So, I think this page should be about how to make article itineraries -- not a list of those itineraries. --(WT-en) Evan 12:10, 19 Jan 2004 (EST)

Ah OK. But where do we list these itineraries? (WT-en) Yann 12:13, 19 Jan 2004 (EST)

That's something I think we need to decide on this page! I can see a couple of ways to do linking to itineraries. First, I don't think we need one giant Project:list of itineraries. If itineraries are going to be useful, we're going to have way too many to fit on a single page.

For itineraries that are contained somewhere, like One month in Southeast Asia, we should probably have links in the Get Around section of destination guide.

For itineraries that are linked from point-to-point, like New York to Los Angeles in two weeks, we could link in the Get Out section of New York, and the Get In section of Los Angeles.

There's obviously some fine-tuning to do here, though. --(WT-en) Evan 17:19, 21 Jan 2004 (EST)

I agree that they should be in the appropriate location, but I also think it would be really nice to have a central location for all the itineraries. I think it would be nice to be able to browse through the itineraries, as these are often interesting reading, and give ideas for travel.

I know that in the long run this page would start to get large. I would suggest that when that happens we start breaking it up by geography and subject. In the long run we may end up with articles as specific as Travel Itineraries/British Columbia Road Trips, but I think that is better than having to drill down in the geography heirarchy to Hope (British Columbia) to find out there is an interesting highway to drive between Hope and Lytton. -- (WT-en) Webgeer 13:00, Jul 27, 2004 (EDT)

I have tried to begin such a list. Please look if that is what you wanted. --(WT-en) EBB 13:18, 27 Jul 2004 (EDT)

That is pretty much what I was thinking. However shouldn't it be a regular article rather than a WikiTravel: article (which I thought were for administrative things). Also I think there should be some mention of that page in other locations so that people know to add their itineraries to that page (I'm going to put more discussion on this in the Project:Other ways of seeing travel) -- (WT-en) Webgeer 14:20, Jul 27, 2004 (EDT)

I had written it as List of itineraries but it was almost immediately moved into the "Wikivoyage:" namespace. I don't know what is the best solution. If you do not agree with Evan's decision to move, I will support you *g*. On the other hand such an category feature as in the Wikipedia would make it easier because one would only have to edit one article (write the itinerary and put a category line into it) than writing the itinerary and adding the article manually to the list. Unfortunately I'm not so experienced with the features here in the Wikivoyage therefore I couldn't do it (honestly said, I wasn't thinking about it when writing the list). --(WT-en) EBB 14:40, 27 Jul 2004 (EDT)

P.S. I am grown up enough to criticize Evan on my own if it seems necessary to me but in this case I think both solutions are acceptable. --(WT-en) EBB 14:44, 27 Jul 2004 (EDT)

I moved the article to the Wikivoyage: namespace because the itineraries list is mainly a reference for contributors. Like phrasebooks, itineraries should really be linked to from destination guides, not put in a separate site hierarchy. --(WT-en) Evan 20:13, 27 Jul 2004 (EDT)

I think there should be multiple ways of getting to an article. I agree they should be linked to in the destination guides, but I don't think that precludes a separate hierarchy for those who just want to see itineraries. However, I would suggest a different type of hierarchy (not geographic). I have refined my proposal for a Travel Planning hierarchy. Please see the suggestion at: Project:Other ways of seeing travel I would like to get some consensus from Wikivoyagers whether this is a good idea and should be initiated or whether this is a bad idea and should be abandoned or significantly changed. I will probably add a note in the Travellers' Pub soon to try and solicit more opinions on the concept. -- (WT-en) Webgeer 23:41, Jul 27, 2004 (EDT)

I agree there should be more than one way to reach an article. I would like to write about an itinerary in middle Sweden. Obviously, I will add a link to the page with a list of itineraries. I would also like to link to this itinerary from other pages: the main article on Sweden, regional pages on Sweden and perhaps even on the pages about major cities allong the itinerary. I have looked at some other itineraries and what pages link to them, and I have the impression that there is no consensus on how to link to itineraries. Itineraries might fit under 'Getting arround' or under 'Do', but not quite. Maybe an item 'Itineraries' should be added in the template for articles? I have tried to find guidelines about linking to itineraries in the FAQ and Help areas, but didn't find any. -- (WT-en) Hdk 14:21, 21 Jul 2005 (EDT)

Pasted from Talk:Princess Highway:

OK... At some point we probably need to hammer out how all these Australian road articles reflect on Project:What is an article?. I get a little mixed up sometimes about it... --(WT-en) Evan 12:44, 21 Jan 2004 (EST)

I understand what you mean -- that's why I said it probably deserved its own article. However, in the cases of the Gunbarrel Highway, the Oodnadatta Track and other outback tracks, I'm convinced they deserve their own articles. Quite a few people go to Australia to drive along them (as I did). They're really destinations in their own right. (WT-en) DhDh 13:44, 21 Jan 2004 (EST)

I agree with both Evan's concern and Dhum Dhum's comment about outback driving. Is there a way we can add to Project:What is an article? so that the Gunbarrel Highway and Silk Road are OK as itiniraries/destinations but that will prevent having Highway 280 or Jersey Turnpike? I think we need to clarify what "deserve" means (cause it's pretty? "important"? "popular"? or has something truely destination-y about it?)(WT-en) Majnoona 17:05, 21 Jan 2004 (EST)

I started working on Project:Itineraries. There's something of a difference between formal routes, like particular named roads (Route 66, Gunbarrel Highway) or trails (Appalachian Trail, Pacific Crest Trail, Annapurna Circuit), and informal routes like One month in Southeast Asia or Istanbul to Delhi over land). But I think the idea is the same. We have dots (OK, smudges) on our maps that are destinations -- countries, regions, cities, districts, etc. And we have lines that go between those dots -- sometimes they're traditional or established, sometimes they're just "suggested" by Wikivoyagers. --(WT-en) Evan 17:12, 21 Jan 2004 (EST)

I think Maj means where do we draw the line between formal routes like Route 66 (of which we definitely want an article) and Jersey Turnpike (of which I think we don't want article). Importance and popularity have definitely something to do with it, but that's probably not all. It will probably remain a quite hazy border but maybe we can devise a number of questions to decide if a given route deserves an article here. (WT-en) DhDh 17:27, 21 Jan 2004 (EST)

Possible questions:

• Can the route be thought of as a destination in its own right, i.e. do people go there in order to travel along it?
• Does it connect important tourist places and is it regularly used by travellers as a means of travelling between them?
• other...

If the answer to any of these is yes -> go ahead and create the article. (WT-en) DhDh 17:38, 21 Jan 2004 (EST)

I think it's pretty hard to say whether a highway or road is guide-worthy (is that a word? B-). I think if we link routes with itineraries pretty carefully, articles like Jersey Turnpike would come out pretty lame. I'd say that if someone went to the trouble to describe an itinerary for the 'pike, well, damn, that's probably worth having an article about. Sucky itineraries and crap places to visit still seem worth having in the guide. Chacun a ses propres goûts. --(WT-en) Evan 19:05, 21 Jan 2004 (EST)

I am new to this wiki, so set me straight if this topic has been addressed. Is there a mechanism to discover or record thematic itineraries? People like to follow their hobbies or interests while traveling. For example, a Civil War buff might want to locate and visit relevant sites while traveling in the southeastern USA.

--(WT-en) Jwalling 16:05, 22 Dec 2005 (EST)

There's an open question right now about whether itinerary articles should cover overlapping areas or routes. For example, if the itinerary for going from point A to point E goes through points B, C, and D, is it OK to have a different itinerary for going from point B to point D?

I think the guidelines in this article seem to show that they definitely should overlap -- that we should have itineraries for different time periods, for different routes between the same two points. I think that itineraries are by nature pretty sparse -- they should really be leaning on the destination guides to provide the bulk of information on the region or route. So the actual duplication of text and images is going to be manageable.

I think very much that we could use New York to Pittsburgh in one day, New York to Chicago in two days, New York to Denver in three days, New York to Las Vegas in four days and New York to Los Angeles in five days, even though the routes overlap. New York to Dallas, New York to Phoenix, and New York to Memphis would overlap these itineraries in some places, and not overlap in other places. I think having an interweaving web of itineraries is a boon, not a downside.

The reductio ad absurdum is that if we keep discarding short routes in favor of longer ones, all we'll have left is Lapland to Capetown, Nome to Tierra del Fuego, Perth to Sydney and Lisbon to Vladivostok. I just don't think that's what someone going from Paris to Marseilles really needs.

Let's open up itineraries to some more experimentation, rather than prematurely shutting them down in the name of efficiency. --(WT-en) Evan 19:56, 11 May 2006 (EDT)

I do not think that completely redundant itineraries should exist. Itineraries should be adaptable so that a LA-to-SLC itinerary will be useful to someone starting in Vegas. But if there is something -- anything -- distinctive or different about the shorter route then yes, we should keep it.

For a subroute itinerary, I would just like to see some indication that there is something that distinguishes the route. The alternative is the opposite ad nauseum -- we not only have Route 66, but we have subsection Albuquerque to Flagstaff and subsubsection Gallup to Winslow.

Now our 9-day Route 66 goes from Santa Monica to Flagstaff in two days -- including visiting the Grand Canyon. Someone who is only going as far as the Grand Canyon might have a lot more time available for visiting stuff, so a "Santa Monica to the Grand Canyon" itinerary could be sprinkled with more sights too see, and could therefore exist.

The question in my mind is "don't shorter routes always have more stuff sprinkled in?" Maybe we should allow all nontrivial subsections. To me if it's nontrivial, the author ought to be able to briefly explain why the subsection is useful. -- (WT-en) Colin 20:30, 11 May 2006 (EDT)

Yeah, I think there's some careful teasing out to be done here. Like, is White Plains to Los Angeles really necessary? New York to Pasadena? Probably not. What about Washington DC to Los Angeles? ...maybe. How far along the segment really makes sense? Do we need a Spokane to Tuscaloosa itinerary? --(WT-en) Evan 20:44, 11 May 2006 (EDT)

Tilting toward either extreme would be detrimental to the project. At the moment, the list of itineraries is a little sparse, but it could easily be overwhelmed by a flurry of New York-to-anywhere routes. However, I think the more pressing need is to expand the offerings of itineraries. It probably wouldn't hurt to present routes that emphasize the variety of travel options that we stress in the destination guides: car, plane, rail, boat. (WT-en) SHC 21:31, 11 May 2006 (EDT)

Here's another live data point to consider:

• Istanbul to New Delhi over land (Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India)
• Six months overland from Istanbul to Indonesia
• Europe to South Asia over land

It's obvious that this is redundant and non-optimal. It's less obvious what the 'correct' split would be. I'd be tempted to suggest that we make one 'superitinerary' called Istanbul to Indonesia, which links to segments called (say) Istanbul to New Delhi, New Delhi to Bangkok, Bangkok to Singapore. So there'd be a kinda-split between 'regional itineraries' and 'section itineraries', where the region route consists of multiple sections. (WT-en) Jpatokal 22:35, 11 May 2006 (EDT)

I think it is crazy to try to come up with a policy for this sort of thing. Any policy you'd come up with, there will be more special cases than cases that conform to rule. Here are some itineraries I thought of 5 minutes ago, as someone interested in history:

• Alexandar's route itinerary - from Greece to Punjab.
• Grand trunk road itinerary - Afghanistan to Calcutta.
• Itinerary that covers the sites of the Indian mutiny - large swathe of the North Indian plains.

I could keep thinking up itineraries - the Government of India markets one based on the events in the Buddha's life, someone might want to follow the migratory path of the Great Indian Albatross, or whatever. There is some amount of overlap between 1 and 2, and between 2 and 3. But I don't know if the same cities are covered. There is no way that any policy assuming that the itineraries are in some straight line is going to work.

I think that we should let itineraries grow organically. If we get a lot of people interested in building itineraries, some of them will stick around and organize them. (WT-en) Piroco, for example seems like someone who is interested in a certain part of recent history and likes his itinerary around that - that should be fine. If he stays and builds this into a great itinerary, it will be an asset to the project. If an itinerary starts off and then loses steam and sees no activity for a lot of time, that is the point at which we should understand that that particular itinerary is not such a hot idea and consider merging or deleting it. Having oo many itineraries is a problem we should love to have, especially if that will get us people who will maintain them. — (WT-en) Ravikiran 13:34, 13 May 2006 (EDT)

Umm. I think itineraries like the Silk Road, Alexander's route, the Narrow Road to the Deep North, 88 Temple Pilgrimage or whatever are a special case, because they are fixed routes and everybody can more or less agree on how they go. However, the three I list earlier are just "overland" and try to answer the question of "gee, what's the best route for backpackers going from from Istanbul to Indonesia?". Here it actually does the traveler a disservice if the information is fragmented among multiple itineraries, and we should at the very least list all the options available when he goes to the highest-level page. (WT-en) Jpatokal 23:47, 13 May 2006 (EDT)

I think shorter itineraries generally are better than longer ones. The main argument here is that shorter itineraries can be combined, longer ones can't. Creating meta-pages for longer suggested trips pointing to itineraries for each leg is, I believe, the right way of doing it. Exceptions may perhaps be appropriate if someone suggest an itinerary with a particular historic, cultural or religious dimmension, i.e. it wouldn't be appropriate splitting up a pilgrimage itinerary which only really makes sense if done from A to C through B.

I don't really understand the concern about overlapping itineraries, or too many itineraries, at least not at this point. Seems to me as some people are just a little bit too keen on administering. If someone really wants to write an itinerary; let them do it. Don't kill their creativity and desire to contribute by kicking them around. Always encourage contribution, and you really need to cut people some slack if you want them to spend time and effort creating content. But then - give it a few weeks or months and if the itinerary is not well maintained, start a process of merging if appropriate. For a new wikivoyager it does not encourage you to stay on and make further contributions if your first page on the wiki is voted for deletion. In fact, you'd be rather weird if you bothered to stay on at all. Sure, pages and itineraries which are completely redundant has to be cleaned up, but if there's just a seed of hope in there, give it some time and see where it goes first! It sounds trivial, but I think it's pretty essential for a social collaboration project such as a wiki to just apply some 'social intelligence' to how we deal with people who give of their time and knowledge.

At the same time, there should be some kind of structure. I think creating a meta-page for itineraries is a good idea. Fully support it. It would also make it easier for everyone to browse and maintain itineraries, and purge those who overlap. Perhaps there should also be some kind of hierarchy to itineraries, i.e. - they should be labelled with - at least - region, perhaps type, characteristics...you could create categories for overland ones, scuba diving, food, pilgrimage etc - and let people browse by category as well. In short; i think itineraries can be put to a lot better use than what it's done today..

• Most important tho - give fellow wikivoyagers some slack to do their thing and develop their contribution. Merging or deleting should at best be a secondary concern. It sometimes feels like it's what keeps this place rolling. (WT-en) Piroco 02:08, 18 May 2006 (EDT)

Archived from the Pub:

I wonder if there's a reasonable way to add a category to a city that's on a road. It would let the traveler have a list of places along their trip. For example, I occasionally travel up TX-35 from Seadrift to Houston and there are lots of interesting things on the way to see. I'm sure someone could do a lot with IH-10 or the like. (WT-en) Jordanmills 20:54, 24 September 2006 (EDT)

When Project:Tags is fully implemented I could see the tag template to be a possible solution. -- (WT-en) Sapphire 21:06, 24 September 2006 (EDT)

One way to deal with this is to do an itinerary for the trip along that highway. Khyber Pass is one example; Route 66 another, and I think Australia has several. This is not always the best solution, or even appropriate, but worth considering. (WT-en) Pashley 01:44, 25 September 2006 (EDT)

Wikipedia has route descriptions, especially U.S. state and federal highways and interstates, but the project manager is adamant that these are not travel guides so information about travelers' services is ruthlessly deleted, even things to stop and see. OK, so why not a parallel project in WikiTravel? What I didn't like about Route 66 is the assumption that everyone wants to start at the same place and go at the same pace. I think it would be more universally useful to be comprehensive about potential travelers' services along the way: food, sleep, get gas, repairs, sights. Also ripoffs to avoid. Places along the way with articles of their own can be linked to. And I would never want to be euro- or amero-centric about this. (WT-en) LADave 00:38, 2 June 2007 (EDT)

Actually, in the case of Route 66, we created Route 66/Cities with a listing of the cites along the route. Most of the attractions/restaurants/hotels are listed on the city pages, while the things that are truly "Route 66" are listed in the guide. -- (WT-en) Fastestdogever 00:57, 2 June 2007 (EDT)

Archived from the Pub:

After a trip, I've started several new itineraries — two for routes I followed, Yunnan tourist trail and Overland Kunming to Hong Kong — and two for other routes, Overland to Tibet, and Burma Road. Comments and contributions solicited.

The Burma Road one is controversial, arguably unnecessary. See Talk:Burma_Road. (WT-en) Pashley 19:42, 30 June 2007 (EDT)

Some more specific questions arise, though. One is a naming convention for overland itineraries. This has been discussed before, at least at Talk:Overland from Singapore to Shanghai and Talk:Istanbul to New Delhi over land. Should "Overland Kunming to Hong Kong" have a "from" inserted? Or should "Overland from Singapore to Shanghai" have it removed? Should "Istanbul to New Delhi over land" be changed?

Another is how to choose directions for itineraries. I wrote it as "Kunming to Hong Kong" because that is the way I travelled it, but "Hong Kong to Kunming" would fit better as a component in "Overland to Tibet". Do we need a policy, or just a suggestion, that says itineraries should be written from the better-known or more accessible end, travelling toward the other end?

There's also an open question about whether we need some sort of hierarchical tag for itineraries. Or for Travel Topics. isIn is fine for destinations, but what about itineraries. "Singapore to Shanghai" has several parts; should they link to it? How? "Overland Kunming to Hong Kong" could be part of one route in "Overland to Tibet"; should there be breadcrumbs for that?

Just using isIn — "Overland to Tibet" isIn Asia, "Overland Kunming to Hong Kong" isIn China, Yunnan tourist trail isIn Yunnan — might be better than nothing, but it does not seem to be the Right Thing. (WT-en) Pashley 04:32, 12 March 2007 (EDT)

Personally, I favour the briefer alternative of "Overland Hong Kong to Kunming" with the convention you suggested of from the better-known or more accessible origin to the lesser-known or less accessible destination.

However, there may need to be exceptions to this. For example, the Routeburn Trail in South-West New Zealand is best walked from the Glenorchy end to The Divide (on the Milford Road) because walked in that direction, one is warmed by the sun in the early morning and shaded from its glare in the afternoon by the prevailing topography...

...(WT-en) Gaimhreadhan ^{(kiwiexile at DMOZ)} • 08:58, 23 March 2007 (EDT)

(moved from Talk:Overland from Singapore to Shanghai)

What's the right title for this type of article? Others we have are:

• Istanbul to New Delhi over land
• Six months overland from Istanbul to Indonesia

Should we try to be consistent? Do we need a convention or policy here?

I'd say this article has it right, "Overland from ... to ..." is the preferred form. It is what we used when I went "Overland to India" years ago and "overland" is what various tour organisers and equipment vendors use . For that matter, a search here on Wikivoyage turns up dozens of hits in the text of various articles.

Despite comments at Talk:Istanbul to New Delhi over land, I think using "over land" here is just wrong. (WT-en) Pashley 23:56, 3 May 2006 (EDT)

Inconsistency continues. The sub-itineraries of this are:

• Overland from Singapore to Bangkok
• Bangkok to Ho Chi Minh City overland
• Ho Chi Minh City to Shanghai overland

My reading of naming suggestions at Project:Itineraries is that the last two are the preferred form. That's fine by me, though personally I marginally prefer "Overland from ... to ..." format.

I do think choosing a consistent naming convention would be useful, and that "over land" must go. (WT-en) Pashley 03:57, 24 May 2006 (EDT)

I would drop "from" out of the page names here because it needlessly emphasizes direction. Just "to" is enough to indicate traversal. I'd use "Shanghai to Paris overland" and make "Paris to Shanghai overland" a redirect to it. I agree that "over land" could be changed to "overland" for stylistic reasons; "overland" is a travel term while "over land" is just a prepositional phrase. --(WT-en) Rogerhc 19:07, 30 May 2007 (EDT)

The current collection of overland titles, taken from Project:List of itineraries is:

• Istanbul to New Delhi over land
• Six months overland from Istanbul to Indonesia
• Europe to South Asia over land
• Round the world overland
• Ho Chi Minh City to Shanghai overland
• Overland Kunming to Hong Kong
• Overland to Tibet
• Bangkok to Ho Chi Minh City overland
• Overland from Singapore to Bangkok

There are also many redirects such as Istanbul to Delhi overland; I think they all point to things listed above. I still think we need a policy and some consistency here.

• My idea of a good first step would be to move any article with "over land" in the title to "overland" and vfd the old version. As I see it, "over land" is simply an error; we don't even need those as redirects.
• I marginally prefer "Overland Paris to Shanghai" to "Paris to Shanghai overland", but don't think the difference is important. I do think we should choose one and stick to it.

What do others think? (WT-en) Pashley 13:32, 5 July 2007 (EDT)

I'd pip for "X to Y overland" just because it feels a little more grammatical. "Overland to Tibet" is too vague (should be split into defined routes) and times like "six months" seem a little unnecessary, because you can do most of them in a week, a year or anything in between.

In general, it seems to me that there are two fundamental types of itineraries. One is time defined: "I've got two weeks in South-East Asia, how should I spend it?". One is endpoint-defined: "I want to travel from Istanbul to Delhi overland, what's the best route?". Titles should also reflect these: the first is "Two weeks in South-East Asia", the second is "Istanbul to Delhi overland". "Istanbul to Delhi overland in two weeks" is too specific. (WT-en) Jpatokal 08:54, 6 July 2007 (EDT)

Those types are the main ones, but I don't think they're the whole story. Generalise endpoint-defined to route-defined so it includes things like Along the Yangtze river. Then add historically-defined for itineraries like Burma Road, Long March or On the trail of Marco Polo; no-one's likely to follow these today (except maybe Long March), but they could be of interest for trip planning. (WT-en) Pashley 06:03, 6 October 2007 (EDT)

(Swept in from the Pub)

Hi, I'm new here, and I got an idea to help travellers, but couldn't find anything resembling it (this post might belong to suggestions of features or an idea section?):

What I'm looking for is a feature like the one on the bottom of this page from wikipedia . It should make the viewer able to easily go to the next (available) article on a particular transport route (Bus/Train/Ferry). Maybe even see the distance (in length or time).

The one on the page is just made ad hoc by someone, but the idea is nice.

Why I miss it: When you plan a trip on a train/ferry, you would like to know what the different stops have to offer, but if there is no page for that specific railline/ferry route, the only way to find out soething about it's stops is by manually looking for every city on the railmap.

E.g. On the Irkutsk page is only listed that trains go from Moscow or Vladivostok. It would be nice to mention the nearest important stations Taishet, Novosibirsk and Ulan Ude, but even nicer with a small box saying Trans-Siberian Railway on the top and containing:

... | Novosibirsk | Taishet | Irkutsk | Ulan Ude | ...

Instead of having to do this for every town, it would be perfect to just be able to make a list of station somewhere.

Something like this - just nicer, and not in an infobox.

(WT-en) Clcow 02:45, 7 April 2007 (EDT)

The problem is that most places aren't neatly laid out on a line like the Trans-Siberian: what's the "next" stop from Tokyo or Chicago? But the "Get out" section is intended to provide the traveller some nearby choices for continuing their trip. (WT-en) Jpatokal 03:26, 7 April 2007 (EDT)

Well, in the US I guess it could be used for the interstate highways, but true, in countries and cities with several options it might just add to more useless info. I'm just thinking that in less infrastructurally developed countries, the number of railroads or mayor roads are small, and this could be an easy way for a traveller to check up on places én route to his destination. (WT-en) Clcow 03:05, 8 April 2007 (EDT)

Regarding the Trans-Siberian route: If you can read/translate German definitely check out the German language guide, which is simply awesome. Without looking at it, I think it does list everything in order, or at least all the major stops in order. -- (WT-en) Sapphire • (Talk) • 03:59, 7 April 2007 (EDT)

Thanks, I was actually just using it as an example (I figured it easier to relate to, than ferry routes in Greenland), but I might check some of the German info and merge it with the English. I'll have to do it on paper at some point anyway, might as well do it here.