Nine sites to help sort out your big trip in advance and keep you happly, healthy and alive once you're there
If there's one area where the web really rocks, it's finding
information, and nowhere more than with travel. There's a huge number
of useful sites out there, from firsthand accounts of popular routes
and destination, through all-singing, all-dancing mega-sites complete
with forums and up-to-the-minute news to the real specialist
resources dealing with issues like travel health and
acclimatisation.
For more great resources take a look at our very own links
section, but to get you started, here are some of our favourite
travel-orientated sites. Oh, one more thing, if you know a really
good site we've missed out, dive into the forum thread at the bottom
of the page and fill us in with the URL.
The daddy of travel information web sites from the daddy of travel
guidebook publishers. The site's a lot more than just book promotion.
For starters, there's the 'Scoop' section with travel news worldwide,
the 'Thorn Tree' - a geographically arranged forum where you can
score the latest on the ground info from travellers who've just got
back or are still out there. Plus LP now publishes updates to its
guide books electronically and for free and focuses on individual
destinations. Finally there's
ekno
their global phone call and messaging service complete with online
'security vault' for storing those crucial details for it the worst
happens.
Does what it says in the box - Cheap Flights is a massive UK-based
directory of flight prices and operators. Easy to use, you just
select your destination and departure preferences and it throws out a
massive list of flight prices and operators. London to Kathmandu for
350 quid anyone? A flight-based dream factory complete with some
useful add-ons.
One of the more daunting aspects of travelling, especially off the
beaten track, is working out which jabs you need. If you're local
GP's experience stops at coralled-off Mexican beach resorts, then
this is a great site to sort out what you really need. There's an
interactive list of countries with recommended and mandatory jab
info, but the piece de resistance is the option to fill in a
questionnaire and get your own, personalised 'Travel Doctor Manual'
complete with recommendations to help you put together a customised
travel health kit for your specific trip and a list to print off and
take to your own GP for prescription. Nice idea.
Getting your acclimatisation wrong can really screw up your trip
and, at worst, end your life. The High Altitude Medecine Guide is an
accessible and easy to use resource that explains what's going on and
how to avoid AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness). Well worth a read if
you're off to the Himalayas, Andes or similar.
The internet's made staying in touch on the road much, much easier
than ever before. But how to you know in advance whether there's a
caff in town? This site lists 4209 internet cafes in 148 countries
with a country-specific search facility. It's not comprehensive by
any means - the cyber cafe in Namche Bazar isn't listed for starters
- but it's a starting point and regularly updated apparently.
'Life is one of those things you miss most when it's gone' begins
this cheery Australian site which tries in a succinct article with
links to give an outline of the real statistical danger of various
travel-related hazards. Great for soothing quaking brows, or then
again, maybe not.
Handy government warnings, Afghanistan, for example, is not
somewhere British nationals should venture at the moment... The
warnings do tend to err on the cautious side, but it's worth a quick
browses at the planning stages. The Foreign Office, for example,
advises against travel to Nepal at the moment, then lists all the
major trekking routes and points out that tourists have not been
targeted. Moreover, the Nepali Maoists are on record as saying that
they will not attack travellers. Also some consular information on
your rights if everything does go horribly Pete Tong.
Weirdly named encyclopaedia of world mountains. You can pick out
major peaks throughout the world, see pictures of them, get some
basic info and, if you've climbed a particular mountain, contribute
to the Virtual Summit Log and add your own comments.
The infuriatingly slow site of the dedicated Covent Garden travel
book shop, if you can endure the arrows of outrageous sluggishness -
a good preparation for South American bureaucracy we reckon - then
this is the place you're most likely to track down those hard-to-find
foreign guidebooks and maps. They really should sort out those speed
issues though...
