Travel itinerary planning

When you start out planning an independent travel itinerary the whole process can sometimes seem very overwhelming. The hassle of arranging visas, booking transport, deciding what you’d like to see, meeting time constraints and co-ordinating the whole shebang through multiple agencies can leave your head literally spinning. As I’m writing this, I’ve already paid for transport to Russia, visas for most of Asia, booked a couple of internal flights and paid for my flight home from Hong Kong. Yet, I’m waiting on 2 trans-Siberian train tickets and without them the majority of my itinerary will fall into total disarray. With just 9 more days until my departure I really need those tickets so I can move to the next stage and book accommodation. Stress!

A little planning and preparation goes a long way, ensuring that you have a smooth and enjoyable trip whilst making the most of your opportunities each day.

The temptation is to forget the ‘boring’ planning and embark upon a period of carefree travel. Whilst this sounds great, in reality it’s often not that practical. With trains and hostels selling out in peak season your travel itinerary would have to be very flexible to accommodate your travel options. If this is the case for you then congratulations, this is a very rewarding way to travel. For most of us though, the unfortunate truth is that we must work within the restrictions of a set timeframe and make the most of the opportunity.

So what are the advantages of planning your itinerary?

To make sure that it works

So you want to spend 3 days in Beijing, 3 days in Xi’an and 3 days in Chengdu? That’s 9 days right? Wrong. Factor in travel times and the fact that some trains do not depart daily and you 9 days is now 11 days or more.

To make sure that you book the correct transport

You’re going to be booking multiple forms of transport through many different agencies and trying to tie them together with the added complication of crossing time zones. Writing things down can help you to identify mistakes allowing you to correct them before they become a major issue.

To help with planning your budget

When you look up transport timetables you have access to fare information, make a note of the cost and use it to calculate your budget. By choosing overnight trains you can combine transportation with a bed for the night which really helps to cut down on expenses. Best of all you go to sleep in one destination and wake up in the next. By keeping a record of the costs you can also tailor your budget and identify where it may be necessary to travel 3rd class and where you can splurge out on 2nd.

So you achieve your important goals

When you start planning your travel itinerary you’re going to have a list of places you really, really want to see.

Let’s work with my original trans-Mongolian travel plan:

St Petersburg (2 nights), Moscow (2 nights), Vladimir (2 nights), Yekaterinburg (2 nights), Irkutsk (4 nights), Ulan Ude (2 nights), Ulaan Baatar (5 nights ), Beijing.

Now let’s factor in my timeframe. I need to arrive in St Petersburg on 6th April and get to Beijing by 26th April for a meeting before onward travel. This obviously isn’t going to work because I’ve yet to factor in journey times.

The first step is to decide which part of the original travel itinerary you can afford to skip on this occasion. Obviously this is a very difficult decision and you need to take some time to consider personal feelings and what you originally hoped to achieve from your trip.

In the end I decided that the absolute basic itinerary for me would be:

St Petersburg (2 nights), Moscow (2 night), Irkutsk (4 nights), Ulaan Baatar (4 nights), Beijing.

It was my intention to add in an extra city where time allowed so I checked time trains and this is what happened:

So no extra cities for me I’m afraid. Next time I travel through the region I’ll have to plan a different travel itinerary featuring the stops I missed out on this occasion.

Because of the train timetables and availability I had to sacrifice a night in Moscow and add a night in Ulann Baatar. While I found this to be less than ideal it’s better that I found out about it early on. I had the opportunity to act upon it and bought one of the few remaining alternative tickets, the next available departure was an entire week later.

What next?

That’s it for this section of the journey, now you may want to look at booking suitable hostels or arranging any local tours. You can of course leave this until you arrive but at the very least take along details of some suitable accommodation. The very first thing you should set out to achieve each day is a roof over your head for that night.

Keep all the relevant documents, (especially booking confirmations), in a plastic file.

As you collect all of your itinerary information and finalise trip details you can add all of the information into a database thereby creating a concise travel itinerary with a detailed budget.

There are many services online that are now offering to gather and collate this information for you, but nowhere is it more easily accessed then on your own computer with a paper print out, written in your own unique style. If you really need an electronic copy email it to yourself and save on the subscription fees. An example database can be downloaded from our budgeting page.

As I mentioned earlier, I’m still waiting for my train tickets so I had better go chase them up. How strange as I wrote that last sentence an email arrived confirming my tickets. Good times.

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