Top Travel Strategies for Travellers

These are a few of the many travel strategies I follow as a world traveller.

Nomadic Backpacker in Kampala at the Taxi Park.

A strategy is a plan of action, a way of doing things, a Modus Operandi.

Good strategies are a more effective way of doing things, making your life easier, less stressful and less complicated and sometimes cheaper and safer.

Follow these Top Travel Strategies, and you’ll be backpacking the world like a seasoned pro.

• Leave Early/Arrive Early
• Don’t plan on travelling too far in one day
• Border Crossing Strategy
• Changing Money Strategy
• Hotels NOT on Booking
• Buy when you Arrive
• Carry Warm Clothing

Leave Early/Arrive Early

On travel days, leaving early holds many advantages.

Things don’t always run as smoothly as you want. In leaving early, you have time to fix things when everything invariably goes tits up; breakdowns and other delays that are beyond your control.

I have lost count of the number of times the bus or shared taxis I have been travelling in have broken down.

If there are buses at 6 am, 7 am, 8 am and 10 am, I will be on the 7 am or the 8 am, or even the 6 am, if the day was gonna be a long one.

In many countries, the number of departures reduces in frequency as the day progresses. In El Salvador, there used to be half-hourly departures until noon, then hourly until mid-afternoon and at dusk, they would stop running completely.

Leaving early means that you have done everything to reduce the risk of arriving (somewhere) late.

There is nothing worse than arriving in a new town or city when it’s already dark. I like to walk from the bus or train station to the hostel or hotel, but in quite a few countries, doing this after dark ain’t the best idea, especially with all my stuff. It would be prudent to take a cab, which would be costly.

But not only that, if you are travelling to a place without a reservation, then by arriving early, you have a much better chance of securing a room at the price you want to pay.

If you arrive late, you might find all the cheap rooms are gone, and you’ll be forced to go over budget. That is one instance when making a reservation is a good idea. A good strategy.

But making reservations in a place you don’t know, in an area of town you don’t know, for longer than a night, is not something I like doing. That, for me, is a bad strategy. Read more about that below.

When I was hiking in Nepal, on the Annapurna Base Camp Trek, I would be up at the crack of dawn and away by 7.30 am. I’d get the day’s hike in by around 2 pm.

By arriving early, I had the pick of the rooms, I had time to get cleaned up, and I’d be tucking into a bowl of porridge, washing it down with a mug of hot, sweet tea, before 3 pm, which was the time that the afternoon rains would invariably arrive.

I’d be observing all the other trekkers coming in, all miserable and soaked to the skin and having to check out every guesthouse to get a bed.

Don’t plan on travelling too far in one day

As a rule, I don’t like to travel too far in one day. Six hours is my preferred maximum journey time on any one day.

A bus leaving at around 8 am is ideal for the reasons mentioned above.

Of course, there have been many times when I have travelled much further.

12-hour buses that leave after 8 am are just beyond stupid. Arriving in the early hours of the morning is the absolute worst. Not to mention how ragged such a long journey leaves you, as night buses rarely afford you a good night’s sleep.

I once arrived in Pietermaritzburg at 4 am. The plan was to make a beeline for the McDonald’s across the street from the Intercape Bus Office, but it was closed until 6 am. The idea of hiding somewhere safe until daybreak is a good strategy. Going to that particular McD was a plan, and it backfired. Pietermaritzburg is probably the most dangerous city in South Africa.

Night buses can be OK as a way to save on a night’s accommodation or if you’re pushed for time, but are only really worth it if you can sleep. Travelling at night is not such a good idea. Drivers can and do fall asleep at the wheel.

The best strategy is to travel for 2 to 5 hours in the morning and continue on the next day, unless of course, you like the place.

Border Crossing Strategy

I love the buzz of crossing borders. I am a big overland traveller, so I have crossed countless borders, and my preferred strategy is to take a bus to the border, cross on foot and then pick up onward transport once across the border.

If it’s getting late in the day, I will opt to stay a night and cross in the morning, or find a hotel just across the border. Onward transport may have all finished for the day.

I did that when crossing the border from Ethiopia to Kenya at Moyale. Other travellers I met at the border jumped on a bus that would whisk them to Nairobi, an horrendous journey made 20 times worse by doing it in the dark. I took the bus the next day, rested and enjoyed the journey to Isiolo in the daylight.

Once, when crossing from Senegal to Mali at Kidiri, I opted to cross the border at around 4 pm and try to get to Kayes. It wasn’t very far, but I hadn’t factored in waiting for four hours to get an onward ride. I should have headed to the Auberge le Boundou or the Auberge Laser and crossed the next day. I ended up walking around Kayes, Mali, at 11 pm looking for a hotel. Far from ideal.

Taking a cross-border bus will cost you 3 or 4 times as much as using local transport to the border and again once you have crossed.

Also, there is nothing worse than waiting for a bus load of people to get processed. Being alone and highly mobile gets me through the border and onto the onward transport with minimal fuss.

Changing Money Strategy

Before heading to the money exchange, I will have worked out how much local money I should be getting for the money I want to change, be it USD, Euros or local money from the previous country.

If I have a small amount of cash, sometimes I don’t even bother changing it. I keep it for next time or change with other travellers.

If I am changing money at the border, sometimes it’s the best place for getting rid of any leftover currency. If you leave Burundi, for example, with leftover francs, you’ll have an impossible time trying to get rid of them. Make sure you change it before you leave.

Mostly, but not always, the rate at the border is crap, so having a selection of 10 or 20 USD notes is an advantage. It’ll get you to the next town, where you will have more options or even an ATM (never use an ATM at the border).

Don’t make hotel reservations

If you stay in a hotel that is on all the booking systems, you run the risk of being kicked out in the morning if you haven’t booked any extra nights.

Staying in a hotel where bookings don’t come in whilst you sleep is freedom.

A few years ago, I went to a hostel in San Jose, Costa Rica. I turned up at the popular backpacker hostel and paid for 1 night as I like to see how a place is before committing to a longer stay. The dude told me, “Yeah, no problem. Just extend in the morning”. Come morning, there were no free beds for the following nights. Whilst I had been sleeping peacefully, all the beds got booked out. I had to move. If you snooze, you lose.

I recall back in the early days, the mo of any hostel was to give the guests until 11 am to extend. They had priority. From 11 am, the hostel accepted new arrivals. This was freedom.

Africa is one of my favourite continents to travel on. Why? It still operates old school. Cheap hotels are NOT on any booking site. Most though are on Google Maps, which is just a modern-day equivalent of the map in the Lonely Planet guidebook, which is why it’s one of the most essential apps a traveller can have.

If you make reservations, you become trapped.

You are in a town that you really like and want to extend, or someone gives you a cool tip about another place, or you get sick and can’t be arsed to travel to the next town, but you have that pending reservation. You won’t often find places that let you cancel for free at short notice.

You make a reservation for a week in a place you know nothing about. Fool hardy, actually, but everyone does it.

You check in, pay the outstanding balance and then what do you do if the hostel is used by school groups where the teachers let the kids run riot, your room is above a bar, next to the highway, opposite a massive construction project. Madness.

The best strategy, if you know you are gonna be arriving late, or it’s the high season, is to reserve one or 2 nights, then if you are planning on staying longer, use the first day to find something, some quaint old school place, where they take cash only.

Buy when you arrive

Avoid high baggage fees by travelling with little more than the clothes you are standing up in. Unless you wear 3 XL clothing, have size 10 shoes, and need some ultra-special medication, you can buy everything you will ever need at your destination. And if you are travelling to the developing world, which is so popular for travellers, getting kitted out will be cheaper than paying for checked-in baggage.

I have often travelled somewhere without toiletries, think shower gel, mosquito spray, toothpaste, just to cut the weight down for that flight out. You can find markets that sell 2nd hand clothing, or even brand new stuff for a couple of bucks.

Always Carry Warm Clothing

Even in the tropics, I carry a sleeping bag and a sweater. Cos you never know when you might end up on a bus, boat or plane where the AC is set to 16 degrees C.

I have been on buses in Sumatra, boats in Sarawak, where it’s 35 deg C out side and the AC is set to low. Other backpackers in the shorts and T-shirts freezing their tits off, whilst I am travelling like a local, warm and cosy with my sleeping bag wrapped around me, locals take blankets for these situations.