Sources of information

Having decided you’re going away the first thing that you generally do is to research it.  Find out what you’re heading for, where you might want to go and what you might want to see.

How do you start this process?  Well personally I dive straight into the internet as a first place to look.  I may have grown up with the internet and it may be my first port of call whenever I’m looking for any information, however the resources available online are not to be sniffed at.  Wikitravel is a brilliant place to begin, sometimes even just for getting an overview of your destination.  Small places off the beaten track are often poorly covered though and in these instances you’ll probably have to resort to resource number two, guidebooks.

Sticking with the internet the plethora of internet mapping sources are an enormous help.  The workings of Google are invariably the best known source of maps for all over, however sometimes the maps are lacking a little in the slightly more unusual places.  Sometimes in these situations it’s worth also seeing the maps on openstreetmaps.org, an awesome open source colabiration that produces both street and topographical data maps.

If Wikipedia is anything to go by then the idea of guidebooks dates back to the 9th century in the Middle East.  Now there’s a lot of money to be made for publishers good at producing the guides people want and if you walk into almost any bookshop there will likely be more travel books than you know what to do with.  Personally I tend to start with either Footprint or Lonely Planet, depending on how well they cover an area.  Footprint has a tendency to get a little further away from the heaving centers of backpackers to some places that just require a bit more work to get to.  Lonely planets though are exceptionally reliable though.

It’s worth also bearing in mind the likes of Insight Guides as well.  Although these can be lacking as a source of information to plan from, they tend to give excellent background information on a nation and make great glossy guides to look back on in the future.

It’s worth bearing in mind though that it doesn’t always pay to plan every detail.  Leave some mystery and strike out to some completely unknown locations sometimes.  Surprises often make the best memories and stories later.