Is this the book that started it all for me I wonder? Searching Amazon to see if there was a new Rough Guide to Germany out, I came across this – The Rough Guide to the First Time Around the World.

Ooooh! An actual Rough Guide on actual going Round the World! It was in my basket before you could say Thomas Cook.

I had a sneaky reason for choosing this amongst the other planning books I could so easily have tipped into my basket with a click of the mouse – this is a Rough Guide, and so therefore everything in it must be true 🙂 in other words, it was the way to Nigel’s travelling heart.

The book is written in the usual RG style, and therefore if you are as used to that as we are, it’s easy to both read and navigate.

It contains everything useful you need to know, and some ideas (for people who haven’t a clue) on itineraries, as well as rainfall and sunshine charts, and a great section on each continent showing overland routes on a map coupled with ‘when to go’, vaccinations, visas, and getting there information which is all useful to have in one book (and actually I have already used the Europe section for some holiday planning that has nothing to do with RTW travel or The Big Trip).

The downsides of this book are really only that it is so out of date already. This 2nd edition was published in March 2006 – so presumably much of the research was done in 2005. Four years is a long time in travel and technology terms. Constant references to camera film (particularly important to keep posting it back home apparently, and take care not to trust shady photo shops with developing your precious films…) begin to irk after a while. It could seriously do with an update.

The plus side is that it told the reader not to rely too heavily on guidebooks (EVEN Rough Guides), and encouraged travellers to go with the flow and be less tied to ‘the Guidebook says…’ which I need to get Nige to read and digest ASAP.

So, yes worth it, and yes useful and interesting. It has worth on any planning scale, not just RTW, and I’m sure will feature heavily in Big Trip planning – and then be left at home – because it told me to!