Have you always wanted to go on a travel adventure? You can do anything if you put your mind to it. In this episode, we present Kit Parks’ adventure travel planner and discuss the ten things you need to consider when you plan your next adventure travel vacation. Catch tips on choosing where to go, who to go with and saving money for your trip. Logistics is complicated but it is key to making your trip hassle-free and truly memorable.

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Listen to the podcast here:

Planning and Going on an Adventure Travel Holiday

Here are the ten things you need to consider when you plan your next adventure travel vacation.

Your How To Guide for Adventure Travel

1. Decide where to go – inspiration:

• Friend and family recommendations
• Learn about places from fellow adventurers on current trips
• Read about locations in magazines, newspapers and Google
• See pics on Instagram or Pinterest

2. Decide to who to go with?

Solo, couple, friends, family or in a group with strangers

Each type offers a completely different dynamic and experience, so consider what you want to get out of your adventure.  Remember, too, that going on an adventure, because of its many challenges, will open up new ways to see and understand loved ones (hopefully for the better:)  The smaller the group, the more likely you will have exchanges with locals.

3. What do you want to do?

Do you want to go on an exclusive activity adventure such as a walking holiday (check out UK’s Best Walking Holidays) or cycling holiday like Cycle Italy’s Stilleto Heel?  Or do you want to mix it up (and give certain muscles as rest) by doing a multi-sport adventure or mix in some cultural activities?

4. Decide how to do it

• Guided, self-guided or self-planned.  Going on a guided or self-guided adventure means all you have to do is push a button (the ‘buy’ button) and the trip is all arranged for you.  If you want someone on the ground to lead the way or be part of a group, then a guided trip in in order.  If you just want someone to make the arrangements, but you want to make the individual calls on each day’s timing, etc., then consider a self-guided trip.  Self-planned means you figure out and book everything on your own.  In all cases, be sure to check out the FREE Travel Planners for each adventure covered.  They can save you a TON of TIME!
• Choose your tour company by using ATA Travel Planners (or email Kit).  There’s a link on each episode’s webpage.

5. What comfort level do you need/want?

• Guest house, mountain hut, campground, back country?  Remember that in some out of the way places, the only way you can see it is to either camp or stay in communal mountain huts (still well worth it!  Just remember to bring ear plugs and an eye mask!)

6. When to go? Check ATA Travel Planners (or email Kit)

The Free Travel Planners available for each adventure tell you the best times to go as well as offering tons of helpful links to make it easy to plan your adventure!

7. How to pay for it?

• Set up a monthly “Travel†bucket. Have it come out automatically like a bill  This method makes saving a snap!
• THEN try to ‘cash flow’ it and pay the different expenses as they come up.  This will help you build up your Travel Bucket to increasingly high levels so you can afford some of the coolest (and expensive) adventures without going into debt.

8. Packing: buy, rent or borrow (See Kit’s ATA Packing List)

• DON’T overpack!!! Use my lists and save your back and aggravation!
• With adventure travel, you usually have to check a bag regardless. Hiking sticks and mini knives are ‘weapons’, unfortunately, so must travel as checked luggage on planes.
• Most transfer companies require that your luggage weigh less than 20 kg (keep it under 40-50 pounds). You can do this: you DON’T need that much stuff!!! You can get my fine-tuned Packing List by clicking the box below:

9. Training

• Determine the fitness goal you desire and then work backwards and break it down into mini goals and wins

* I find it helps to make a training chart because I like to check off things as I do them.

10. Logistics

• Take advantage of Wikipedia to find the less aggravating direct flights: Google wiki + the airport name of where you want to go.
• Scroll to the bottom of the site to see what direct flights go there. THEN you can look for good flights and rates with the least amount of time on planes

Adventure Travel Planner

I want you to go on an epic adventure. However, doing so sometimes can be a little bit complicated. On this episode, we’re going to go through exactly the ten steps that you need to take to make sure that your adventure is the trip of a lifetime and fulfills your expectations. Let’s dig into those ten questions so that you can have the adventure of a lifetime.

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We’re going to go through the thought processes of planning and executing an adventure trip. We’re going to decide where to go and what goes into getting there. Let’s go step by step. Number one, you first got to figure out where you’re going to go. Generally speaking, most of my trips, I’ve gone to a certain location, a certain adventure because somebody said, “We’re doing this, you want to come?†I was like, “Sure,†I’m going to take advantage of any opportunity that comes to me whenever possible. I went to Scotland to visit Jamie, who I met at Nicaragua for his birthday party. I went to Glacier with Venti. I met her in France. She said, “I’m going to Glacier, want to come?†I was like, “I’d love to go.†Next up I’m going to Cotswold Way. This one’s a little bit different. I was doing some research on UK’s best hikes and came across the Cotswold Way. That’s the next stop for me whenever I go back to Europe. That’s what I’m getting ready for. I’m sitting outside the airport getting ready to head over to the UK to do a 100-mile hike in the Cotswold. There’s lots of different ways to find that. Generally speaking, somebody has to bring it into my radar. I don’t go googling places to go or what not. Either it’s something that somebody’s told me about, I’ve seen it on Instagram, or somebody’s triggered the thought, “Let’s go there.â€

When you treat something like a bill, you get it done. Share on X

Once I decide where I’d like to go, then I got to figure out the next thing, how am I going to do this? Am I going to go on a guided tour? Which means that I pay a company and I push a little button, pay for it, and then I show up. That’s always nice because there’s no work involved. The second option is one that I also do quite frequently, and that’s a self-guided tour. I’m using a company. They make all the arrangements. I still push the button but there’s nobody there to hold my hand on the other side outside of a phone call. They’re a phone call away if there’s a problem. I never had to use it. For example, this Cotswold, this is a self-guided trip. I pushed the button and paid for the tour. A couple of weeks later, I get this nice packet in the mail. I get the maps, a book, the whole itinerary, the outline of where I’m staying and a little luggage tag. They move my bags every day. That makes it super easy, but I’m on my own and I will be going solo so I don’t have other people to travel with. I’ll meet him on the trail, but for the most part I’m on my own.

Your other option is to self-plan and to self-tour. Use my travel planners, use Google, and you plan your own adventure. It’s a lot more work and may or may not save you money. Sometimes I’m finding that some of these self-guided tours save me money because they know of better places than I could find. I know they save me countless hours. I’m not big into spending my time planning trips. A lot of people love it, I don’t. I’d much rather have somebody do it for me. They already know what they’re doing. They know the lay of the land is, the great places, everything. That’s pretty much the way I’m going now. I also like to decide, do I want to push myself or am I going for the beauty? Is this a plus one? What I refer to as the plus one is where I want to challenge myself or am I just going to go see something pretty? The Cotswold Way that I’m going on, not so difficult but it’s going to be gorgeous. I hope the weather cooperates, but if not, it’s still going to be a pretty adventure.

Another thing to decide, how much are you willing to rough it? An adventure sometimes is lax, but most of the time it’s not. Sometimes you’re going to be camping, in a guest house, in a hostel or mountain hut situation where you got snoring neighbors. You need to bring eye mask and ear plugs and all that. You need to know exactly what you’re willing to do. Most of you that have responded to my survey that I encouraged you to take at ActiveTravelAdventure.com. It lets me know that you don’t mind roughing it if you’re going to be seeing something spectacular. You got to figure out who’s going to carry your junk? Are you backpacking it? Are you going to have it portered for you? Is a pack animal going to take it for you? I’m doing the Cotswold Way, slack packing it? It’s what we call in the Appalachian Trail where somebody is hauling your junk for you.

On this trip, I put a little luggage tag on, I drop it down the lobby in the morning. When I arrive later in the day at the next location my bag is waiting for me. That’s a fun way to do it. I’m getting more and more into that even though I do like to backpack, because there’s some places that you can’t see unless you take a backpack. There are no accommodations up there. You’ve got to take your accommodations. You got to take your kitchen. The next big thing to decide is when to go. There is seasonality to almost every place on the Earth. Generally speaking, the best times are spring and fall. I wish we could do more of that. There’s also the shoulder season for a lot of great places. The prices are better, the temperatures are better and the crowds are down. Consider the shoulder seasons, particularly the spring and fall in most cases and you might get the best of both worlds.

You got to look at budget, is this an expensive trip? Adventure travel can be more expensive because logistics can be difficult. You have to pay somebody to get you to some of these more difficult places. Is this something you can save up for and do in one, two years? Whatever it is, in fact what I did, I put a certain amount in the bank like a bill. It’s automatically drafted and goes into my travel bucket. Every month that goes in. It’s shocking how quickly that can build up. When I do, this is my little secret sauce, is I try to, when the bills come in or when I’m going to do something, I try to cash flow it. Meaning, I try to pay for it without going into my travel bucket. What happens is unless I get a massive bill, I can nickel and dime my way to get, buy the plane here, buy this little thing here, and get this hotel room there. I don’t tackle that travel bucket. When I get some great trip that’s going to be expensive, I’ve got a little kitty in there that I can tap into. That’s worked well for me. Not just for travel but for some other savings things. When you treat it like a bill, you do it. At least for me, that has been super effective in helping me build up my little travel kitties and my other little monetary little buckets in my life.

When it comes to packing, fortunately I have all the gear. I don’t do a lot of cold weather things because I don’t like the cold. If the weather is at all normal, I’ve got the gear. If you don’t, you don’t necessarily have to buy it. You can borrow it or rent it in many cases. In fact, when I went to my Safari in Tanzania, I had found out from a local bird watching event that I went to, the difference in binoculars. They let us use this Bausch and Lomb Binoculars that cost over $800. I had no idea what the difference this made but I don’t need $800 binoculars. Somebody in a group happened to have a good pair. I said, “I’ll pay you $50 if I can rent them for two weeks.†She was thrilled. I was thrilled. Everybody’s happy. You got to get good economy. You’ll be able to pull this off inexpensively without forking up a lot of money for a gear you may or may not use in the future.

Next is training. Do you have enough time to get ready? I cannot emphasize enough that going on a major adventure without training, you’re setting yourself up for not enjoying it as much as you should. Make training a way to have fun exercise in because you’ve got this end goal in mind. Figure out when you’re going to go and back into what you have to do. Where I live where it’s super flat, when I’m going to go on a hiking adventure that require elevation that means we join the local rec center getting on the treadmill with a pack. Doing some 50% grade on the treadmill helps a lot. Donna who we interviewed for the Iceland trip, her family in Texas has a flat area. They found a parking garage which is five stories. They would take their pack up and down the stories each weekend. Do yourself a favor, break it down and then work your plan. That way you’re in your best physical shape to thoroughly enjoy the adventure. It’s a challenge, but not killer. You then decide who you want to go with. Are you going to go by yourself? Are you going with family and friends? Do you want to join a group so that you’d meet other people?

That’s a great way and that’s been a super effective way for me to make friends all over the world. I love that. Mostly I’m travelling solo these days, but I’m not solo. I’m generally with another group or I’m in a situation where I’m going to be meeting other people. To me, I meet one or two and become lifelong friends with somebody. In fact, on this Cotswold Way I’m being met at the airport by a gentleman I met in Scotland the year before on the west highland way. He and his girlfriend are going to host me for a couple of days before I start my journey. You also need to decide when you go someplace what are you going to do? Do you want to hike, do you want to bike do you want to paddle, do you want to horseback ride, do you want to do a combination of all the above? Do you want to add in some culture, some food and do a bunch of tasting, wine tasting, touring, von tourism? That’s the new thing where you go there to help out a little bit in addition to seeing the country or the culture. There’re different ways of setting up the tours depending on what it is that you want to do.

The thing that’s not my favorite thing to do but it’s important, you have to do it is the logistics, how are you going to get there? Most of the places I go to these days I have to fly. I live in a very awkward place to get out of so it takes me a day to get to a decent airport and then I fly. To pick my flight here’s what I do and this is the super easy way to get the best rates possible, Google, Wiki and then the airport code of the place that you’re going to. You scroll down to the bottom of that page and it lists all the direct flights coming into it. As you scan that, look for places where you know it’s inexpensive for you to get to. That way you’re not going all over the place trying to figure out who the best carrier to go there. You can go to their website to get their deals. You can also use Google flights to look for deals and pathways. It saves you tremendous amount of effort. I booked a trip to New Zealand. There’re multiple hundreds of ways to get to New Zealand. By doing that I can say, “These are direct routes. I am on the plane the least amount of time.†I can’t go direct from where I live, but I look for the portals of getting there so that I don’t have to sit in the plane for a long time.

You got to look at packing. I’m a big believer in not over packing. I have a packing list I’m happy to share with you that I cultivate. I write down what I put in there. When I get home, if I didn’t use it, it gets booted for the next list. My suitcase is fine-tuned because I don’t want to take anything I’m not going to use. There’re times when I am filthy. In Nicaragua we sled down some mountain the Cerro Negro where we’re literally sliding down on a board of lava ash. I was completely black. The dust was everywhere. I was so filthy that I literally showered with my clothes on as a first rinse to try to clean those clothes. A lot of times I wash the clothes in the sink. I bring all performance gears so it dries almost instantly and certainly by the next morning. That way I bring very little clothes. It’s just my gear, the sticks and what not. Speaking of sticks, a lot of the stuff we use in adventure travel you can’t bring a carryon. My sticks have a little metal point. I consider it a weapon so I must check them. My little one-inch blade knife has been confiscated before on me because it too, is a weapon that must be checked.

I’m happy to share my packing list. Check that at ActiveTravelAdventures.com/planning. You’ll have a link to my general packing list. What are your thoughts? Did I miss anything? We’ve looked at the who, what, where, how and when of how to do adventure travel. I know that some of you, a lot of you have completed the survey that I have. I’d love to hear from you because that helps me figure out what I can do to help you get into adventure travel. We’ve decided where we’re going to go. That’s usually referrals, whether it’s from Active Travel Adventures, your friends, the family, Instagram or what not. We’ve decided how we’re going to do it if we’re going to do a guided tour, a self-guided tour, we’re going to figure it all out ourselves. We’re going to figure out when to go. That’s where we use our travel planners. That’s when if you can’t find it on then, email me. I’ll do my best to help you. We’re figuring out how to pay for it, what’s our budget? We’re figuring out our gear. How we’re going to get it, what do we need to have, can we borrow, rent it or buy it. We’ve got to train for it so we thoroughly enjoy our trip without killing ourselves.

We’ve got to figure out who we’re going with. Are we doing it ourselves, friends, family? Are we going with a group? Are we going to trek along with strangers? We got to figure out what activities that we’re doing. Are we going to hike, bike, paddle, horseback ride or do some combination of all the above? Do we want to add in time for cultural and do a little foodie tour? Do we want to do some voluntourism? We got to figure out how the heck are we going to get there? Logistics with adventure travel is complicated. That’s another reason I like doing tours because they start and stop you. They’ve got the little van to take you so you don’t have to backtrack and do little loops all the time. You can go forward. They pick you up and take you to the next destination. In many ways tours end up being cheaper for you because it’s hard to replicate that when you’re a party of one or two.

A well thought out and a well planned adventure travel can be a trip of a lifetime. Share on X

A well thought out and a well-planned adventure travel can be a trip of a lifetime. My friend Jamie, who I interviewed, has an expression that I love. This is Jamie from Scotland, the guy that I hiked to his 48th birthday party. He went on a trip to Pakistan. He’s like, “That’s a trip of a lifetime.†He’s like, “Why do we only get to do stuff like that once in a lifetime?†That resonated with me. I’m like, “Jamie, I want all of my trips to be a ‘trip of a lifetime.’†Literally for the previous years, that’s what I’ve been doing. That’s what I want you to do. You can do it if you do the little step by steps. Plan it out, put it on the calendar, back into it and make it happen. You can do it and I want to hear about your travels. Email me, tell me about your adventures, where you want to go and how I can help. You can always reach me at Kit@ActiveTravelAdventures.com.

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We’ve looked at what’s involved in planning a trip and in our next episode I’m going to take you in an actual trip. We’re going to do something different, normally I’d give you a report when I get back. This time I’m going to take you step by step on the actual adventure. We’re going to go through some of the things that we went through. I can’t wait to share it with you, we’re going to the Cotswold Way in England. Until then, adventure on.

Important Links:

• Nicaragua – previous episode
• Glacier – previous episode
• Safari in Tanzania – previous episode
• Iceland trip – previous episode
• ActiveTravelAdventure.com
• ActiveTravelAdventures.com/planning
• Kit@ActiveTravelAdventures.com

• Here’s How »

• activetraveladventures.com
• Active Travel Adventures Facebook Page
• Active Travel Adventures Facebook Group
• Active Travel Adventures Twitter
• Active Travel Adventures Instagram
• Active Travel Adventures YouTube
• Kit Parks LinkedIn