Planning an adventure of a lifetime takes time and research. What should I bring? What do I want to see and experience? How do I get a tourist visa? How do I stay on budget? With each country booked, brand new questions arise with the next destination; not all of which can be answered in a simple Google search. Travelers post all sorts of inquiries on various websites, and tools such as TripAdvisor can be extremely helpful to a certain extent. However, the number one most useful thing I've done in all of these weeks and weeks of planning was to reach out to someone who's been there.