Planning ideas for long-term travel

July 9, 2011 6:09 AM

I'll be heading off for a multi-destination, 6 month trip, and I'd like suggestions for how to handle logistics & trip planning.

At the end of September, I'll be leaving Vietnam to head off on some long term travel. I plan to fly into Bangkok, bus to Chiang Mai, bus back to Bangkok, fly to Kolkata, train to Mumbai, train back to Kolkata, and a few other trips around India, and possible across the border into Bangladesh. I'll be gone for around 6 months.

As I start to make plans about everything, I'm looking for some good resources for putting it all together, and visualizing it. Specifically: spreadsheets, maps, budget planners, timetables, etc. Ideally, one big website/document that contains places, locations, ticket/flight info, packing lists, to-do planning lists, hostel/apartment info, etc.

I tried TripIt , but it seems more oriented for single-destination vacation plans, it doesn't contain many of the features I'm looking for, and I strongly dislike the way it displays info.

If I need to pay for such an app, I'm not opposed to that. If the best solution is a predesigned Excel spreadsheet that someone's used before, great.

So vagabond mefites, any ideas?
(I'll be posting a more destination-specific question later, but any anecdotes are also appreciated!)

posted by hasna to Travel & Transportation (5 answers total)

Honestly, I think for a lot of this (or at least the accommodation details) you're better off just flying by the seat of your pants. You may end up paying a bit more in the end, but unless you're going to be in a certain city when you know it's going to be very busy (because of a festival or holiday), I think you'll find you can find a room when you show up to the town, or by booking online the night before. I suggest that mainly because you'll probably find you're in one town you love, but are obligated to leave and head to the next town because you've got accommodation booked.

As for apps, if you're on an iPhone, Cartographer looks interesting.

Sounds like a great trip. Have fun.
posted by backwards guitar at 7:43 AM on July 9, 2011

Response by poster: just to clarify, I won't necessarily be plotting down pre-booked reservations. I'm unlikely to pay for anything until I absolutely need to. I'm more interested in a format that allows me to pencil in tentative plans, such as: "MON Oct 4th EAT: CS meetup - XY cafe SLEEP - Maria Hostel (123 Street) 300r / Paragon Hotel (987 street) 450r book 2 days in advance!"
posted by hasna at 8:18 AM on July 9, 2011

I travel very frequently. Evernote for reservations where they can exist (PDFs and the like), Google Calendar including all tentative plans, and Tripit (synced to Gcal) covers everything. Don't make it more complicated than it needs to be!
posted by wingless_angel at 8:20 AM on July 9, 2011

I use Devonthink for this kind of thing. But I also tend to take my laptop everywhere I go, and I'm pretty sure it's not on the cloud yet.

Anyway, you might consider tweaking a versatile program like that. Evernote could also work.
posted by vecchio at 8:21 AM on July 9, 2011

tripit.com is also worth a shot, i worked well for a shorter trip I had that involved 4-5 cities.
posted by mulligan at 9:09 AM on July 9, 2011