Owen Park
There’s a point when a traveler hits a wall. And for most travelers that happens within a 30-day period of time. I know for myself and for my staff, that two weeks into a 30-day trip it starts to take off and by the end of the third week you’re starting to feel tired and by the end of the fourth week you either start to get back your energy or the trip just stops being fun. It’s been my pleasure to plan many 30-day trips for myself and for my staff, and as such I have formed some pretty well thought-out opinions on how to plan a 30-day trip that is just fantastic, and how to plan a 30-day trip that hits the wall by the end of the 18th day of travel.
The ‘four bases’ rule
For 30 day trips, stick to 4 bases, 5-8 nights per base. After that, the trip turns into a series of mini-trips and will be extremely tiring. I use the ‘four bases’ rule to stay grounded for 30 day long trips. All four ‘bases’ can be planned out in 8 days total, leaving the remainder 22 days for the scheduled activities as well as for travel between all of the locations. Eight ‘between’ location traveling days would equal 16 days for the planning and work that is required for travel ‘between’ 8 different locations for 30 days long trips, and this would clearly result in 16 days of traveling ‘in between’ locations and only 14 days for all of the location you are traveling to for your 30 day long trips. This means that 16 days of the total 30 days would be spent traveling to and from subpar places between better locations, which would simply not be fun. Four ‘bases’ is simply not that hard to work into a 30-day long trip, and would allow for so many additional ‘on the road’ type of traveling and additional stops to locations of interest that are only a short trip from each of your four ‘bases’ or main locations for your 30-day long trip.
Pacing within each base
Plan for the days within a base in a logical fashion. Spend the first day or two at a base location to settle in to the area and to get familiar with the local neighborhood. Then proceed to do the primary things you went to that base to see. That could be local sites of interest, museums, whatever. Then after 7 days of so, have a rest day. That is to say, plan no activities for that day. Just relax and have a “down day”. Go get a table at a local cafe and read a book. Just relax. Later in your stay at a base, re visit some of the places you saw in the first days of your stay at that base. This allows one to get fully acclimated to a base and to then relax before moving on to another base location. If a base has 4 days or more at a location, then try to follow the plan above for the days at that base. There are people that travel all over touring who arrive at a new location in the evening, and the next morning off to the primary attraction for the day. That type of touring can cause one to miss a lot of the local color of the area that one is visiting.
Buffer days inside the 30 days
Next, within a particular ‘base’ for a 30 day long trip, there should be scheduled out two ‘on plan’ buffer days that are filled with activities of your choice, open ended (ie. NOT already pre scheduled and booked) and NOT subject to subsequent change. This is to serve as a shock absorbent, as to give way to any unexpected and/or unplanned encounter(s), such as falling very ill for example, being affected by unusually bad weather, etc.. Also, work can be extremely tiresome (I’d estimate about 50% as tiresome as first of all actually traveling between various places within a 30 day long trip in order to visit all of the planned sites and/or for work within said places in the first place), and so, it would be terrible if the whole remainder of your very long and arduous trip (as mentioned above out of 30 days in total for this example) turned out to be in extreme contrast to what was originally envisioned, and was NOT at all enjoyable. And so, in the end, as I previously stated for an example above (as given by the above example for a 30 day long trip and for which four ‘on plan’ bases are scheduled in advance for said 30 day long trip as well as eight ‘on plan’ nights for ‘on the road’ type locations in between the ‘on plan’ bases scheduled in advance as well), as mentioned above for that 30 day long example, this would mean that of the 30 total days for said 30 day long example above of a long trip, 22 would be ‘on plan’ scheduled days, 8 ‘on plan’ scheduled days for ‘do as you please’ buffer days.
Accommodation pacing
For the cheaper properties I like to mix in a few very cheap hostels for the initial energy boost at the start of the long trip, a few very cheap mid-tier hotels and/or self-catering apartments for the rest of the trip (these are usually many $100’s of cheaper than equivalent quality hotels) and a couple of smaller ‘treats’ for the last part of the trip. I have traveled around the world for over 10 long trips, totaling many months of travel, and can attest that to traveling in dorms lead almost instantly to burnout and extreme tiredness by the end of week three. This will be the downfall of most long trips – traveling while somewhat tired at the end of a long trip is bad enough, but constant tiredness for weeks on end will very quickly eat away at your ability to continue to enjoy your travels. As a very budget-conscious traveler (daily budget of just $60 while I was traveling), I am always searching for ways to save in order to continue traveling long into the future, but sleep is an essential component and by far the worst part of traveling in dorms. As with so many things in travel, just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should.
What to do at the halfway mark
The big 15 – Take a real rest day at day 15 of your 30 day journey. The middle of your 30 day trip is a good time for a ‘down day’ or ‘laundry day’. Use this time to catch up on sleep, do some laundry, write out a solid plan for the second half of your 30 days of traveling. It’s likely that after the first 15 days of your 30 days of travel you’ll have learned a thing or two about how you can improve your trip. If you find that you’re spending way too much money in certain areas of your traveling then you may have to look at cutting your expenses in those areas for the remainder of your trip. Also, be aware that a seemingly cheap hotel or other accommodation may end up costing you more than you bargained for once you get there. Always research a place before you book it.
When the trip is wrong for 30 days
And some destinations are just plain wrong for a 30 day sojourn. Southern Spain for example can be so perfectly and comprehensively explored in 14 to 21 days that filling the remaining 9 to 17 days of a 30 day trip there would be a challenge of Herculean proportions. Conversely countries like Japan, Vietnam, Southern Spain/Portugal, Argentina/Chile, Mexico, India and Indonesia are absolute parfit for a 30 day sojourn. And countries like Iceland, Croatia, Switzerland and Ireland are best explored on a 10 to 14 day sojourn.
