TAKE THE HIGH ROAD: A Primer for the Independent Traveler

NOW UPDATED. Also includes better cross-reference indexing and new sections, including those on travel dangers and scams, how to bargain in foreign markets, when and how to tip and revised/updated recommendations on everything from electronics to luggage to clothing.

This is a primer and resource with chapter after chapter of unique travel advice and nearly a thousand pages of updated associated travelogue for the independent traveler. While the world’s other popular travel guidebooks are valuable resources, they omit many of the practical aspects of how to travel for up to months at a time without your life coming apart at the seams. Whether it’s how to handle your phones, your PC’s, your finances, your security, leaving your car or even how to choose a suitcase – it’s covered in this book. So is how to structure journeys and choose between cruise lines, trains and airlines. In short, to learn how to travel like a pro.

This book is huge, yet designed to be easy to be used with a tablet or laptop. It covers travels to every continent, across and around the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans. It includes comparisons of dozens of cruises, a month’s worth of trains in Africa, a month’s drive across India, a month and a half in Italy, the same in Japan and extended stays in numerous other countries. The book covers choices of where to stay (whether safari lodge, maharajah’s palace, Japanese traditional ryokan, castle on a hill, spa or simple bed and breakfast), where to eat and what sort of eclectic items there are to buy around the world – where to find them and how much they should cost. It tells how much taxis and tour guides should cost, how much to tip, how big a discount is reasonable to negotiate to, how to find a free walking tours of cities worldwide and where to find free Wi-Fi in hundreds of locations around the world.

Both to keep the size of the book’s file rational and to allow it to be portable to a wide variety of e-readers (Tablet, Kindle, PC, mobile phone – whatever), the accompanying photos (about 17,000 of them) have been hosted on a special web based account just for readers of the book (no personal information is required to view them).

In addition, there are bonus sections outlining custom detailed self-conducted walking tours in cities such as New York City, Shanghai, Tokyo and Lisbon, as well as multiple packing and reminder lists for those heading out of town.

Whether you are an experienced traveler, just starting out or traveling vicariously, there is a lot in this book that will be novel and useful. Costing not much more than a cup of coffee, with hundreds of suggestions and tips designed to save you time and money, the first time you use it, the book will likely pay for itself.