Gap Year Advice Items

Gap year experts to offer advice at webinar event next month

If you’re worried about your year abroad then tune in to a special ‘webinar’ next month, where a host of student travel experts will be offering their advice in a series of one-on-one interviews.

Dos and Don’ts when buying souvenirs abroad

It’s important to keep a few things in mind when buying souvenirs and know what is legal to bring back home and what is not. Here a few dos and don’ts to follow:

Hostel survivors guide

Hostels provide backpackers with inexpensive readily available accommodation while travelling abroad. They can sometimes be great sources of information and a great place to meet other travellers too. However, hostels can also be loud, dirty and uncomfortable and there are certain unwritten rules about sleeping staying in them. So follow our top tips to surviving staying in hostels.

What not to wear around the world

When travelling, whether volunteering on your gap year, career break or simply backpacking, it’s important to be aware of local laws and customs and adhere to them. This is especially true when it comes to clothing. Wearing the wrong type of clothing could attract unwanted attention, offend locals and even forbid you from entering certain places. So, here are our top tips on what not to wear around the world.

Advice for women travelling alone

Sometimes during your gap year, backpacking travels or career breaks, you may find yourself travelling alone. Whether this is through circumstances beyond your control, or simply because you want to, you will find great rewards in travelling solo. However, solo women travellers who need to take extra care, so follow our advice for some top tips on staying safe.

A guide to gap year travel insurance

Travel insurance is one of the most important things you need to remember when planning for your gap year. Travelling is unpredictable, especially if you are going to be away for a long period of time. Although you have to be sensible when travelling you also don’t want to be worrying all the time about things getting stolen, activities you can and can’t do and costs of potential accidents or cancellations, so you need to make sure you’ve got the right insurance policy.

Travel health guide

It is obviously very important to try and stay healthy on your gap year, so follow our top tips for healthy travels. Most of these are specifically applicable to developing countries, although it won’t hurt to follow some of this advice for other places too.

Eating etiquette around the world

Last week on mapthegap.co.uk we gave you a few words of advice on body language etiquette when travelling. This week, we are going to give you some advice on something that we think is equally important - table manners.

Interview with a backpacker

Each week mapthegap.co.uk will be talking to someone who has taken a gap year to get the low down on what they did, how they did it and to get their tips and advice for getting the most out of your gap year. This week we talk to one of our travel writers, Esme Fox to find out what she got up to on her gap year.