Things to Consider in Your Master Plan for Your Travels

A full travel experience can include participating in more refined activities along with seeing street life. Bolshoi Ballet.

The next step after clearly identifying your travel objectives is to create a "Master Plan" for your travels.

Your master plan is a big picture view of what you want to do in your long term travels. It is not a day to day trip plan, but a blueprint of your overall plan and how you will achieve your travel objectives. Since everyone's travel plans are going to be different, I can't lay out your Master Plan. Instead, here are some things to consider when designing your Master Plan:

Cost and Money: The most common way for travelers to determine their overall timeframe they expect to travel is based on how much money they have and a loose calculation on how long they can stretch this money out.

However, I suggest that the key thing to strive for is not how long you can manage to stay on the road, but how long you can afford to have a quality experience while traveling. Perhaps this might mean taking your maximum amount of time you think you can travel, say one year, and cutting it back by a third, or even half. This way you then have more money to spend on those activities that will really make the time traveled most worthwhile and enriching.

Some ideas to consider about budgeting money for a quality experience:

• Traveling on a very tight budget may be necessary much of the time, but should not be practiced all time. Staying in low cost hostels and eating on a few dollars a day tends to deny the traveler many interesting aspects about where they are traveling. To save money to stretch out the travel time, the traveler is often either cooking in their hostel with other fellow budget travelers, or eating at the cheap local restaurant that the popular guide book recommended—with other budget travelers.
  
• On the same token, eating on the street with the locals sounds romantic and a way to identify with the people and culture where you are traveling. It is, to a certain extent, and can be quite a fun and memorable part of the experience. However, only puts you in contact with one part of a society that you are visiting—usually the poorer part. While the poorer people will be the majority in most countries in the world, it is not the segment of society that shapes things, or determines the trends, fashions, and politics of most societies. Suggestion: To experience a society more fully, plan some of your travel funds to be used to periodically going out to nice restaurants, events, mixers, shows, popular nightclub or other social occasions when in cities or locales that have such things. Mixing at times with the middle and upwardly mobile classes of whatever society you are traveling, gives you a glimpse of how those that might shape the society live and think. Also, by meeting and talking to people of the more educated and affluent classes, you can learn a lot about the society you are in. It is also makes travel more fun.
  
  In some types of societies in particular, popular nightspots can be great places to meet interesting people if you ask around and find the "hot" place. This is applies more so to poorer countries, unstable ones, recent conflict zones, and countries where a lot of expats are stationed for big infrastructure projects, such as many countries in sub-Saharan Africa. In some locales, you will meet interesting ex-pats doing business in the area, NGO, UN or aid workers, journalists, even intelligence officials and other government agents.
  
  One of the more colorful people I have met during my travels was a salesman representing Nepalese mercenaries, whom I met in a popular hotel bar in Kabul, Afghanistan.
  
  The same idea can be applied to hotels and guesthouses. Sometimes it is necessary, or just beneficial, to stay in a more upper scale place than the usual long term budget traveler digs.
  
  To give one of many personal examples of this: While visiting Libreville, Gabon, I chose to spend more than usual for my accommodations. I stayed in a moderately priced hotel that was a popular for traveling businesspeople. In my 3 days there I met several very interesting people that I have stayed in contact with ever since. One, a member of the extended royal family of a neighboring country, even aided me in getting a visa to visit his country (saving me the hassle and expense of flying back to my home country to accomplish this task)! The $61 per night I spent for this hotel has been more than repaid via the great contacts I made there.
  
  
• Eating healthy should be a priority and costs more than a few dollars a day. To help keep healthy, try to not eat a diet overly heavy in cheap starches like white rice and white bread. Instead, allocate a bit more of your travel funds to ensure a daily intake of fresh vegetables and fruits and other nutritious foods.

Some of the most memorable things you'll see in your travels can cost a bit of money to experience. Gorillas, Bwindi Forest.

In summary, when designing your master travel plan, the most important thing is to plan for a worthwhile and fulfilling experience. If money is tight, don't try to stretch your funds to be on the road the longest time possible. Instead consider traveling a shorter period of time so that you can then have more money available for a great quality experience.

About Traveling Light. Traveling light is good. But, having the things necessary to accomplish your objectives is better. Many long term travelers use a backpack, have only one pair of shoes, or maybe even just sandals, and only a few casual all around clothes available.

Suggestion: For almost all long term travel plans, it is good to have at least one nice and complete dressy outfit, including proper shoes. This way, you have the ability to walk into the different social situations as mentioned above.

Some other ideas regarding what to bring:

• Along with a nice outfit it is good to have some things that make life more "normal" and comfortable. Here, the choices of what to bring are highly personal and varied. Some obvious items are sunscreens, mosquito repellent, and an umbrella. A basic medical kit is a good idea, along with certain medications and antibiotics. This might include: Ciprofloxacin for severe stomach illness, anti- diarrheal medicine, malaria prophylactics, antihistamines, and painkillers such as Ibuprofen or Tylenol. These are things you could really need at times but may be hard to find in some places you travel.
  
• If you will be hiking or trekking, especially in remote wilderness areas, bring an extra set of shoelaces for your hike boots. (It may sound silly to worry about shoelaces, but many places won't have them. When traveling Ethiopia, I could not find any to fit my hiking boots, even in the capital of Addis Ababa. So, to fix my broken shoelace, I spent an hour in a dimly lit hotel room sewing my broken shoelace back together).
  
• For outdoors oriented travels like the hiking/trekking just mentioned, consider bringing a pair of binoculars.
• Other things to consider bringing: a flashlight, with replacement lightbulb and extra batteries, electrical and scotch tape, super glue, some small Ziploc bags and larger waterproof Ziploc bags.
  
• For extended travel in some very poor countries, such as a number in sub-Saharan Africa, you might want to bring your own set of medical syringes and needles. In the event of a major medical emergency where you may need blood transfusions, you can at least be assured of sterile needles for the process if you supply them yourself.