Nowadays. Everyone seems to be in a rush to get to wherever they are going as quickly and as conveniently as possible. Many people are willing to pay a premium to ensure they can get a non stop flight to their destination of choice. This series is going to discuss the merits of abandoning that as a goal and taking advantage of what stopovers can give you. To date we have had meaningful stopovers involving exploration in several locations including Singapore, Taipei, Toronto, Ho Chi Minh City and Cairo. I will have further posts to discuss the particulars of these stopovers but there are several advantages that are common to all of them.
The first major advantage of a stopover is that it gives you the opportunity to visit a location that may not have been high on your wishlist. In fact you may have never even considered going there at all. It has only been as a result of a long stopover that I have had some of my favourite travel experiences ever.
The second major advantage is that you can utilise your savings on the flights to pay for your day out in whatever location you are in. It is rare that a stopover is not going to be cheaper than a direct flight, so in situations where you can afford a direct flight and you are likely to lose a day to travel anyway, it makes sense to utilise that travel time to experience something brand new.
The third major advantage of stopovers is that they allow you to prioritise effectively. Due to the limited time that you will probably have as part of your stopover you are forced to pick considerably less things to do. This can help you figure out what is really important to you as a traveller.
Lastly, especially in situations where your baggage is checked through to your final destination, stopovers help you to experience a location without worrying about the less exciting things about travel, i.e. going to a hotel, checking in, unpacking. You can go straight from clearing immigration to whatever the first experience you have planned is which is a real bonus when you have limited time.
If you are thinking about using a stopover to explore something new, there are a couple important things you should take into consideration.
- Understand the geography. If a location has two major sites you want to see, but they are in different directions and travel time between them is not low, you need to figure out if you will actually have enough time to visit both, or whether you need to pick one over the other.
- Understand local transport conditions. Public offroad transport will almost always be a safer way to do a stopover compared to using a car, taxi or bus. This is because they are less affected by traffic. If you are planning on using something that travels on road, research what traffic conditions are like at the time that you are travelling. This will help you figure out how much time you need to leave to get back to the airport.
- Plan a route. When time is limited, you really don’t want to be wandering around in circles. It is sensible to plot all the places you want to go on a map and then figure out a route that gets you to all of them in the least time possible. If any of the locations cause the route to deviate massively, you should consider whether visiting there is worth it, since it will add a lot of extra time for a single place.
- Pick a time you want to get back to the airport, and work backwards from there. It is important to remember that the most important thing you need to do on a stopover is meet your connecting flight. As such you need to figure out based on the airport you are connecting in, how long it will take you to get back through security to continue your trip. This will allow you to come up with a target time to be at the airport for. Once you are out and about exploring you can ensure that wherever you end up, if you decide to freely wander, you will be able to get back to the airport at that time, saving your tears.
Hopefully this post has made you consider adding or even extending connections on your trips. We really have had some wonderful memories on our stopovers and exploring somewhere new can never be a bad thing.
