget travel and being adventurous.
• Let’s Go
  • Unfortunately not making as many guidebooks as they used to, this is a great company to check first and see if they have a book covering your up-coming destination. Written almost exclusively by Harvard students, these always up-to-date books cater to the young and budget conscious.
• Footprint
  • The best guides for anywhere in South America. One thing I really like are the thin pages to save weight and the hard cover to help protect the books from damage throughout the trip.
• Lonely Planet
  • The mega popular guidebook company, these guys started it all. Lonely Planet covers more destinations than any other company and despite trying to cater to too many demographics in their normal books, their “On A Shoestring” series aren’t all that bad.

Accommodation

I think personal word-of-mouth recommendations trumps any guidebook or online resource, but that certainly doesn’t mean I don’t use them.

• Hostelworld.com
  • The go-to website for finding hostels and looking through ratings. Keep in mind that not all hostels in each location are on this website, and most likely less will be over time as Hostelworld has recently set their commission to a hefty 20%
• Booking.com
  • No commissions, and while catering mainly to hotels at the moment, this website has recently entered into the hostel market as well.
• Couchsurfing
  • Find a friend and sleep on their couch. A great way to see a place from a local vantage point and save money in the process.
• AirBnB
  • Rent an apartment instead of a hotel. Great for couples and groups looking to get a unique perspective of a new destination. Simple and intuitive website and design.

Travel Gear

• Coming soon…

Books

While not all of these books are about the physical act of traveling, they all share an adventurers spirit and the desire to explore. I’m sure there are many fantastic books that I’ve left out but these are some of my favorites.

• Everything by Bill Bryson
• Everything by Paul Theroux
• Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
• Born To Run by Christopher McDougall
• American Nomads by Richard Grant
• Touching The Void by Joe Simpson
• Three Cups Of Tea by Greg Mortenson
• Adrift: Seventy-Six Days Lost At Sea by Steven Callahan
• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
• Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer
• The Art Of Travel by Alain de Botton
• Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
• Long Way Down by Ewan McGregor
• No Reservations by Anthony Bourdain
• A Cook’s Tour by Anthony Bourdain
• The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain
• The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
• On the Road by Jack Kerouac
• Do Travel Writers Go to Hell? by Thomas Kohnstamm
• Unlikely Destinations: The Lonely Planet Story by Tony Wheeler
• The Beach by Alex Garland
• Smile When You’re Lying by Chuck Thompson
• Vagabonding by Rolf Potts
• Seven Years in Tibet by Heinrich Harrer
• The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner
• Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
• Marching Powder by James MacFadden

 

Credit Cards

Unfortunately this list if just for USA citizens, as there are too many differences and options from country to country. However, some basic guidelines are universal. Credit cards that have a foreign transaction fee (and that’s most of them), meaning that you have to pay a fee each time the card is used while in in a foreign country, are obviously not good for travel. Also, cards that reward you with points for flights or cash back incentives are certainly a bonus. Keep in mind that greater benefits usually means a larger annual fee, and depending on the usage, it may not be worth it.

• Chase Sapphire Preferred
  • 1st year free, after that it’s $95 annually. The card has no foreign transaction fees, is chip enabled for ease of use abroad, and has a number of great deals for earning points to get free stuff.
• Capital One Venture
  • Venture One
    • No annual fee or foreign transaction fees, and 1.25 miles for every $1 spent.
  • Venture
    • 1st year free, after that it’s $59 annually. The card has no foreign transaction fees and you earn 2 miles for every $1 spent.

Airfare

My rules for finding great flights are simple. Check a lot of different websites, and be flexible. It may not be a luxurious airline, you may be leaving before the sun rises, or you may have multiple stopovers instead of a direct flight, but that money you save will be better spent on your trip than for some extra comfort to get there.

Movies

• A Map For Saturday
  • A travel documentary that follows one young man as he quits his job with HBO to travel around the world for a year and live out of his backpack. It gives an accurate picture of what it is like to backpack around the world. It also shows you that anyone can travel cheaply if they really want to. The only thing stopping you is, well, you. This gets my highest recommendation for all of the movies listed.
• Into the Wild
  • The true story about Christopher McCandless, a recent college graduate who gives away his live savings and hitchhikes to Alaska. He meets a plethora of personalities along the way, each with their own unique stories. In Alaska, he heads out into the wilderness to live on his own and find his utopia. Unfortunately it’s not the happiest of endings.
• Lost in Translation
  • Bob & Charlotte are two very different people that happen to be visiting Tokyo at the same time. They meet each other and form a friendship as they experience confusion and hilarity in a strange and curious city. They are an unlikely pair, experiencing a degree of loneliness in a foreign city filled with millions of people. The many little random experiences that present themselves while traveling are often the most memorable.
• The Motorcycle Diaries
  • The true story of two medical students embarking on a five month motorcycle trip across South America in order to use their medical training to volunteer for a remote leper colony along the Amazon river. Based on the personal journals of latin American revolutionary Che Guevara, this film highlights the freedom, adventure, and personal discovery that is part of their travel experience.
• The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
  • The story of Walter, an introverted, awkward, and anonymous photo editor at LIFE Magazine who’s real life is quite boring. However, Walter has a very active imagination. When his job is threatened, he embarks on the adventure of a lifetime, traveling the world from Iceland to Afghanistan in search of his photography hero while taking risks and conquering new challenges along the way. A mix of incredible visual landscapes, and a beautiful soundtrack. The perfect movie to inspire those yearning for something more out of life.
• Seven Years In Tibet
  • The true story of an Austrian mountaineer who heads out to conquer a Himalayan mountain in 1939. After WWII begins, he is captured and sent to a prison camp in India. He breaks out with another man and sneaking into the holy Tibetan city of Lhasa he befriends the young Dalai Lama. Both men are from different worlds, yet become great friends teaching one another about their different views on life.
• UP
  • From the Pixar team that brought us Toy Story and Finding Nemo, “UP” is about a man who spent his life dreaming of world travel and adventures with his wife, only for the both of them to grow old without ever taking any action. When he finally decides to do something about it, he ends up having the adventure of a lifetime. Most people spend their whole life pushing travel goals off to the future, when they should be living those dreams right now. Life is short, and you have to fill it with interesting experiences as often as you can. This movie does a good job of emphasizing this theme.
• 180 Degrees South
  • This documentary follows one man’s adventure to Patagonia in the spirt of his mountaineering heroes. A solo trip that quickly turns into a group trip, we end up following a group of friends packing up their surfboards and climbing gear as they sail and drive south along the South American coast, learning about the losing battle against industrialization and the destruction of the natural world. The movie’s beautiful scenery and fantastic soundtrack mix together with a strong message and travel adventure to create a true work of art.
• The Way
  • A beautiful and inspiring tale about a father walking Spain’s Camino de Santiago trail to honor his recently deceased son. The experience is an eye-opening and emotional trip, as he’s forced to make friends with complete strangers, get a taste of his son’s lifestyle and examine his own life during the 800km journey. It features a very eclectic mix of characters, all walking the path for their own personal reasons
•  The Beach
  • Twenty-something Richard travels to Thailand and in Bangkok soon finds himself in possession of a strange map. Supposedly it leads to a solitary beach paradise down south, a tropical bliss off the well-worn tourist trail. Excited and intrigued, he sets out to find it.
•  The Darjeeling Limited
  • A film (by abstract and wacky director Wes Anderson) about three wealthy and spoiled brothers taking an overland train trip through India. They haven’t spoken in a year, and the trip is intended to be a healing process to bring the family back together. Initially it all goes wrong as they bicker and fight. When it seems like all hope is lost, their terrible experiences unite to finally put their lives into perspective. With beautiful cinematography throughout the film, it will make you want to visit India.

Basic Packing List for a Long Backpacking Trip: