The dreaded Israel passport stamp

As you may know, some countries will not allow you to visit if your passport shows evidence of a previous trip to Israel. There’s a lot of misinformation circulating about how all this works, so I am going to try to set the record straight.

Here are the ten countries you cannot ordinarily visit if you’re carrying the Dark Mark: Bahrain, Iran, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.

(There are several other countries that do not allow Israeli citizens in, such as United Arab Emirates and Malaysia, but they do not care about non-Israelis who happen to have visited Israel.)

Of course, if you have the right connections or the right story, it’s always possible to arrange an exception.

Fortunately for travelers, Israeli immigration inspectors (the people who stamp your passport) are normally willing to give you a stamp on a separate piece of paper and leave your passport unblemished. Politely ask her not to stamp your passport, because you hope to one day visit some other countries in the region. She may be reluctant, but in my experience, will always cooperate. You will receive a small slip of paper with your entry stamp on it, which you turn over to another inspector as you leave the immigration area.

Note that this will probably not work if you enter overland from Egypt, or from Jordan at any crossing other than Allenby Bridge. The Egyptian and Jordanian exit stamp from the border post facing Israel serves as evidence of your travel there, just as surely as an Israeli stamp itself. Allenby Bridge is an exception, because Jordan considers the occupied West Bank as Jordanian territory and therefore doesn’t insist on stamping you in and out. If you want to go from Egypt to Israel without a passport stamp, you can either fly, or take the ferry to Jordan and then travel all the way up to cross at Allenby (a two-day project).

Also be aware that passport stamps aren’t the only evidence that can keep you out. If you open your wallet to pay for your Syrian visa and a wad of shekels falls out, you’re probably out of luck. Likewise guidebooks or products with Hebrew labeling on the package can give you away. So if you have visited Israel recently, even if you avoided the stamp, make sure you aren’t carrying anything else incriminating.

Travel agents: What’s the point?

There’s no question the travel business has seen drastic changes since the emergence of the web. And you’re right: These days, anyone who can click a mouse and find the number on their credit card can buy a ticket to Shanghai from the comfort of their own basement at three o’clock in the morning. But travel agents do a whole lot more than selling simple round-trip tickets, and they always have.

Unlike yourself, many travelers don’t know exactly where they want to go. They just know what they want it to be like (”where can I go that’s a 4-hour flight from Chicago, has white sand beaches, and won’t cost more than $1000 for a week?”) and they’re relying on the pro to fill in the blanks.

Sure, for people who enjoy researching their own destinations, that sounds weird, but it’s just like anything else that you could do but might prefer to leave to an expert sometimes — changing your spark plugs, painting the house, or pulling that throbbing wisdom tooth.

Meanwhile, on the other end of the travel badass scale, there are some tickets that it’s almost impossible to buy without going through a travel agent. Sure, Expedia can sell you the round-trips from Dallas to Salt Lake City all day long. But try to book a Star Alliance round-the-world fare online and see how far you get (emailing a travel agent doesn’t count).

Similarly, the web sellers only let you buy the routings that their systems consider reasonable. Sometimes you really want that extra stop in Philadelphia so you can hit the food court and punish your heart with a cheese steak. Or maybe you want to get one segment of your next trip on Northwest instead of United so you can hit elite frequent flyer status. If it doesn’t come up that way in the search results, you’re out of luck… unless you go to a travel agency.

Ironically, in the early days of the web, it used to be possible to do many more of these things online, using a much-lamented system called EasySabre which put the full power of a travel agent’s terminal in the hands of anyone with a home PC. To the continuing chagrin of many frequent travelers, EasySabre got absorbed into Travelocity and then disappeared. So in some ways, travel agents are more important now than they were when web shopping was in its infancy.

Sleeping bag: Bring it or fling it?

Hey Sleepy,

Years ago, it was very common to use sleeping bags in youth hostels and other budget accommodations. These days, not so much. After a few months on the road, they tend to accumulate all sorts of tiny creepy crawlies, which understandably puts off hostel owners. Consequently you’ll often see signs forbidding them in dorm rooms. The good news is, as backpacking has gradually moved upscale over the years, almost all hostels now have a ready supply of blankets on hand. Hopefully they’re clean!

Fortunately there’s something else, called a “sleep sack”, which I’ve never heard of anyone banning. Essentially just a queen-size sheet folded over and sewn into a bag, they’re easy to launder and serve as a nice protective barrier between you and whatever your hostel’s cleaners failed to catch. You can buy them ready-made, or if you have access to a sewing machine, quickly make one yourself.

Of course, if you’re planning on sleeping in the rough, or traveling through truly cold places like the Himalayas, forget all this, and bring your subzero sleeping bag along. Life without toes is no fun at all.

My girlfriend keeps trying to postpone our trip

There’s three ways this can go, right?

1. You can stay home and put it out of your mind.
2. You can go on the trip without her.
3. You can find a way to take the trip together.

I get the sense that the first option is a non-starter. So what are you left with? If this relationship is really important to her, and after five years I sure hope it is, then you can probably blackmail her into going by threatening to pack up and go without her. But would that really be your dream trip? Nothing sounds less fun to me than dragging around someone who wishes they were home and shows it.

Instead, I’d suggest making a serious and thoughtful effort to figure out what’s really keeping her home. Even if it was just a romantic fantasy for her, there’s nothing better than turning a fantasy into reality — and you can be the man who made it happen. Chances are, she’s hung up on one of the same three bugaboos that are holding a lot of other travelers back too: Could it be fear of the unknown? Money worries? Concerns about a big gap on the résumé?

These are all legitimate issues, but they’re not worth missing a dream over.

Fear of the unknown is in many ways the hardest one to conquer, because it’s not completely rational. You can’t debate someone’s fears away. The most important thing is to be understanding, because otherwise it can grow into a barrier that prevents her from wanting to discuss the trip at all. And to the degree that you share that fear, be open about it so that it becomes something you’re working on together.

By comparison, money worries are a whole lot easier to work with. Draw up a budget for the trip. Negotiate about which luxuries and destinations you can do without — by cutting short that swing through Europe and using the time in Latin America instead, and staying in youth hostels while you’re in the more expensive countries, you might make that budget significantly smaller.

Many people seem to think that if they just wait a few years and sock some money away, they’ll be better able to afford an ambitious trip. But I’m not so sure about that. When you’re young, you can sleep in a $2 thatch-roofed beach hut and it’s a fun adventure. Spend a few years working, building up your bank balance and getting comfortable, and next thing you know you’ve turned into a person whose ideal vacation features a whole lot more air conditioning and hot showers. The corrolary of this, of course, is that someone who doesn’t feel rich enough to travel at 22 with $5,000 in the bank, is probably going to feel the same way at 27 with $15,000 saved away. So make the trip fit the money you have. Missing out on a few destinations is better than missing out on the whole thing.

That leaves us with the easiest hurdle of all, the résumé gap. Remember when you were 12 years old and acted up in school, and the teacher warned you that your misbehavior was going to end up on your Permanent Record? It sounded pretty scary at the time, but I’m going to let you in on a big secret: Nobody cares about your epic lunch-hour spitwad battle with Jimmy Sanders. You are forgiven.

It works the same way with your résumé. The only time a gap is an issue is immediately afterwards, when you’re looking for your first job after the trip. Once you’ve got some productive experience under your belt, that’s what matters. And that’s not all — many returned long-haul travelers report that their journey actually helped them in interviews: It provides a wealth of examples that can be finessed to demonstrate your cultural adaptivity, financial acumen, and overall resourcefulness. And the more places you’ve visited, the greater the chance that one of them is your interviewer’s dream destination too.

Of course, your girlfriend’s issues may be slightly — or very — different from these. But the basic point is the same: If the idea of travel appealed to her, then the reality can too. You just have to figure out how to get her there. Ultimatums won’t do it, and they aren’t necessary. Listening, planning, and compromise are your best tools.