- Hostelbookers: If you are on a budget, Hostelbookers offers youth hostels and cheap hotels in over 3500 travel destinations with no booking fees.
- Couchsurfing: Not our first choice but it is a great way to stay cheap and get to know locals when you travel.
- Trusted Housesitters: Housesit your way around the world.
- Homeaway: Find & book vacation rentals with HomeAway. Rent everything from cabins & condos to castles or villas. The whole house. The whole family. A whole vacation.
Our favourite research sources
- Wikitravel: Much like Wikipedia, Wikitravel offers great information regarding how to get to locations, such as what bus to take, and information about entering and exiting a country, scams to look out for, and any information you may not think to research.
- Lonely Planet: In recent years these guys have taken over as the preeminent source of travel information. They have good info on almost every location around the world. They produce great looking and thorough content. You can’t go wrong with a lonely planet guide in your pack.
- Rough Guides: Rough Guides offers some of the best travel books around. Their website offers some tips and provides you with travel inspiration. We like these guys a little more than Lonely Planet because they’re geared towards backpackers on a budget like us!
Transport
- Skyscanner: Skyscanner is an awesome tool to help you to find the cheapest flight between destinations, especially if you are flexible with your dates. It also supports multi-city flights which is a great way to save money.
- Rio2Rome: Great website for discovering how to get from A to B by searching plane, train, bus, car and ferry routes.
- Google Flights Explorer: Similar to SkyScanner with some interesting features like the ability to search for destinations to full continents within a certain time frame.
- Momondo: Momondo’s search engine tend to cover many more booking agencies compare to Skyscanner and it will almost always find a cheaper fare for the flight dates you have selected.
- SeatGuru: SeatGuru is a dead simple site rating airplane seats so you don't end up next the toilet during your long-haul flights.
- Seat 61: The best and most detailed website for train travel across the world.
- AirAsia: This low-cost airline offers a lot of cheap flights around Asia.
Trip Planning
- G Adventures: A great website to book guided and packaged tours on.
- Intrepid travel: With more than 1,500 itineraries in over 120 countries it's a good place to stop by to find inspiration.
- Audley travel: Audley Travel specialises in tailor-made holidays and private tours for discerning travellers seeking authentic experiences around the world.
Gear
- REI: Extremely large selection of outdoor and travel gear.
- Patagonia: Great shop for any outdoor clothing and gear. Climbing, surfing, skiing and snowboarding, fly fishing, and trail running, whatever you do they will get you covered.
- CamelBak: Backpacks with a great lifetime warranty policy.
- Eagle Creek: Eagle Creek offers a wide range of cubes to fit virtually everything you need for your trip.
- Osprey: Comfortable, full of features, and durable backpacks. They also have the all mighty guarantee, where they will repair or replace it without any charge, within its reasonable lifetime.
Money Management
- XE Currency: Essential for converting your currencies while abroad.
- Nomad List: Cost of living and other metrics per cities.
Other Favorites
Travel Blogs
- The Blonde Abroad Award-winning solo female travel & lifestyle blog featuring travel tips, fashion, festivals and photography from around the world.
- Be My Travel Muse: Travel blog by Kristin Addis, a solo female traveller who has been travelling consecutively for two years.
- World of Wanderlust: World of Wanderlust follows the daily adventures of solo travel blogger Brooke Saward.
- OneWorldOneYear: Mark and Britnee travel around the world for a year.
- Expert Vagabond: Popular adventure travel blog featuring inspirational stories, photography, and tips from around the world. Follow Matthew Karsten on his wild adventures.
- Love & Road: Travel a Brazilian Couple travelling and having fun around the world.
- Never Ending Footsteps: Follow the misadventures of the unluckiest traveller in the world?
- Hippie in Heels: An American who left a career to live on the beaches of Goa.
Country resources
China
India
- Cleartrip: India's leading travel agency.
- Confirmtkt: Best train App to get confirmed train and bus tickets, PNR status and even PNR prediction for Indian Railway train tickets.
- https://indiarailinfo.com/pnr