You should travel without a guidebook because
- guidebooks are expensive
- guidebooks are heavy
- guidebooks cover only a fraction of your target destnation
- guidebooks are outdated
Guidebooks like the popular backpacker bibles Lonely Planet or Rough Guide cost a lot. Those printed dinosaurs are obsolete in todays fast paced world. Many places change far faster than it is possible to update a book and print a new edition of it. Alternatives are online resources which are often community-built like VirtualTourist or the Lonely Planet Thorntree forums. There are a lot of other quality and free specialized websites like PassPlanet, TravelHappy or TalesOfAsia.
Get a Map!
One of the oldest tools for travel is still one of the bests but often overseen nowadays. Get a good map. Not this tiny guidebook maps which show the backpacker trails but a good quality paper map. As a reader of this blog I assume you are interested in a vagabonding lifestyle rather than getting to all the tourist spots in as little time as possible. With a map you can go to any place and make you own picture, you will get information about good spots on the way.
“Scan” your Guidebook
If you have a vague idea where you want to go, simple check your favorite guidebook in a library or traveler cafe and use your digital camera to “scan” the important pages. You can access them anywhere with your digital camera display. Carrying the information like this does not add additional weight to your baggage and is free. You can also mix together information from as many guidebooks as you want without having to buy them let alone carry all of them.
Google Book Search is another option if you are desperate for some guidebook information but can not get the book. The service allows you to read a lot of books online for free (including most Lonely Planet titles). It does not disclose the entire book though. If you do some intelligent searches however (you need to know place names before), you can often get the information you need. Give it a try!
Google Earth is a great tool to virtually explore your target region. It allows you to already get a feeling for the place and the environment there. If you enable the Google Earth Community Layers you will get a lot of additional information like geocoded photos of the region, interesting landmarks, sights and even youtube videos related to the area.
Couchsurfing and Hospitality Club are networks for making connections between travelers and the local communities they visit. This means you can sleep on a “couch” in your destination place for free in exchange to doing the same some day or contribute in other ways. The best thing is not the free bed though, but the people you meet. It is one of the best and easiest ways to immerse into a new place as mosts host will be happy to help you with all information you need about the place. So even if you do not want to get hosted in terms of sleeping at your hosts place you can just meetup to for a coffee or a drink and chat for a while.