REUTERS

CLAIM HAPPY DISCOVERIES: Backpacking can be lots of fun and travelling without a guide book allows for more spontaneity.

I moved house the other week. And I learnt that my once-passionate love affair with travel guides is well and truly over.

Due to an undiagnosed personality disorder I have always found it hard to chuck stuff away, especially books. But, with the thought of lugging various volumes up and down stairs – and with the plan of preventing serious back injury (or, at least, a hernia) – I decided that some serious culling was in order.

It was time to be brutally honest: I rarely use guidebooks anymore.

The last one I bought, about five years ago, was called The Guardian’s Guide to Bullfighting, or Lonely Planet’s Bhutan on a Shoestring. Or something like that. To be honest, I can’t remember. Whatever the title, the time had come to ditch the sentimental attachments and memories associated with each guide – and kiss goodbye to their manzanilla- and cappuccino-stained pages.

Once the first guidebook was consigned to the past, the floodgates opened, and they all followed.

Soon enough, these once cherished life-savers were forming a towering pile in the middle of my living room. One mound of old guides was destined for the recycling bin, and newer ones, for the charity shops. It was initially painful, but ultimately a liberating experience.

I don’t rightly know what sparked the change of heart. All I know is that, about three years ago, I started to travel without guides. As a result my luggage was lighter, my head clearer. I didn’t stop using guides because I know it all. Quite the reverse – if anything, I’m pretty sure I now know less than when I started travelling in my early 20s.

Somewhere along the line, my attitude changed. Nowadays I prefer to wing it, leave it to chance and stumble upon places rather than pretend to have it all worked out. Travelling without a guidebook can be liberating. Any mistakes are your own. Likewise you can claim any happy discoveries.

In retrospect, all the fun times I’ve had abroad were never listed in guidebooks. Surely half the fun of travel is encountering the cranky Fawlty Towers-like B&B that is not listed anywhere.

Sure, I understand that if you are travelling on business, or just in a hurry, the Hotel from Hell can be a royal pain. But if you have time on your hands, why not enjoy the ride? Increasingly, I have enjoyed it when things have gone wrong, or not gone to plan.

Obviously, I don’t mean terrible stuff like plane crashes or tsunamis, but incompetent waiters, inedible meals and “quirky” hotel staff who probably shouldn’t be employed. My view of travelling now is: “Stay foolish, make mistakes, get ripped off”.

Over the years I’ve utilised many different guidebooks, and have even helped compile a few. In my experience, the best are truly admirable; honest and thoroughly researched, with superb historical sections.But the worst are thinly disguised tourist brochures.

Now, information that you used to look for in guidebooks is available within just a few clicks. But that won’t replace the spontaneity and flexibility that travelling without a guide allows – be it in book form or on your phone.

Now, where did I put my passport? I hope I didn’t throw that away in the move. – Daily Mail

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