Backpacking for Beginners: How to Plan an Affordable Adventure Step-by-Step
Thinking of planning a backpacking trip for the first time and don’t know where to start? You’ve come to the right place. This step-by-step guide covers every aspect of planning a backpacking trip, from before you leave until you get back home, with particular attention to the budget.
How to choose a budget destination
It may seem obvious, but choosing a cheap destination is essential if you want to plan a budget trip. Even though getting to one of these destinations can be expensive as far as the plane ticket goes, once you’ve arrived it will be extremely easy to keep your budget low when it comes to accommodation, transport, food and activities.
If it’s your first experience abroad, then I recommend Southeast Asia because:
A) The cost of living is extremely low.
B) Flights tend to be more affordable than to other budget destinations such as South America.
C) In general they’re safer countries.
Other budget destinations are, for example, Eastern Europe and Central Asia. I’ve written a detailed guide on how to find cheap flights to save on what often turns out to be the biggest expense of a trip.
One last piece of advice I’d give before choosing your destination is to check your own government’s official travel advice (for example, the UK’s Foreign travel advice) for detailed information on the safety situation in the country in question.
How to travel safely (visas, vaccinations and insurance)
Once you’ve chosen your destination and bought your plane ticket, it’s time to move on to the paperwork. For some countries – Australia, India and Vietnam (for stays longer than 15 days), just to name a few – it isn’t possible to get a visa on arrival. In these cases the visa has to be applied for online (eVisa) and it may not be free. Here you can find a complete list for Italian passport holders (Wikipedia has the same list for every nationality).
Some countries also require mandatory vaccinations, and I recommend checking your country’s official travel-health website (for Italians, the Ministry of Health’s site) for detailed information, or asking your local health service’s travel clinic for advice.
To wrap up, do yourself a favor and take out travel insurance that covers at least medical expenses and personal liability. I’ve written an extremely detailed article on how to choose good travel insurance where I compare the best ones, take a look.
To learn more about the topic, I recommend taking a look at my 19 best tips for traveling safely.
How to create a budget travel itinerary
To keep the trip on a budget all the way, I recommend gathering information on possible itineraries and things to see online (take a look at my guides). The web is full of sites, blogs and forums on these topics, especially in English; alternatively, buy a Lonely planet, a Rough guide or any of the hundreds of guidebooks out there, remembering that no guidebook is perfect and keeping them constantly up to date is difficult.
If you don’t know where to start, take a look at inspirock.com – once you enter the destination, the length of your stay and the type of activities you’re interested in, it’ll give you a possible itinerary. Alternatively, you can simply ask ChatGPT. Another site I use a lot is wikitravel.
OK, now that you’ve gathered all the information you need, it’s time for the actual planning:
Look up your points of interest and mark them on a map (Google Maps is perfectly fine) so you get an idea of where they are and can create an itinerary that lets you move around in the smartest way possible. Let’s take as an example a trip to northern Italy with Milan as the starting point and Lake Garda as the end point, with Venice and Bologna as intermediate stops. Following the itinerary in the order I just mentioned makes much more sense than following: Venice, Lake Garda, Bologna. Making sure your itinerary makes sense geographically, and therefore in terms of getting around, will save you time and money.
Make a list of the things you’d like to see, bearing in mind that expecting to see everything a country has to offer is impossible, just like expecting to make long journeys every two days. In general, try to spend at least 2 nights in the same place before moving on to the next stop; traveling can be extremely tiring both physically and mentally, and it’s better to see a few things without rushing than to spend all your time jumping from one place to another.
Leave yourself some leeway: itineraries can change quickly; you might decide to go somewhere else following the advice of a traveler you met along the way, or get stuck somewhere for reasons beyond your control. Whether you like it or not, it’s unlikely everything will go exactly according to plan. Let your instinct guide you, stay calm if something goes wrong and don’t be afraid to “skip” a stop in favor of another one, or simply to spend a few more days in a place you particularly liked. Have fun and be spontaneous.
How to pack your bag
At this point all that’s left is to pack your bag; I strongly recommend a travel backpack. Either way, whatever your luggage, pack it according to the kind of trip you’re going to take, keeping in mind the climate and the activities you’re going to do (for example trekking, snorkeling) and always putting lightness first.
Traveling light is the best advice I can give you when it comes to luggage: it will save you money, for example when you can simply walk instead of taking a taxi, and spare you the fee for checking in your bag. You’ll also be grateful for it when you have to move from one place to another without necessarily breaking your back (if you’re thinking of a wheeled suitcase, remember that there won’t always be an elevator instead of the stairs or a nice sidewalk in perfect condition to roll the wheels along).
At this link you can find a complete list of what to bring on a trip.
How to find cheap accommodation
I love hostels and recommend them to everyone. These places, snubbed by many, have reached really high quality standards in recent years, all at an extremely low price. They’re highly social places and therefore particularly suited to solo travelers. More and more often they offer private rooms at better prices than hotels, perfect for anyone who isn’t willing to share a room; basically, the ultimate solution for a budget trip.
To book hostels, my favorite platform is hostelworld.com. I’ve written a practical guide on how to choose a hostel.
If hostels really aren’t your thing, then I recommend using booking.com or agoda, the latter extremely popular in Southeast Asia. Another really interesting and cheap option is airbnb, which lets you book a room or even entire apartments and houses at really competitive prices.
For those traveling on a really low budget, besides good old camping, I recommend taking a look at couchsurfing, which gives you the chance to be hosted for free. It’s also a great opportunity to connect with locals.
Personally, I recommend booking only the first few nights from home and booking the following ones once you’re sure of your next move. I love being flexible, and booking would set unnecessary limits. Only avoid doing this if you’re traveling in high season or during holidays, when not having a booking could be risky.
Another way to save indirectly on accommodation is to travel at night (for long distances) by taking night buses or trains. That way you’ll not only save the cost of a night in a hostel/hotel but also a lot of time.
How to get around cheaply when traveling
Long story short: use public transport, avoid taxis at all costs and walk whenever possible. These three simple moves will save you an enormous amount of money.
Unfortunately, sometimes it’s impossible to avoid taking a taxi. In developing countries, which are also the typical budget destinations, the price is often ‘eyeballed’, with a tendency to rip off tourists. Agree on the price before getting in, so you avoid pointless arguments once you reach your destination.
Where possible, use Uber or GrabCar (particularly popular in Southeast Asia) for short distances, while for long distances I recommend BlaBlaCar.
For the more adventurous there’s always hitchhiking, which in certain countries is not only generally safe but also a very common practice – for example in Australia and New Zealand.
Rome2rio, although not perfect, especially when it comes to remote areas, is a great site for working out how to reach a given destination. I also recommend checking the “get in” and “get out” sections of a given destination’s wikitravel page (the English version of the site is by far the most complete).
Where to eat cheaply
Obviously, being able to cook your own food is almost always the cheapest solution, which is why, especially in countries that aren’t exactly budget destinations, I always try to find a hostel with a kitchen.
That said, if the destination you’ve chosen is a budget one, you can often eat for a few euros (sometimes we’re talking cents); my advice is to visit the local market – both to eat and to stock up on fruit and vegetables. Markets, besides offering the best prices, are also extremely interesting places to visit!
As for restaurants, use common sense and avoid extremely touristy areas. Seeing a restaurant full of locals and not tourists is always a good sign. Personally, searching for restaurants on Google Maps with the price filter works really well for me. Finally, once again I recommend visiting wikitravel and checking the “eat” section.
How to book tours, activities and tickets
In general, I advise against booking any kind of activity, tour or ticket online, except for tickets to tourist sites that only admit a limited number of visitors a day, such as Machu Picchu; there it’s definitely worth buying the entrance ticket in advance.
As for tours and activities, going straight to a local agency once you’re there turns out to be cheaper in 99% of cases. One of the many examples I could give you is the tour of the now-famous Rainbow Mountain in Peru, for which the price online starts from at least 30-35€, while all the agencies in Cusco sell it for no more than 20€ – and believe me, we’re talking about the exact same tour!
A really interesting initiative for budget travelers is the so-called free walking tour, i.e. free tours on foot (the guide expects a tip at the end of the tour). They’re extremely common in lots of tourist destinations and are a great way to get a sort of introduction to the city without spending a fortune.
Before going home or visiting another country
Before leaving the country you’ve just visited, work out how much cash you’ll need to get to the airport, eat, pay any exit fees, etc. etc. and get rid of the rest of your money before you reach the airport, where the exchange rate is always terrible. Ideally you’d manage to swap your money with another traveler at the official exchange rate, but that’s not always possible. The alternative is to go to an exchange office, asking your hostel/hotel to recommend one or doing some research on Google Maps.
If for whatever reason a long wait at the airport lies ahead, then arrive prepared with food and water (you can’t get through security with a full bottle, so empty it before the checks and fill it up in the bathroom once you’re inside the area with the gates). As a rule of thumb, avoid buying anything at the airport because of the prices, which are always too high.
If you’re crossing a land border into another country, there will most likely be someone hanging around near immigration willing to change your money at a decent exchange rate. I recommend downloading the XE Currency app so you always have the current exchange rate at hand.
Planning a trip? Check out these posts:
Which travel insurance to choose
Which travel backpack to choose
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