We are only part way through planning our accommodations — we’ve got a gap in Brazil, but otherwise have everything lined up for our first two months. (The Brazil bit is caused by a lack of itinerary in that point. Hoping to have that solved soon!) Oh, and our last 4 nights are figured out, too. (Guest rooms at Grandma Susan’s condo building.)

Criteria:

Our needs are pretty basic:

• Safe neighbourhood
• well reviewed by other independent travellers
• good access to the transportation we need for our expected activities
• a door that locks with a bolt, or storage lockers (I suspect we’ll be travelling with padlocks!)

Our preferences aren’t over the top, but might be hard to get in some places:

• one room with sleeping arrangements for all of us
• WiFi (which we are told Australians pronounce as “Wiffy” )

Our luxury wish list varies:

• air-conditioning (though that’s a “must have” for our time in India -it will be hot! in June, like 40C, Egypt-in-August hot!)
• pets (this is the girls’ wish — luckily the apartment we’re renting in Brooklyn actually *does* come with a cat who C&J will feed twice a day)
• a swimming pool

Sources:

My usual way to research accommodations wasn’t going to work – I usually take out the hardcopy travel guides published in the last 3 years or so from our library, I plop down on the couch and make lists of possible places to sleep, eat and see. Then I check those top choices online. Clearly that wasn’t going to work for the whole world – i’d be buried in books on the couch, not to mention the late fees because it was taking me ages!!

So, I started and continue to do the following:

•  look at Hostelling International since they are well known for their low-cost, clean and safe accommodations.
• do general searches on Kayak and other compilation searches.( Those methods are great for identifying individual hotels, and checking out reviews, photos, etc.)
• check out the destination sections of Fodors and Frommers and Budget Travel.
• run a general Google search for “budget hotel” on that particular location
• locate, if possible, the hostel/hotel’s actual site (I usually book directly once we’ve made a choice. My first HI hostel booking was through the Hostelling International - I didn’t realise until later that I could have done it directly (doh). That’s probably because the HI rated hostels in US and Canada can generally only *be* booked through the HI site. I was able to buy our HI membership with the reservation, though, so that’s one more thing off the do to list!)
• take a look at the reviews — mostly on Trip Advisor,  and AirBNB for the apartments. (Of course we take all comments with a grain of salt! We don’t rely on individual details but an overall sense of the place. A page of consistently bad reviews moves me along quickly. A page with one or two bad comments might just have me investigate more)

I have rediscovered the Fodors Forums through this process. I’d forgotten what wonderful gems can be found there! Not just for hotels, but all sorts of things — sightseeing tips, ideas for general itinerary planning, what restaurants are worth splurging on, etc.

India and Nepal are next – I think I have a line on our 1-2 nights in Agra but that’s about it. Still very much up in the air. One of the big challenges for India is a room for 4. We may have to get 2 rooms, which isn’t ideal since C&J like to sleep together in one bed while we sleep in the other. For safety reasons, we wouldn’t do that if the beds were in different rooms. So, we’ll have to figure something out.

I can’t really start on accommodations for SE Asia since we only know our arrival date for Bangkok and our departure date for Singapore. We need to finish up our planning for Australia, too.  Julian has cousins in Sydney,  and we both have friends or acquaintances in Melbourne. I haven’t looked at any itineraries for New Zealand (north island only, I think, since we have just a week and our flights are in/out Auckland.) Not sure how much we’ll get finished (accommodations-wise) before we leave. I don’t want to spend too much time while we’re on the road looking up the next destination’s hotel options.

When I started writing this post, I thought I’d put up links to the places we’ve booked already. But I think it’ll be more fun, and make more sense,  to add them on the road.