If you go missing on your journey would anybody know? How long would it take before anyone came looking for you? And where would they start?
Reply to this Hello Doug 😊
If you want somebody to look out for you while travelling, register with your consulate when you enter a country. Then let them know when you have completed your travels safely. If you dont reappear, they will look for you.
Also, you can do other things like have a person at home who you email often and let them know where you are and where you are going.
And if you have a mobile phone you are even more in touch.
Mel
Reply to this Yes Mel, I couldn't agree more.
The trouble with consular registration is generally the same as with a Ranger Logbooks when bushwalking... it is all well and good to fill it out but no one will read it until you are reported missing. The consulate won't care about you either until someone else starts jumping up and down. Who is going to do that?
Your comment about regular emails is sound, but I could tell you a story about the lack of a regular email being dismissed by the authorities as "the unreliability of youth"... so even that doesn't entirely solve the problem. Quite a sad ending to that story, actually, that REALLY need not have happened.
Mobile phone, brilliant. But we had a story recently in New South Wales, Australia of a kid making several 000 calls after getting lost in the bush and being abandoned due to him not being able to name a crossing street (do you believe it?).
I'm not into paranoia but I do believe in the "Umbrella Principle"... if you take your brolly then it won't rain, and you can enjoy a beautiful day. Simple precautions when travelling are much the same.
Doug.
Reply to this Used to drive me nuts. My ex would take of with the children and head for the mountains. This was pre-cell phone and even today there is little cell coverage in the mountains. Sometimes he would tell me which mountain range he was headed to or a lake, but that was about as much as I could get out of him, because he never stuck to a plan. One time I did go - we ended up going down a mountain side where there were no paths and across streams into nowhere. Coming out the spot we were going up was so steep we had to have one person move at a time, zig zagging back and forth. Then about 1/3 of the way up one of the boys dropped his pole and we had to wait while he went back down the mountain to get it. Turns out he had taken them to this out of the way lake several times in the past. Somehow they all survived. Thank God.
Reply to this I usually registered with smarttraveller.gov.au
My parents, my bf and my friends & colleagues all know where and when I go so I guess if I don't come back, then something bad has happened.
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