| But virtual travel is still possible: the web has more sites dedicated to travel than any other category of human endeavour, shopping and porn excepted. |
| The Virtual Browser: Perhaps the best list of travel websites is the one compiled by |
| The Times; despite the understandable UK bias, this list of 108 needs to be bookmarked. |
| The Times' 108 Best Travel Websites: http://travel.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,20789-2155182_1,00.html |
| Packing Guides: One Bag is especially useful for the backpacker and the budget traveller. Travelsmith is a catalogue-in-disguise, but it has a checklist of items you can't afford to leave behind if you're on a cruise or at a ski resort. Possibly the best page on how to pack, with useful tips for the business traveller, is run by Mark Verber. |
| One Bag: http://www.onebag.com/ Travelsmith: http://www.travelsmith.com/ts/packlist.jsp Mark Verber: http://www.verber.com/mark/travel/packing.html |
| The Grand Indian Tour: Googling "India travel" is useless: the search engine offers pages of tour operator listings. There are lots of specialist sites there, though, besides the Lonely Planet, Rough Guide, Footprint and Outlook Traveller websites. |
| Make My Trip, is a decent trip planner, though not for the niche traveller. Foreign tourists might find the Incredible India website useful if it didn't have an impossible URL. Indax offers survival tips for the first time visitor to India, and the eco-conscious traveller might want to drop by Ecoclub's India listings. |
| Make My Trip: http://india.makemytrip.com/ Incredible India: http://64.239.149.251/ EcoClub India: http://ecoclub.com/india.html Outlook Traveller India: http://www.outlooktraveller.com |
| Travel tools: Yahoo! Trips is just out of beta, and promises a whole range of tools, from trip planners to weather reports. FlySpy and TripConnect are great for looking up cheap airline rates and hotel rooms respectively. |
| Lonely Planet has a comprehensive podcast directory, where you can listen to personalised guides to museums, cities, restaurants, or natural landscapes on your iPod. |
| HotelChatter dishes the dirt on the world's biggest hotel chains "" drawbacks, special offers, the best rooms. My personal favourite is Boots N All "" great community, great guide. |
| Yahoo! Trips: http://www.travel.yahoo.com FlySpy: www.flyspy.com TripConnect: www.tripconnect.com Lonely Planet podcasts: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/podcasts/ Hotel Chatter: http://hotelchatter.com Gridskipper: http://www.gridskipper.com/ Boots N All: http://www.bootsnall.com/ |
| The Bored and the Beautiful: Luxury Explorer bills itself as a one-stop shop for the well-heeled; read this alongside Conde Nast's lists of the hottest spots across the globe. |
| For the business traveller, Vijay Dandapani runs a popular blog on the hotel industry, and there are a handful of decent business travel blogs at BizNet Travel. |
| At the other end of the scale, Robert Young Pelton tells you how to survive the world's most dangerous places. And if you're tired of hotels, or just broke, The CouchSurfing Project will link you to strangers across the globe who'll offer you a place to crash, or a chat over coffee. |
| Luxury Explorer: http://www.luxuryexplorer.com Dangerous Places: http://www.comebackalive.com/df/dplaces.htm Vijay Dandapani's blog: http://www.vijaydandapani.com/ Biz Net's business blog network: http://www.biznettravel.blogs.com/ Conde Nast's travel guides: www.concierge.com The CouchSurfing Project: http://www.couchsurfing.org |
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