10 Rogue Tips For Travelling Without A Plan

To me, it feels a little counter intuitive to give tips on how to be unplanned or how to be rogue (the latter which sounds a bit like a podcast started by a failed comedian with a penchant for slurs). By reading this list, surely you’re undermining the idea of being unplanned? Planning to be unplanned is the sort of thing you could see Spongebob doing while wearing a pair of square glasses with tape in the middle. If it doesn’t come naturally to you, why bother right?

Personally, I think you should bother because travelling unplanned can simply be amazing. Unplanned trips undertaken in one’s prime are the sort of things people speak of proudly for the rest of their lives. Planning a trip can be an achievement in logistics but making a trip unplanned can feel like a personal achievement to yourself. A challenge that you set without quite knowing what your reward will be. When you find yourself with your feet on unfamiliar ground and your brain without a clue it forces you to be spontaneous and push yourself outside of that comfort zone that you have paid an airline dearly to escape.

If going rogue does not come naturally to you, these ten tips that I personally employ will help you have a different style of trip with an outcome that only you can ever truly understand.

One: No Tourism

There are many cliches I could use here; ‘ditch the guidebook’, ‘get off the beaten track’, ‘go wherever the road takes you’ etc. The reason there are so many of these sayings is because this is really the most obvious travel advice there is when it comes to going rogue.

I’m not saying don’t see the Vatican or the Pyramids, many tourist attractions are worth seeing but to go rogue they should make up just one point in your itinerary. The other point in your itinerary should be nothing as having an itinerary is planning is therefore not rogue! Any time you spend doing any box ticking stuff needs to be matched by an equal amount of time spent exploring your destination without an agenda. Likewise, every major city you visit should be matched with an unusual or lesser known destination.

The method of which you travel is going to have a big impact on this as Kontiki style tours leave you with about 14 minutes downtime per day. You’re not going rogue on a cruise OK, I’m sorry that’s just how it is.

Two: Just Walk

You might just end up walking to the top of a mountain like we did in Edinburgh.

Alright, you’ve stepped out of your accommodation, your Lonely Planet is back in your suitcase, you’ve closed the door behind you and beneath your feet lies unfamiliar paths. Now what?

Just bloody start bloody walking that’s what.

If you’ve got no idea what to do, that’s good. You can always just walk. Pick a direction and go. Feel free to turn any way you want, double back, get on a tram, get off and walk somewhere else. Work up an appetite. Eat at the place you’ve accidently walked to. Burn those calories trying to figure out your way home. Walk until sweat sticks your shirt to your back like skin. Walk until you’re lost and you really need to pull out your maps app to get your bearings. Then walk every day until you’ve developed an internal compass.

Now you don’t need to take this too literally. You could also cycle in one direction, pick a random train or bus. But apart from the calming mental health benefits, I find walking can be a spiritual experience. For our ancestors, pilgrimages always took place on foot. Going the slow way allows ample time to absorb small details, discover points of interest and learn all these tiny insights for yourself. It’s simple and it’s free. Just walk.

Three: Go Out Wanting To Make Friends

An old friend & a new friend in Berlin.

Making friends with other travellers is a fantastic idea but did you know every city in the world has travel guides that will share lesser known insights for with you free? They are called locals.

For some of us, the idea of talking to strangers feels about as fun/safe as a game of Russian Roulette. In a way, it’s a perfect analogy because sometimes you will meet a psycho but more often than not, you’ll be completely fine (most people aren’t psychos, otherwise psychos wouldn’t be interesting). Likely, the local has their guard up about you too so if you just be yourself and act as you would if you were trying to make a friend, the locals you meet while travelling will share some real authentic tips with you.

Think about how you would feel in your home town if someone from far away politely approached you and asked for a bit of advice. You’d probably want to give them useful tips as well as a few unexpected ones to prove you’re cool. Well, it goes both ways.

Friendly shopkeepers are the best way to get started. As you’re buying something and having a natter, ask them what bars or restaurants they like in the area. From there you can ask waiters, bartenders or best of all, other patrons for their tips. Most of the time, you’ll end up getting a polite ‘well enjoy yourself then’ after a few minutes the more you do this the more likely you are to have conversations with locals which genuinely offer the best insights into what your destination is really like to live in. From there this could turn into an invite to dinner and other authentic cultural experiences planning just cannot offer.

Whether you become friends with locals or other travellers, having friends all over the world is a comforting feeling and one of my personal life goals.

Four: Leave The City

The natural beauty just under an hour outside of Geneva.

Cities of course offer the easiest transport options on a multi stop trip which is why we see so many cities while travelling. Indeed, some people make a single city the basis of their whole trip which is an amazing idea.

However, as an Australian, I can acknowledge that our major cities, while beautiful, are very different to what you see on the postcards/The Simpsons. In my experience, it’s like this all over the world. Germans will happily (or rudely) tell you that Berlin certainly doesn’t represent all of Deutschland and Beijing is a far cry from the agrarian lifestyle lived by half of the Chinese population. If you want to say you’ve been to the country and not the city then you need to go rogue and leave that city during your trip.

This could be done as a day trip, or as part of a smaller stop on your way elsewhere. Smaller towns may offer less in terms of dining and retail but make up for it in spades with natural beauty and outdoor recreational options, something people such as myself can sorely miss while on a city-hopping trip. It’s for this reason I got out of Geneva to enjoy some of the naturally beautiful Switzerland on my rogue day. Yes, it was not a winning strategy and if we had been a bit quicker on the walk we would have made it to a lovely beer garden before the kitchen closed but that leads me to my next point…

Five: Make Friends With Disappointment

Those of have seen the Cologne episode know what this is about.

So I’m mentally ill. I’ve had depression my whole and it influences the way I react, or rather, over react to things. Obviously, there’s never a good time for this to happen but during a trip I’ve laid down good money on, sometimes by working a job that fuels my depression, is when I’d least like to be easily influenced by my imperfect brain. What this means for me is that I’ve had to make friends with the disappointment that comes with all forms of travelling. No matter how much you plan, your flight can still get delayed, your train can get cancelled, your luggage sent to a different hemisphere. In order not to spend my travels sad and in bed, I’ve had to shake hands with disappointment and accept them as part of the deal.

This goes double for travelling unplanned. To quote Mark Corrigan (while talking to his would-be rogue girlfriend) ‘There’s a reason the places no one goes aren’t in the guidebooks, because they are overpriced and have poor service.’ Simply, you can’t expect to discover a hidden gem every day. If you don’t learn the location of a cool local bar, eatery or activity that you must recommend, you might end up learning a lesson on what not to do. Be comfortable with that if you want to go rogue.

I have a whole separate blog on this concept which deals with an idea I learnt in therapy about how we can’t control our surroundings, only our reactions. I call this the two ways to think about luck while travelling and essentially it boils down to not being deterred by disappointment but using it as a learning experience that fuels the next of many choices you will make while travelling with a spontaneous spirit.

Six: Charge Your Bloody Phone

“Oh come on Benny, that’s not very rogue!” Listen strawman, how effen hard is it to plug your phone in to charge on your bedside table of an evening? While travelling, I rely on my phone so much. I need it to point me in the right direction when I’m lost. I need it for ordering Ubers when I’ve had a ripping night out. I need it for messaging my folks when I feel homesick. I cannot do any of those things when my phone has run out of battery!

Going rogue doesn’t mean going mental. The reality is, we need our phones these days and I’m not copping the blame for you reading this, going rogue and ending up at a Brazilian rainforest airport on 1% wondering where your pilot is. Just charge your phone or become a monk, who for the record, I’m pretty sure have phones these days, well charged from the ample time they spent meditating.

Seven: Look To The ‘Next Thing’

Next time I’m in London I will definitely return to Ponchokhana White Chapel.

On my rogue day in London, I wanted to end the night with a curry in the town’s iconic curry precinct, Brick Lane. However, I hadn’t yet devised point one on this list and didn’t realise how touristy an area that is so well known for curry (London’s culinary favourite) had become. I don’t plan this stuff remember. So I was looking at these restaurants and none of them really looked that good. Soon we had walked off Brick Lane and I was looking at less touristy restaurants with signs in multiple languages instead of just English. As I had a sticky beak, Katie told me just to pick one for goodness sake. “Brick Lane isn’t rogue Benny,” my girlfriend the planner reminded me. “This area is the next thing.” The dinner was an absolute treat and the staff treated us so well. I have zero regrets of that night and have no doubt I enjoyed that dinner more than I could have at tourist-targeted spot on Brick Lane. We ate authentic Bangladeshi curry amongst locals and it was a heavenly end to my winning day.

As a travel writer, we always look for the next thing. In the ‘90s Thailand was the place for an exotic beach holiday, then it was Greece, Croatia and now it looks like it might be Montenegro although the opportunity is there for it to be anywhere at this point. But I digress, it’s not just travel writers that should look for the next thing but anyone who wants to travel rogue. The above tips are all great way to discover the next thing and yet it is worth being a tip itself as it’s a guiding principle that creates the spirit adventure all rogue travellers should hold onto like a spiritual passport.

Eight: Let Pop Culture Be Your Travel Guide

Image not technically rogue as it was on Katie’s planned day in London (I’d have NEVER been Watson otherwise) but it matches the theme.

Being a travel writer and not admitting you like Anthony Bourdain is like being a pub carpark freestyle rapper who say they don’t like Eminem. Nobody believes you and that’s because you’re lying. What I liked about Anthony Bourdain is how much pop culture influenced the sort of travel experiences he wanted to have. In his first series, A Cook’s Tour, he is in Egypt desperately trying to live out a desert fantasy he has of eating a whole goat roasted over the fires. The show then follows the slog he has trying to organise it, even with a production crew because it turns out that’s not a thing they really do there. Still, he saw it on TV as a kid so he was determined to make it happen.

Instead of simply reading a travel guide of your destination, check out a few films, books or even some music created and inspired by your destination. This can be done beforehand or more excitingly (and spontaneously) done while you’re in the midst of your journey. Don’t be afraid to ask for some Japanese cuisine you saw in an anime or live out some Indiana Jones fantasy in the rainforest with a borrowed machete. If at any point, a local tells you your ideas are outdated or an untrue stereotype (see tip five re disappointment) you’ve learnt something about your destination that the tourists might have missed out on.

So often while travelling on a schedule, we end up seeing the destination as we already had through media. If we seek out to explore the destination from a perspective of guidebook or Wikipedia truth, we may reinforce some stereotypes we believed before we left home. Yes, it can be embarrassing to learn you’re an ignorant foreigner by asking locals if this is a real Italian restaurant that inspired a scene from The Godfather but a) you won’t be the first or last and b) you are either going to confirm or deny the truth of a certain aspect of your destination you’d only ever absorbed on a screen or page before.

Literature or media do not make for a honest guide but the expectations they set up for you can lead you down an unforgettable path towards understanding.

Nine: Go Rogue In Moderation

Moderation is important. I like this Berlin kebab, but I couldn’t have it for every meal!

I certainly couldn’t live rogue full time. As much as it murders part of my soul to admit it, so much travel really isn’t possible without some planning. Yes, you can just jump in the car and go without doing any thinking and to you I say have fun with your frozen schnitty at the Gurligrah Diggers Club.

Indeed, the whole idea of Planned vs Rogue was to discover if one method of travel is superior and from what I’ve learnt so far, you need a balance of both. For us to make Planned vs Rogue, we had to do a little bit of planning. While doing a big trip we always try to be two weeks ahead. That means at any time we know what city we’ll be in and where we’re staying in 14 days time. For some, just a week works but for our production we found two was best. Plus, it means we spent less time thinking about it. The shorter the window, the more you have to think about it and the less time you can spend being rogue on a daily basis.

I’m not saying ‘don’t make being rogue your whole thing’, that would be intensely hypocritical. What I have learnt from one season of this show is that I personally find it impractical to be completely unplanned. The ratio is different for everyone but for me I’d say it’s a 70/30 split from being rogue and planned. That 30% is book flights, accommodation, dishes I want to eat and a pic I suspect Instagram might enjoy. It’s the 70% that gets me excited because I’m never really sure what it’s going to be when I leave my accommodation.

Ten: Journal

Me writing in Paris, not yet aware of the irony I’m taking this pic for social media.

Often these days, social media is the place where we keep a record of our travels. Realistically, there’s not much wrong with that and I’ll readily admit that without social media I literally don’t have the career I have today. Where social media as the only place to remember our travels falters is that often we are sharing our highlight reel, the things that look the best and will get the interactions of social acceptance that our brains semi-reluctantly crave. I try to be a creator who shows everything honestly, warts and all but obviously not all my misadventures end up being shared with you. Not all of them are that interesting and we try to keep episodes to 20 minutes. For these reasons, I recommend keeping a travel journal as a record of the deeply personal experiences of your rogue travels that you might not want to share with everyone.

More than just a way to keep a record of your travels for the future, journaling is a way to vent and reflect in the immediate. It is a great way to pass time over a train journey or wind down at the end of the day. Returning to tip five concerning disappointment, journaling can be a therapeutic way to turn our misadventures into lessons and eventually, into funny stories. Previously, I’ve written about how honest blogging (for you it could be journaling or even vlogging) can make you more daring and willing to try things while travelling. I call this The Best Chip Theory; if you purchase the purported the city’s best chips and they in your opinion were falsely advertised as such, you now have an opportunity (bordering on obligation) to find the real best chips in the city, the next part of your rogue adventure. The record you keep of that could be interesting enough to share with your friends, the mad people who follow you or simply your future self and no one else.

Additionally, as a creative person, a journal is a place to really take risks. I don’t have to share what I’m writing therefore don’t have to try as hard, don’t have to feel insecure about sharing and don’t have to write for anyone but me, all pieces of advice I should have taken regarding my poetry in Paris.

Yes, you can journal on a planned trip but think of it this way, if you do too much planning you already have your diary entries written before you’ve left home.

11: Forget This Entire List

My daily planner ended up being useless and went in the bin.

What! An 11th point in this ten point list!? “Benny! You bastard!” Haha! I warned you I was rogue and you heeded me not! Perhaps I am a little bit of that ‘dishonest or unprincipled person’ Oxford Dictionary was banging on about.

You really want to go rogue? Print out this list and burn it. Or save the paper and just forget about it. Write your own rules. Then forget those too. Do what challenges you. Do what feels right. Travelling rogue does not come naturally to everyone but it’s worth trying it due to the myriad of benefits, the surface of which I have merely scratched without drawing blood. It’s a skill that you only get better at and I wouldn’t encourage you to do it at anything other than your own pace. By the same notion, don’t be afraid to flip me off and dive right in the deep end. Fuck this list. It is long and wanky. Forge your own path as only you can.

PS - When You Find A Great Place To Drink, Stay There

Cafe Wanderer in Nuremberg. Stopped in for a drink and spent the whole beautiful summer night there.

I’ll make this quick because this list has gone on too long and I’m now breaking the rule breaking joke the above point summed up well in addition to providing a natural conclusion but I strongly believe this is a point you cannot do without (plus I only remembered it after I finished writing this article). If you discover a great place to have a beer and you’re not sure whether to have another drink or go somewhere else, have that other drink. When you find a winning venue, stay on it. Do not flip the coin again, you’ve already got your desired outcome. Any place you are enjoying whether it be a bar, cafe, restaurant or outdoor bloody picnic area is worth of more than one quick drink. When you’ve got a winner, stay on it!