Freedom!

You want to travel. There’s a trip you’ve been longing to take, a destination that beckons, a cool experience far away — just thinking about it excites you.

Well, you’re in luck — world travel has never been easier. Is now not the right time? Maybe, but there’s nothing stopping you from making a plan. You may find that you can travel farther than you think, longer than you think, with less hassle and for less money.

The key is to Do-It-Yourself and become an “independent traveler.” What’s different about independent travel?

Pros

• Go where you want — Avoid crowded, costly and inauthentic tourist traps. Dig in to the places you visit. Understand the people who live there. If a city or beach doesn’t excite you, go somewhere else.
• Go when you want and stay flexible — Customize to your best dates, not the fixed dates required by many travel “deals.” Stay flexible and do cool stuff you discover only after arriving.
• Control your comfort level — Don’t get locked-in to a package deal designed for “fly and flop” tourists. Choose the transportation type and class, lodge and room that suits your style and budget. If something isn’t right, change it.
• Enjoy the experiences you want — Pick and choose your experiences — sightseeing, trekking, shopping, museums, beaches, partying and more — without being a sheep in the tourist industry flock.
• Get more value for money — Even luxury travelers travel the world on a budget (albeit a generous one). DIY travel lets you travel farther, stay longer and do more on a given budget.

Con

What’s the downside to independent travel? There’s only one:

• Effort — Independent travel is more time and effort for you to arrange. 

The right stuff

Since we’re going to a lot of places, often over a longer time, we need to equip ourselves for a wide range of situations, from city nightlife to beach to trek. Sometimes we must prepare for wildly different weather. Yet we still have to travel light.

• Carry-on only — Large, hard-to-move luggage is an anchor on your mobility. Checked luggage costs more to move and carries the risk of loss or damage. All pro independent travelers (unless traveling with small children or specialized equipment) go with a carry-on main bag of 45 liters or less. The sweet spot is 35 – 40 liters.
• Limited clothing & gear — If you’re traveling with that little space and weight, it’s both an art and a science to take just what you need. Believe it or not, a carry-on bag with limited stuff is liberating!
• Quality clothing & gear — If your stuff is limited, it has to be durable and (where possible) multi-functional.
• Services that fit — Conventional “travel insurance” and “travel credit cards” are not a good match for independent travelers. And they cost too much. You need to find services that fit your needs at a reasonable cost.

Expert travel advice to get you going

Does it seems like there’s too much to learn about organizing your own international travel? There are books written about it. The internet is rich with blogs full of traveling tips, checklists, product recommendations and more. Then there are magazine and newspaper articles with their shallow variations on “10 tips for international travel.”

You can waste loads of time wading through that swamp. And you need to be careful: not all the “best travel tips” are helpful. Most target vacationers and newbies. Some are demonstrably wrong.

Relax! We’re here to distill and present the best travel resources and strategies in the shortest and cleanest way possible. 

We’ll help you to…

• Save time and effort — Yes, it takes time and effort to arrange your own travel. As a general rule, the cheaper your travel, the more time and effort you expend to get it right. We offer a wide selection of techniques to reduce time and effort, so you spend more time enjoying yourself.
• Make sure you don’t miss anything important while planning and preparing for your trip — There’s a list of tasks to do and probably some gear you’ll need. We try to offer comprehensive coverage so that you can leave home with confidence.
• Save money — Travel can be expensive, especially since you’ll be in a foreign country and culture, making buying decisions with limited information and (often) a language barrier. We provide tactics and tips to give you more leverage.
• Stay healthy and safe — You’re in a new country, a new city, a new street and new lodge, meeting new people and eating new food. Our tips help you avoid unsafe situations, manage them if you’re unlucky and minimize health risks.
• Be a responsible traveler — Travel has a carbon footprint and travelers create an impact on the cultures that host them. We’ll help you to reduce your environmental and cultural impact, even while you leave behind positive economic benefits.

What we don’t do…

• Furnish information on destinations and activities — (Including advice and reviews about where to stay and what to do.) There are already thousands of websites, blogs, guidebooks, magazine features and newspaper articles that cover any destination and activity you can think of. We’ll give pointers on how to zero in on the best info out there.
• Limit our content to backpackers, young people and Americans — We offer useful content for anyone who wants to be an independent traveler, regardless of budget, age or country of origin.
• Pretend we know it all — There’s always something new, something more, something better. We invite contributions from travelers with practical wisdom to share. We especially value corrections when we get it wrong or when our information gets out of date.

If you’re looking for the essential travel advice required to put together your own trip with the least hassle and expense, you’ve come to the right website. With the nuts-and-bolts preparation under control, you can focus on the exciting stuff — exploring where to go and what to do.

How can you do independent travel? 

It works the same way, whether you have 2 weeks, 2 months or 2 years.

Plan

The shorter your trip or the more ambitious your itinerary, the more you need to plan. But, regardless of the duration of your journey, you don’t want to “over-plan” and turn down a spontaneous opportunity that could be the best experience of your entire trip. And you don’t want to stress out when an unexpected glitch throws you off a tight itinerary. Set time  aside— a morning, a day, a few days — for serendipity and relaxation.

• Who’s traveling? — Just you? You and a companion? With kids? As part of a group?
• When do you go? — Annual vacation? Leave from your job? Between jobs? Gap year? Upon retirement? Or maybe now is the time for independent travel and you simply must find a way.
• Why do you want to travel? — Clear goals will help get the most out of this precious opportunity. If you’re traveling with someone, are those goals shared?
• Where do you want to go? — How does your dream destination stack up against your goals, your time available and your budget?
• What do you want to do? — Enjoy great experiences at your destinations. Keep alert for fresh ideas that reveal themselves only after you get there.
• What style of travel do you want? — Find your personal balance between comfort, pace and cost. If you’re traveling with someone, do you share similar styles?
• How much will it cost? — Independent travel can be the most economical way to go. Your budget depends upon style, destination, duration and what activities you plan to do. Use our budget template to figure it out.

Prepare

Spend sufficient time and care getting ready. It doesn’t need to be complicated or expensive, but you need to cover DIY travel basics. If you don’t, precious time and money could be spent during your trip dealing with an issue or finding an item you could have arranged in advance. Good preparation should increase your confidence, too.

• Are you fit for travel? — Make sure you’re physically and mentally ready. This includes vaccinations and other health considerations. If you’re not up for your trip yet, what can you do to get ready?
• What stuff do you need? — Know what documents, luggage, clothing, electronics and other gear you’ll need for independent travel. It’s equally important to know what you don’t need. Once you write your essentials-only list, you can see what you already have and what you need to get.
• Will you be prepared for emergencies? — Make sure you buy adequate travel insurance for the best price. Prepare a plan to cope with emergencies in each country.
• How do you manage your money? — Find out the lowest cost of acquiring local currency. Get debit cards and credit cards that don’t carry hidden costs. Estimate how much hard currency you’ll need. Figure out how to protect your precious loot.
• Do you need the lingo? — It helps to use a few key phrases and the more you understand the deeper you can get into local culture and friendships. But it isn’t necessary to speak the local language. If you want to try, how much do you need to know? What’s the best way to learn?
• But what about your life back home? — Arrange your affairs at home so that they don’t intrude on your trip and spoil your enjoyment. Decide what you can manage online, what you need to leave in someone else’s care and what you can forget about.

Now you’re ready. Buy tickets for the first leg of your journey. Book your first room. Pack your luggage. Open the door and step out.

Go

Once you’re traveling, the challenge is to arrange transport, accommodation and other tasks in the easiest and most cost-efficient way possible. Taking care of them correctly will leave you with more time, money and energy to enjoy your destinations and experiences.

• How do you get from “A” to “B”? — You want a decent flight for a good price. Cut through the dozens of booking sites to find  the best flight for the money.
• How do you find a restful room for a reasonable price? — Forget the best room in the best location for the best price. You want a pleasant room in a convenient location for a reasonable price. Know how to inspect both the lodge and your room to stay comfortable and safe.
• How do you become a responsible traveler? — Make sure you minimize your environmental and cultural impact and maximize your economic benefit to the places you visit.

What products & services do pro travelers use?

Are you getting ready to go? Do you need to know about gear, clothing, credit cards, insurance, flights and more? We’re here to help.

We all need stuff. Just like you, we’re consumers of travel goods and services. We all want the best value for our money.

Our needs are different from vacationers and business travelers. We try to define the quality features that make a product or service outstanding for independent travelers. And we invite experienced travelers to help us to refine them. 

• “Field Tested” products & services — Using those quality features, we review products and services we’ve field tested ourselves.
• “Looks Good” products & services — We’re still a small outfit, so we can’t buy and test everything. To supplement our own testing, we scour the internet and suggest products and services that earn very good to excellent feedback from other users. For example, we don’t include any product with less than 4 stars on Amazon unless we’re trying to warn you about a product that failed our Field Test. With so many raves on online stores, we try to tease out well-founded critical points.

Members Rule! Members can review any product or service or leave feedback in the comments.

Gear and clothing is easy. We can try it out and share whether it meets our standards for independent travel.

Services are harder. We’re at a big disadvantage when we pick credit cards, buy travel insurance, book flights or search for accommodation. These are offered by big companies who tweak their services to make it hard for us to compare. And changes can happen fast. What was a good deal last week is a bad deal now. Or vice versa. It’s hard to stay on top of it all. We do our best, but our community can help us to keep up.

Clothing and gear must work well and last long. And we need service providers to deliver reliably at a fair price.

We need you! With your participation, we hope to offer a mini-marketplace of the best clothing, gear and services specifically useful  to independent travelers.

Join us

Hello! I’m Eric Bellows.

My travel history. I made my first independent trip in 1973-74. It was solo to Europe and Morocco. Since then, I’ve traveled, lived and worked abroad for almost 30 years. Most of that was as an expat in Sri Lanka, the Philippines, South Africa, Malawi, the Philippines (again), Tanzania and Mozambique. And I remain overseas to this day, based out of the Philippines.

My passion. I want others — everyone! — to have the opportunity to do independent travel. It changed my life. But rather than evangelizing, I’m focused on the practical “how to” of travel. I continue to learn from anyone with travel smarts… including old Road Warriors and impressively wise travelers who weren’t even born when I started traveling.

I’m still traveling. It’s a blessing to travel with spouse and travel buddy Connie Regis. She’s a real Girl Scout when it comes to getting logistics organized. And super-calm and patient when something blows up in our faces (yeah, it still happens). Together, we’re discovering new ways to make independent travel easier, cheaper, safer and more fun.

*Welcome aboard

Free membership benefits. Free membership will keep you updated on the latest techniques, tips, products and services via a monthly newsletter. Downloadable tools like our Travel Itinerary Planner* and our Travel Budget Calculator* are exclusively for members.

You can help fellow travelers. Every independent traveler learns some cool stuff. As a member, you can share your experience and travel advice. We are grateful if you help us improve our articles and correct us when we’re wrong.

No payments. No spam. We don’t ask for a credit card because we don’t sell anything. And there’s no spam. We promise. 

We survive on your clicks. The site is supported by modest commissions we make when you click on some (but not all) of the product or service links and buy something. Prices are the same whether you buy through our link or not. The vendor pays us for sending you to them. (Thank you for your support.)

You want a great trip. Independent travel — using the best travel resources and strategies that fit your style and budget — is the way to go. You’ll reduce hassles, control costs, go to astonishing places, and experience adventures you’ll remember forever.

Let’s go! So, saddle up. The world beckons.

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