Planning and budgeting your transport

Discovering new places is what I like most about travel. Getting to those new places and finding the most comfortable / cheap (yes, I’m leaving out fast because everything takes time here in Asia) way to do so can be quite a challenge sometimes.

It would be great if a one-stop website existed with all the possible bus / train / flight routes of the world, together with how much they cost on average at a certain time of the year, but so far I know (if you know more, let me know) a website like that doesn’t exist (yet).

So, what do I use then? These are the websites I turn to to plan and budget our transport.

In the mix

• Rome2Rio lines up all different kinds of transport (bus, train, plane) with a price next to it. This is as close as it gets to getting an idea of your possibilities all at once although I’m not 100% sure they’re advertising the cheapest / most updated fare. At least you’ll know if there actually is a bus route (for example) or not and you can research it further.

Plane

• Skyscanner show prices from one destination to another over a period of a month so you can find the cheapest rate. You can type in “Everywhere in the world” as a destination to see the cheapest place to fly to right away. Sounds wonderful doesn’t it?

Bus

• I found out Wikitravel has a lot of information on local busses and how much they should cost on average.

Train

• The man in seat 61 has all the answers. There are a whole lot of countries on his website and prices for every possible route are mentioned.

I usually know upfront what kind of transport I’ll look for first: I really love train rides and will always try to cover as much distance as possible by train. If the ride takes longer than 1 full day or 1 night I’ll try to squeeze in a good stopover city in the route but if there are no interesting stops along the way: plane it is. I try to avoid buses for long distances (in a train you always have a toilet, you can walk around and I just feel safer than on the road).

Which kinds of transport do you like the most and which websites do you use to plan and budget them?