Popagandhi

By popular request, a list of my favourite travel websites. With a huge Asia focus, obviously! These are the websites I spend far too much time in, websites that have made my life a little easier, or made sure there was a roof over my head while I’m on the road. I hope you enjoy using them as much as I do.

Flight Search
WeGo.com
Ever since I discovered WeGo.com recently and used it to book my flight to Barcelona, it’s quickly become popular among my friends and family for their travel search needs. We all like how its quick and easy interface presents search results across hundreds of travel websites, and always gives you a good fare. After-tax prices are worked in from the moment the search results are presented, which is a nice touch. You find out all you need to know and zip through flight bookings in a quarter the time it takes at a certain incumbent. I’ve searched fares originating from most Asian countries and can attest to the good rates out of Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok, which are the main airports I fly out of. I like the research section where you can filter your search for travel information by the very logical and useful categories of “travel magazines, newspaper articles, guidebooks, blogs, videos, industry news”, etc.

AirAsiaPlus
While WeGo.com’s flight search is fabulous for regional and international travel, I can’t break the habit I’ve had for a long time: lurking compulsively on AirAsia’s website looking for deals out of Kuala Lumpur, especially for domestic Malaysian flights. The AirAsia website is fast enough, but this indie search site does just one thing: power search AirAsia. I do an insane amount of power-booking at AirAsia: not long ago, I’d scrambled out of bed at 5 am in a Kuching hotel, and in the five minutes I had to wash up, get dressed, and jump into a car, I managed to book some flights to Bangkok and modify other flight bookings, and pack my bag. That’s because AirAsiaPlus.com’s simple interface lets you view flight prices for 15 days from the day you pick. Taxes aren’t worked in yet, and you can’t click through and book them directly, but you can mess around to see which dates are best for your budget. (For example, it tells me there’re a host of $7 tickets to Kuala Lumpur coming up…)

Destinations and Advice
Travelfish, for Southeast Asian travel
A long time favourite, Travelfish just keeps getting better and better. It has come to the point where I now advise friends, even those who have never travelled independently, to use Travelfish as their exclusive research resource, rather than splurging >S$40 on a guidebook. Accommodation listings are usually spot on, and I’ve found an impressive array of special places to stay, for every budget, in most Southeast Asian countries, through their pages. Just about everything I know about Southeast Asian travel has something to do with Travelfish.

Indiamike, for great India travel advice, with occasional bits on Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh too
While I learned whatever I needed to know about India through five separate amazing, long, and immersive experiences, I cannot stress how important it is to acquire some practical information before going to India, especially if one knows next to nothing about it. Indiamike’s community of experts and the great articles they’ve written there have literally saved my ass. If you’ve ever tried booking an Indian train only to come across jargon like: AVAILABLE - 0012, WL30/WL12, 3AC, 2AC, it’s articles like India Railways and the Indian Train over at the articles section (India for Beginners is especially useful), as well as forum discussions which can be immensely helpful, if you use it well (example of a GREAT thread. The hotel review section can also be very helpful; I’ve never gone to India with a guidebook, so I rely almost exclusively on the web for hotel information. It’s served me well.

Trains and Planes
Indian Railways
I spend so much time at this website for booking Indian train tickets, I can navigate it with my eyes closed. That also applied to the old website: a horrible, usability nightmare if you remember it, which just means that I (1) book too many Indian train tickets (2) go to India too much. I even have the IRCTC mobile app on my Nokia N95 so if I’m ever sitting down in a cafe and urgently wanted to check seat vacancies (and book it), I could.

Trains at a Glance
I collect the book, Trains at a Glance, available at all good Indian bookstores. I own most recent editions, and the one thing I ask of friends who visit India in the times I’m not in India, is to buy me an updated version. A girl can’t always have her train bible handy, so it’s online too. The only problem is it’s built exactly the way it’s presented in paper form, and I took a few days to figure out how it worked on paper, so go figure how hard it is to use it… but once you have, this is an impossibly useful resource. I have spent many afternoons by my window berth in sleeper class, reading Trains at A Glance from cover to cover. I do this every alternate even hour of my 37 hour train rides (odd hours: drinking tea and talking to strangers). Happy times. If you’re as obsessed with train timetables as I am.

The Man in Seat 61
Another train nerd, slightly nerdier than I, runs the godfather of all train websites. There are sections for just about every country and continent, in which he gives you spot-on advice about domestic train travel, as well as how to get to neighbouring countries by train, where available (Vietnam to China? London to Finland? It’s all there). More helpful is the breakdown of train classes in every national railway system, complete with description and photographs. I hardly spend a day without reading this site compulsively.. but that’s just me. Regular folks may find it useful from time to time, when planning for train journeys.

Spanish Buses
If you’ve ever had to plan for a trip to Spain, you might find it… quite an awful experience. I’ve had more fun and more coherence planning for journeys to Bangladesh and India than I did to Spain. Which is a pity. Buses are a great way to get around Spain. Movelia is a bus search website for all of Spain. If you’re thinking of buses to other European countries, you’d have to go to Eurolines.

Sleeping In Airports
Save a six hour wait that saw me crash flat out on the floor of Amsterdam Schipol, I’ve never… in the strictest sense of it, had to sleep in an airport. But if you absolutely have to, there are more than 5500 reviews of the sleep-ability of various airports around the world. Some useful tips, others absolutely pointless. But beggars can’t be choosers, so brush up on your airport sleeping tips.

Packing
One Bag, The Art and Science of Travelling Light
One Bag teaches you how to pack for business and leisure, how to pack stuff, how to pick a bag, and how to secure it. It’s full of useful information on all things packing, and also recommends various tools.

Universal Packing List
Very useful site where you enter your date of departure and return, max/min temperature, and other variables (”I wear glasses, I wear contact lenses, I am bringing a digital camera, etc”), then pick the size of your bag. The Universal Packing List automatically generates… a list of things for you to pack. It does one thing and does it well.