Photo by Frederick de la Faille, via Flickr.

Why your travel guide is not a bible.

Travel guides are often the first thing on a traveller’s list of “must-get” items. They are undoubtedly useful for finding your way in an unknown land, providing the weary traveller with everything from a list of recommended hostels and restaurants to contextual references and historical background. Used well, they can help a journey go smoothly, providing a swift, accessible insight into a location and leaving you more time to enjoy yourself. But used incorrectly, they can create disappointment and can even promote a lack of inclusion and provide a barrier to communication.

Choose well

Select your travel guide well. Choose an up-to-date one, and choose one that suits you. This is quite important, and by way of an example, Rough Guides tend to be just that, with less information, but are more rapidly accessible than Lonely Planet, which tend to be packed full of information, on more places, but tend take more involvement to fully access it all.

Pick a guide based on your journey

If you’re travelling across Southern Africa in a few weeks, but only stopping at major touristic cities, a generic guide to the continent might suit you better than buying three in-depth guides to the countries that you will visit, whereas if you intend to travel to remote and inaccessible locations within one country, a country-specific guide will serve you better than a generic guide. It’s common sense, but you’d be amazed at how many people buy the wrong guide.

Know yourself well.

Are you the sort of person that likes to plan where you are going months in advance? Or do you love the spontaneity of turning up in a village with just a backpack and a smile, leaving everything up to chance? Are you all about the destination, or all about the journey? Are you planning on taking a 90L backpack filled with gadgets, or are you travelling light? These are all travel concerns that influence how you use a travel guide.

Don’t be afraid to get lost.

The people who know the areas best, are those that live there. Talk to people, talk to fellow travellers. They have far less of an agenda than travel guides, and they don’t have to legally provide safety warnings like travel guides do. I’ve been many places that travel guides advise against visiting. You should too. Be sensible, but not paranoid.

Travel guides aren’t bibles.

Don’t take their word as gospel. If you visit a hostel because the guide says they have internet connection, don’t sweat it if they don’t. If the guide gives you a price for something, treat it as a guide for haggling, and not as a concrete certainty.

Learn from it

Putting yourself in uncomfortable or strange situations isn’t bad. It’s healthy. Just because you’re all grown up, it doesn’t mean you should stop learning, and a great way to learn about yourself, other people, and the world, is to encounter new and unusual places, people, and scenarios. Ticking all the sight-seeing boxes might impress your friends, but they often are no different from other places you have been, and they won’t gain you anything other than a nice snapshot to put on facebook. Teach yourself something. Isn’t that why you wanted to travel in the first place?

Don’t be afraid to visit places that your guide doesn’t mention.

If someone recommends a town, event, or area that isn’t in your guide, count yourself lucky; It’s probably the very place you’re looking for.

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