These 3 resources will help you

My wife and I are in the process of planning a 6-month trip around Europe starting in January. I’m British and my wife is Thai, so that already complicates our planning.

Mostly it’s my wife that needs visas (EU, USA), but sometimes it’s just me (Russia).

Now on top of that, we also have to figure out which countries are open or closed due to the pandemic. As we’ve had different vaccines, that’s yet another complication.

So, here are the resources we use to get around all these issues.

Resource #1 — Wikipedia

The first resource that we always use, which isn’t pandemic-specific, is Wikipedia.

If you search for “Visa requirements for XXX citizens”, you’ll have an overview of which countries you can visit visa-free and which ones you need visas for. For example, here’s the one for British citizens. As you’ll see, it’s very comprehensive. Visa requirements for British citizens.

Resource #2- Kayak International Travel Restrictions

The next resource is from the travel company Kayak. It has details of international travel restrictions by country.

All you need to do is select which country you’re traveling from, and you’ll then see a world map that’s color-coded in green, orange, and red.

Green means the country is open, orange means it’s open with restrictions, and red means it’s closed. This allows you to see at a glance which countries you need to focus on.

If you then click the country you want to visit, it has a handy pop-up that shows a quick overview for vaccinated and unvaccinated visitors. You can click through for more specific details.

As we’ll be starting our journey in Thailand and heading to Georgia as our first stop, here’s is what we see.

Kayak Travel Restrictions Map — Screenshot by author

We’re fully vaccinated, so we can enter without any restrictions. What’s also great about Georgia is that we can both travel visa-free and stay for up to a year. Why can’t it be this easy for all countries?

Our next stop with be Ukraine, which we can also enter without restrictions. The third country we want to visit is Russia. However, the Kayak map doesn’t have any information at all about it, so we’ll need to check with the Embassy.

Resource #3 — visadb.io

The final resource is a site I discovered recently that shows 800 long-term visas in 150+ countries. We sometimes like to stay in one country for many months, so we can search this to see if there are any suitable visa options that we weren’t aware of.

The site is visadb.io.

Wikipedia is great for short-term visas, but it doesn’t include information about long-term stays.

As if all the above is not enough to contend with, these restrictions can change day to day. But at least it will be an adventure. Once we’ve arrived at the first country, we’ll need to stay flexible about where to go next.

Our current plans are to start by visiting Georgia, Ukraine, and Russia. We may then head to Turkey and a few EU countries. Croatia and Slovenia are two we are really eager to visit again. But all this depends on the pandemic. I’m sure we’ll figure it out one way or another.

I hope you find the above useful for your own travels.

Let me know if the comments if you have any additional tips.