Plan A Long, Slow Trip Across Asia
This guide is built for travellers giving themselves weeks or months, not a fortnight — the kind of trip where the route, the visas and the season you travel in all have to line up before you book a single flight. Work through the five parts below in whatever order suits the stage you're at.
The Five-Part Guide
How to string regions, borders and seasons into a route that actually holds together over weeks or months.
Comparing trains, sleeper buses, budget flights and ride-hailing apps for getting between and around destinations.
Working out a daily spending average, separating one-off costs, and keeping a contingency reserve intact.
Matching dorm beds, guesthouses and hotels to the leg you're on, and eating well from street stalls to sit-down restaurants.
Reading entry requirements by nationality and matching your route to monsoon, dry and shoulder seasons.
Where To Start
If this is the first time you've planned something longer than a standard holiday, work through these steps before opening a single booking site.
- Read the routes guide first. The shape of your trip — loop, linear or hub-and-spoke — decides almost everything that follows, including which visas you need and which season windows matter.
- Cross-check your rough route against the visas and seasons guide before you commit to flight dates. A route that looks fine on a map can put you in the wrong country in the wrong month.
- Once the shape and timing are fixed, use the transport guide to work out which legs need booking weeks ahead and which can wait until you're on the ground.
- Build a daily budget using the budgeting guide, then sanity-check it against the accommodation and food guide so the numbers match the kind of trip you're actually planning to have.
- Keep the whole plan loose enough to survive contact with reality. Every section below assumes you'll adjust it once you're travelling.