Today's most authoritative guide on how to travel anywhere, anyhow. This guide contains expert advice from the world's most experienced travelers, personal reflections from globe-trotting celebrities, survival tips and health facts, profiles of every country as well as a comprehensive contacts directory. Whether you're a backpacker or a business traveler, an adventurer or a beginner, you'll find this book essential and inspiring.
There are so many travel choices it's frightening, or it would be if not for Miranda Haines's Traveler's Handbook, which helps with issues like when to travel, where to travel, which festivals to aim for or avoid, what guides to buy, and what kind of focus you want in your trip: independence, adventure, romance, luxury, work, or eco-travel. The Handbook explores each option, describing the ups and downs of traveling alone, as well as the practicalities to consider for pregnant, elderly, and diabetic travel, honeymoon, gay, and vegetarian travel, and female, student, and business travel.
There are chapters on all the concerns of flying (how to choose an airline, getting a good deal, traveler's protection), overlanding (motorbikes to trucks to buying and selling a car abroad), train travel, river travel, hitchhiking, foot, and microlight travel, cargo ship, horse, and camel travel. There are chapters on visas and money, health and luggage, communication, computers, and theft, as well as surviving a hijack, a kidnap, and a civil war. No travel stone is left unturned. And as if this weren't enough, there follows a directory of all the countries in the world, with info on population, capital, currency, government, religion, safety, and best times to visit for each. This plus world weather charts, rainy season guides, sea temperatures and city altitudes make this an incredibly thorough and useful book.
Travel is the unknown, and the unknown promotes anxiety. It's reassuring to read these careful, perceptive words penned by someone who's given some thought to all the angles.
Most helpful customer reviews
22 of 22 people found the following review helpful.
By Todd Adams
This book is everything it's cracked up to be. One thing anyone considering buying this should note, though is that it's a UK based publication. In discussions about visas and work permits, it assumes EU citizenship. A lot of the advice wouldn't pertain to a U.S. citizen. Most of the directory information only lists U.K. based organizations.
That said, this is a great resource and very inspirational. It's made me think about going to places that I would have never even considered before. That's mostly because it combines engaging narratives by obviously well-travelled writers along with nuts and bolts practical information on the "how to" planning stages, and insightful advice.
It prepares you for the cultural differences you're likely to encounter, and prompts you to think about contingencies due to weather, medical, or political trouble. There are warnings about the hazards and adversity of some travel without trying to scare you away from it. The book manages to be a general purpose travel guide without being generic. It would be an equally good read for adventure travellers as it would for cruise ship enthusiasts.
The reference section alone is well worth the price, giving you fascinating and comprehensive information about every country on the planet. This book approaches you like a good friend who happens to be an experienced travel agent, hoping to help you plan a trip of a lifetime. It is remarkably well written and organized. I can't imagine planning a trip overseas without it.
28 of 30 people found the following review helpful.
By Adam Rifkin
What an indispensable guide for the world traveler. This book is cover-to-cover bits in a single volume, weighing the same as a water bottle. This book is literally the planet earth's version of the famed "hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy", with short, informed essays on everything from choosing guides to all forms of travel to finding great rates to finding places to stay to equipping for a trip to what to do when things go wrong (topics for that one include: theft, trouble with the law, surviving a hijack, surviving a kidnap, surviving in jungle/desert/cold, and my favorite: surviving a civil war). Plus it's got 300 pages of directory, like an all-bits almanac....
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
By Sheri Lee Stritof
This is a great book. It is little in size, but huge in content. The editors have covered just about every aspect of world travel. If you want to know about riding a camel, how to survive being kidnapped, or how to avoid hassles in a certain country, this book will have the answer for you. It also includes a lot of emergency contacts, practical global travel tips, and useful website addresses.
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