Travel tips for trips by airplane or train (Packing, Jetlag, Time Zone Changes)

1. For airplane flights that are longer than 2-3 hours, I’d always recommend you to bring along at least an inflatable neck pillow, especially if you travel economy, where you normally don’t have so many options to change your sitting position. The monotonous sound of the engine always makes me sleepy after some time, so having my pillow around my neck, I can always take a little nap and arrive refreshed. If you travel more frequently, investing in a well-fitting sleeping mask and bringing along comfortable, warm socks is also recommendable.
   
   
2. Especially for longer flights, I always recommend having a small tin of some rich cream (like Nivea) in your hand luggage. Since the dry air on board lets your skin dry out and makes your nose stuffy, a bit of that cream can bring noticeable relief.
   
   
3. A very important utensil for travelling is earplugs. There’s nothing worse than coming somewhere after an exhausting trip and then not being able to sleep because of thin walls or the noise of an air-conditioner, or traffic noise or whatever it may be. There are great earplugs made from silicone which don’t dry up your ears even if you wear them daily for a longer period.
   
   
4. When I travel I always have a book ready, so there is no lost time even if there is a delay. We all have a lot of things we always wanted to read and travelling seems like the perfect place to do it, because delays and waiting times seem to be inevitable.
   
   
5. For women, if you don’t want to be interrupted, bringing along an MP3 player is always a good method, once you have your earplugs in, you signal to the people around you, “I’m busy and I am not available for a talk”. If you want more contact, taking the earplugs out is the first helpful step.
   
   
6. For intercontinental flights which include time zone changes, I would always recommend to try to sleep as much as possible on the flight. As enticing as it may seem to watch the entire board program, in my eyes, it is not worth a totally sleepy first day on my destination. If you sneak into first and business class, you will notice that most of the frequent travellers are sleeping or at least resting after the first meal has been served. They know why. As soon as the airplane starts, I change my watch to the new time and I try to get into the feeling of the new time zone as much as possible. Even if I cannot sleep, I force myself to rest as much as possible, since with earplugs and a sleeping mask, you nod off from time to time anyway and this is important recharging of your batteries for the days to come.
   
   
7. In the first days after a time zone change, I’m always a bit careful with caffeine intake, since sleeping at unusual times is hard enough without your body running amok due to artificial excitement. On the plane, I normally don’t drink coffee, since in my case, I know that the main effect from the coffee comes a few hours later, when I’d then try to go to sleep. This applies especially for trips in eastern direction, when your day gets shorter and you have to try to sleep even though you’re not really tired.
   
   
8. With time zone changes, I recommend adjusting the clock immediately after boarding the plane and no checking back how late it would be at home. You want to trick your body in the new time zone as smoothly as possible and it helps when it doesn’t get confused by different signals.
   
   
9. When you fly intercontinental, it is advisable to keep the program moderate for the first two or three days (depending on how sensible you are to this change). Especially on the first and second day, when your inner watch is practically totally out of whack, there will always be times when you feel lightheaded and foggy, and this is fatal if you have a 6 hour car drive ahead of you.
   
   Should you plan to travel by RV, most RV companies don’t let you drive at your arrival day, they know why! Take is slow and give your body a light program with lots of daylight and vitamins. I personally always prefer smoothies made from 100% fruit (without added sugar) on my first day, I have the impression that they do my body good and give me the fast energy needed for the trip.
   
   
10. A very crucial readjustment aid is daylight. Daylight signals your body that it has to maintain its daytime programming, so when you arrive at your new destination and you have the day ahead of you, instead of staying inside and zapping through the TV channels, I cannot recommend enough to go out into the air and get as much fresh air and daylight as you can.
    
    
11. Resist the temptation to take a nap. Even if your body feels tired and you think, it is only for 30 minutes and it will do me good, most of the time there is no waking up from this nap, once your sleep hormones have kicked in. Your body is programmed on another time and if you let this program take over, it takes considerably longer to readjust to the new time zone, because at night you will be wide awake and not find into your sleep pattern. On the first day, exhaustion from the trip helps you over this disruption, if you try to just follow your body’s hunches, it will take you many days with disrupted sleeping patterns. Try to get adjusted at the new time as quickly as possible, a little bit of self-discipline pays off hugely on the days that follow.
    
    
12. This also means, you have to follow different procedures dependent if you fly to the East (which means you loose a few hours of your day, so you will have more problems going to sleep at night) or if you fly to the West (which means you gain a few hours and you will be really tired in the late afternoon/early evening).  Most people have less problems with going West than with going East, since it is easier to stay awake a bit longer in a new and exiting environment, but harder to fall asleep when you’re not really tired.
    
    
13. So for travels to the East, the advice would be, try to get into the new time zone, don’t go to sleep in the afternoon, but go to sleep in the early evening while you still feel exhausted and tired from your trip. There is a certain tipping point, when the exhaustion gets replaced with a “new wind”, which in my case kicks in around 9:30 p.m. when I come back from the US, and if I don’t go to sleep before that time, I will lay awake practically all night, and then the next days are really hard. If I manage to go to sleep around 7:30-8:00 p.m., my exhaustion from the trip takes me over this second wind and I can sleep through for sometimes up to 12 hours, which is the best, since then I’m readjusted in two to three days.
    
    
14. For travels to the East, it is especially recommendable to reduce your caffeine intake, since everything that holds you awake longer than necessary is detrimental. Drinking enough water is always important, even though there are people who say they don’t drink too much before they go on the plane, so they don’t have to frequent the bathrooms too often.
    
    
15. To avoid (or better said, mitigate) Jet Lag, I had good experiences with No-Jet-lag, homeopathic pills that you take during the flight. Taking one pill per hour (as long as you’re awake) seems to really reduce the symptoms and the readjustment time needed after the time zone change. It’s not really cheap, but in my eyes, it is worth the money, since suffering for days is not the best side effect from travelling.
    
    
16. When the airplane lands, you can normally take your time, there is no hurry to get to the baggage claim areas, since it always takes quite some time for the luggage to arrive at the band.
    
    
17. If you fly to Canada or the US, be careful with all fresh food in your luggage, and check the regulations before you start. I was picked by a food detecting dog one day for having an apple in my trolley and it really can confuse you mightily (in our case, we forgot one suitcase over the whole confusion, which we only noticed hours later in our hotel room. Luckily enough it still was there when we came back to the airport, but it nearly cost us a day and two expensive taxi trips!).
    
    
18. If you’re planning a trip with changing hotels each day, I’d still recommend to book a hotel room for the first night at the new destination. You want to make sure that you have a place to stay when you arrive and there’s hardly something more aggravating than being tired and exhausted and having to travel from hotel to hotel since something is going on in town and everybody is booked out.
    
    

For the moment, this sums up my tips for airplane travels, I will new hubs with tips for travelling in general to my hubpage, so stay tuned.

As always, comments are highly appreciated, if you have some tips I forgot, I’d be grateful if you’d add them as a comment. Many thanks!