NOMAD

User Guide

Each use case has a «Show me step by step» button: it opens the page where it happens and walks you through it, highlighting each control.

1. What Nomad is

Nomad is a long-haul travel planner for Southeast Asia. It brings together, in one tool, the three questions that shape any months-long route through the region: which visa you need for your nationality and how many days it allows, what the weather will be in each country each month (the monsoon rules everything), and where you cross from one country to the next — real land borders, seaports and airports.

Use it either way, or both: let the route finder propose an itinerary optimised for the time of year and turn it into a travel plan with one click, or build your trip stop by stop in the planner while the app watches visas and seasons for you.

The application's version number is shown in the footer, next to NOMAD.

2. The home page: countries, maps and destinations

The front page shows the main countries of the region. Click any card to open the country guide; from there, the Map of… button opens its full-screen map, with three layers you can toggle from the side panel:

• Destinations (green): cities and places of interest with coordinates.
• Airports (blue): with their IATA code.
• Railway lines (red): the country's rail network, where it has one.

The side panel lists every destination: click one to centre the map on it, and the arrow opens its destination page. You can also reach it by clicking the destination's name in the map popup. Each destination page carries the full description, a photo, a location map, the weather forecast (current temperature and the days ahead, data from Open-Meteo) and shortcuts to the country map and the planner. Coastal destinations also show a "Sea & surf" card with wave height, sea temperature and the maximum wave height for the days ahead (data from Open-Meteo Marine); it does not appear for inland destinations.

When there is transport to the destination, the side column also shows a 12Go search box with the routes that get you there (bus, train, ferry or plane); click one to see times and prices and to book. Destinations with no known connections do not show it. Each country's sheet in Country Info carries a similar box with the country's most popular routes.

The Explore menu option gathers every destination in the guide into a gallery: one photo carousel per country, linking straight to each destination page and to the country map. The carousels advance on their own and can be dragged.

Country Info holds the practical fact sheet for each country (currency, language, budget, plugs, emergency numbers…). Next to the time zone it shows the current local time, which updates on its own; countries with several zones (such as Indonesia) show them all.

At the top of the home page, a featured carousel ("Did you know…?") cycles through destinations — a wide photo and the start of each one's description, every card linking to its page. It advances on its own every few seconds and you can move with the side arrows or the dots; the selection changes on each visit. An easy way to stumble on new corners of Southeast Asia.

3. The itinerary planner

The heart of the application, under Itinerary in the menu. It simulates your trip day by day: where you are, which visa covers you and how much of it is left.

Configuring the trip

The configuration dialog opens on first visit (and from the gear ):

1. Your saved trips. If you are signed in and have saved itineraries, a list appears so you can choose which one to load — or start a fresh one. Trips are saved to your account.
2. Nationality. Decides which visas you can request and how many days they grant.
3. Companion's nationality (optional). Travelling with someone on a different passport? Set it and the app watches out for them too: picking a visa shows whether your companion qualifies or needs a different one, the generator warns when they cannot enter a planned country or their visa is shorter, and the itinerary rules are checked for both nationalities. Leave it on travelling alone and everything works exactly as before. Both flags show together in the status bar.
4. Starting country and city, and the trip's start date.

Moving around

• Change city within the country: pick a destination and, under Days at this stop, how many days you will spend there (see below). Picking the city you are already in adds one day to the stay.
• Stay longer where you are: under Change city pick the city you are already in (adds a day), or use +1d on its itinerary row.
• When the two cities are linked by the railway network, the leg is marked as train 🚆 automatically — in the itinerary, the PDF and the calendar. The automatic generator takes it into account too.
• Cross the border: pick a destination country and a real crossing (land, sea or air). You need a valid visa for the destination in your passport — the crossing is blocked without one. If the destination is in monsoon season, the app warns you before crossing and lets you decide. The steps are explained below.
• Where no crossing is on record for a country you hold a visa for, you can fly: you land at the country's airport city.
• Your favourites: when you are signed in and have starred destinations, a card lists them. The button adds that destination as your next stop in one click — a move if it is in your current country, or a direct flight to that city if it is in another.

How many days each stop lasts

When you change city you decide up front how long you stay. The Days at this stop counter has − and + buttons (you can also type the number):

1. Pick the city in the dropdown.
2. Set the days. Next to the counter, a label spells it out before you add anything: "Chiang Mai: 3 days".
3. Press Move. The date moves on by that many days and the stop appears in the itinerary with its +3d label.

Crossing a border, step by step

1. In the Request Visa & Cross Border panel, pick the destination country. Its weather this month and the visas open to you appear.
2. If you do not hold one yet, pick the visa and press Request Visa: it goes into your passport. If you already had it, the app tells you ("you already have this visa") and there is no need to repeat it.
3. Pick the border crossing. Each option's icon shows how it is crossed (🚌 land, ⛴️ sea, ✈️ air).
4. The Cross Border button lights up as soon as a crossing is picked and your passport holds a valid visa for the destination. If it stays grey, one of the two is missing.

Searching tickets and getting directions

Every journey in the itinerary (a change of city or a border crossing) carries two buttons under its name:

• Search tickets opens 12Go (buses, trains, ferries and flights across Southeast Asia) in a new tab with the route and the departure date already filled in. It only shows on legs you have not travelled yet, and disappears once you tick "I've bought the tickets" in the calendar (see section 4).
• Directions opens Google Maps directions for that leg. Hover over it and the tooltip names the exact leg: "Directions (Google Maps): Siem Reap → Battambang".

The itinerary toolbar

The Itinerary panel header shows icons only, so they all fit. Hover over any of them to see what it does:

• full screen · presentation mode · calendar
• save · ICS export · whole route in Google Maps
• PDF · send by email · undo · clear the itinerary

Save, PDF and email show a small padlock while you are not signed in.

The route map

The compact map draws your route with one numbered marker per stop — the same number shown on each row of the itinerary log, ordered from 1 (the origin, at the top) onwards. Click any row of the log and the map flies to that stop with a brief pulse, so you can follow the route in order. Its layers (route, destinations, airports, railways, borders) toggle under the map itself. Map opens the full-screen version and Calendar shows the trip month by month.

To check the route for real, the icon in the itinerary header opens the whole route in Google Maps, and each leg has its own Directions button that opens directions for that trip (driving, transit or ferry depending on the mode).

Watching the route play out

The Replay route button on the map's header travels the whole trip from start to finish:

1. Press Replay route. The map first frames the entire route, so you can see where the trip runs from and to.
2. A green marker travels each leg, drawing the line as it goes. The icon is the means of transport that leg has in the calendar: bus, train, boat or plane. A border crossing by road shows as a bus; only legs marked as plane show a plane. Change the mode in the calendar and the replay follows it.
3. The map zooms to each leg just before travelling it, so a short hop between two towns is seen close up and a long flight is seen whole. On arrival at each stop, its name appears above the marker and a photo of the current destination shows in a corner of the map, changing at every stop.
4. When it finishes the map pulls back to the whole route and leaves the trace drawn. Press the button again at any point to stop it.

The trip in progress

When the real date falls inside your plan, a prompt offers live trip mode. From then on the app stops simulating: your device's clock sets the date (in your own timezone), visas and the day counter run on real time, and the banner tells you where you should be today: "Day 47 of your trip · the plan says you are in Hoi An · day 3 of 5".

• I'm here confirms your position and changes nothing.
• Not exactly… reconciles plan and reality: I'm still at the previous stop (the delay is computed for you and the rest of the trip shifts — or tick keep the end date to take the days from the longest remaining stays), I already moved on, or I'm in a different city.
• If a shift pushes future countries out of their good season, the app says so immediately 🌧.
• Under the banner you get real weather for your stop: the temperature right now and the next 3 days' forecast (with rain probability when it is high), plus the arrival-day forecast for your next stop when it falls within a week. Data from Open-Meteo, nothing to configure.
• Stops already lived lock (they dim, and today's row highlights): they are your record, the one a border control counts. Editing them requires confirming "fix the record".
• Past the last date the trip is marked finished and you can open the summary: days, countries, stops, kilometres, the final score and days per country. Back to planning leaves live mode whenever you want.

4. The calendar and your hotels

The Calendar button on the Itinerary card header opens your trip day by day. It is where hotels are recorded, and where you can best see how stays fit around travel days.

Getting around the calendar

• Monthly shows the whole month; Weekly shows a single week with taller cells, which is where hotels read best. The arrows move between weeks.
• Each day shows the destination name, its country and a "Day 3 / 7" counter. Click the destination name and its guide opens in a new tab, without losing the calendar.
• Travel days are split in two: the city you leave on top, the city you reach below, divided by the departure time and the transport icon.
• Show images turns the destination photos off and on, if you prefer a plainer read.
• The phases of the moon show on their day: 🌑 new moon, 🌓 first quarter, 🌕 full moon and 🌗 last quarter. Many Southeast Asian festivals follow the lunar calendar, and the full moon is party night in places like Koh Phangan.
• Days with a festival at your destination carry a 🎉; hover to see which.
• The Save button in the calendar header saves the trip without going back to the planner, with everything you changed here. If you are not signed in, it offers to sign you in and bring you back.

The travel day: transport, times and tickets

Click a travel day (the ones split in two) and the right-hand panel shows the journey: from where to where, the estimated road distance and everything you can note about it:

1. Means of transport: bus, train, plane or boat. It is the one you see in the itinerary, the PDF, the route replay and presentation mode.
2. Schedule: departure and arrival time. Tick 🌙 Arrival next day for night buses or trains.
3. Reference (flight, train or vessel number) and free-text notes, when the mode calls for them.
4. Search tickets opens 12Go with that route and the departure date already set (arriving next day, the date is the evening before, when the night service leaves).
5. Once you have them, tick 🎫 I've bought the tickets, next to arrival next day. It saves instantly, with nothing else to press, and the Search tickets button disappears from that leg both here and in the itinerary. At a glance you know which journeys you still have to book. Untick it if plans change and the button comes back.
6. For the rest (mode, times, reference, notes), press Save changes.

Adding a hotel

1. Click the day you are staying. The detail panel opens on the right, with the destination's photo, its figures and description.
2. Scroll to the Lodging section and press Add hotel.
3. Type the hotel name. It is the only required field. If you want, paste a photo URL too: that is what appears on the calendar bar and on the lodging card.
4. Leave "One hotel for the whole stay" ticked. With it on, check-in and check-out are filled in from the stop's real arrival and departure and then locked, so they cannot drift out of step with the itinerary.
   • Untick it only when splitting a stay between two hotels: the dates unlock and you set them by hand.
5. Press Save hotel. The calendar reloads with the booking drawn in.

How a booking looks

Each stay is drawn as a green bar carrying the hotel's photo and name, running from check-in to check-out underneath all of its nights. When a stay crosses from one week into the next, the bar continues on the following row. Click the bar and that day's panel opens.

Editing or deleting a hotel

1. Click any day the booking covers, or its green bar.
2. Under Lodging you will see the hotel card with its photo, dates and number of nights.
3. Edit reopens the form with the values loaded; Delete removes the booking once confirmed.

Where else hotels appear

• In the itinerary list, as a badge under each stop.
• In the PDF, under the matching destination.
• In the ICS file, as one event per stay you can import into your calendar.

5. The visa passport

The Passport panel lists the visas you hold. To get a new one, pick a country under Request visa: you will see the options available to your nationality with duration, cost, single or multiple entry, and whether it is issued online or on arrival (VOA). Each visa shows its state:

• Active: the one covering you in the current country.
• In passport: valid, not yet used.
• Expiring (yellow): 7 days or fewer left.
• Expired / Used (struck through): a single-entry visa is consumed when you leave the country.

The Hide expired checkbox keeps the list readable on long trips.

The public guide covers dozens of nationalities, not just Spanish — pick yours from the dropdown. Each visa shows when it was last checked ("Verified on…" or "Pending verification") and, where available, a link to the official source (the country's immigration or embassy page). Visa rules change without notice: treat it as guidance and always confirm with the official source before travelling.

6. The visa day counter

The Visa day counter panel rebuilds your trip day by day and answers the key question: how many days have I spent in each country, and how many do I have left?

• Total days and number of entries per country, plus the current stay.
• For visas with a rolling-window cumulative limit (90/180-style): a progress bar with the days used inside the window, the days left, the last date you could stay if you remain put, and when allowance frees up again.
• Entries used, where the visa caps entries per year.

Above the bars sit the alerts, most severe first: visa expired, window exhausted, few days remaining, entry quota used up… The rule engine also validates the whole itinerary — e.g. “a single stay cannot run longer than N months on the visas available to you” — and adds its findings to the same panel.

Trip summary

Above the itinerary log, the Trip summary card gathers the whole trip's headline figures at a glance: days, countries, stops and months, plus the total distance broken down by transport mode (🚆 train, ✈️ plane, 🚌 bus, ⛴️ boat) and the trip score (0–100) with its breakdown (season · visas · pace), the same one you see in My itineraries. It updates itself on every change and hides while the itinerary is empty.

7. Editing the itinerary

The itinerary log lists every stop with its number, dates, days of stay and photo. Each row has its own controls:

• drag a stop by its handle to reorder it within its country; the origin and border crossings stay fixed and the dates recalculate on their own. Works on mobile too.
• +1d / −1d lengthen or shorten that stay (everything after it shifts).
• removes the stop and recovers its days.
• The menu holds the bulk edits, made for reshaping a generated itinerary:
  • Move earlier / later: swaps the stop with its neighbour, within the same country.
  • Change destination…: swaps the city, keeping position and days (same-country cities only).
  • Take / give a day to the next stop: moves days between neighbours without changing the trip's total length.
  • Remove the whole country leg: deletes every consecutive stop in that country at once.

The button puts the log in full screen (Esc to leave). On each row, under the stop's name, you see the hotel booked for those nights and the leg's buttons (Search tickets and Directions). Border crossings carry the icon of their means of transport: 🚌 bus, 🚆 train, ⛴️ boat or ✈️ plane.

The button opens presentation mode: a full-screen slideshow of the trip, one stop per slide with its photo, dates, days and means of transport. It advances on its own (the progress bars at the top set the pace); you can also navigate with the arrow keys or by tapping the photo (right half forward, left half back), pause with the space bar and leave with Esc. Ideal for showing the trip to someone.

8. Annual plans: Round Routes, Chase The Sun and Route Search

Three tools compute itineraries that respect the monsoon and visa limits, each with its own angle. All three live under the Routes menu option:

• Round Routes: precomputed 12-month routes over every country, one tile per month with the country for that month and its climate report.
• Chase The Sun: you choose which countries make up the year ( Change countries) and can pin a country to a specific month by clicking its tile; the rest is recomputed around your pins. Browse the variants with Previous / Next.
• Route Search: itineraries for a range of months (up to 6), say May–July. Ideal for planning one summer or one winter rather than a whole year.

Sample routes: a ready-made trip in one click

Under Routes → Sample routes there are eight routes of 2 to 4 months, one country per month: Laos and Cambodia, Vietnam and Cambodia, Myanmar and Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia, Malaysia and Thailand, Sri Lanka and Nepal, Thailand–Laos–Vietnam and the classic 4-month loop (Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia). Each card shows the best month to set off, worked out from each country's weather.

1. Click a route. You see each leg with its month, what the weather is like, the season, the festivals that fall in it, highlight destinations and links to its visa. To leave at another time, the other good departure dates recompute the route for that month.
2. At the bottom, under Open in the planner, pick your passport. The departure date is already set from the chosen month.
3. Press Open in the planner: the planner opens with the itinerary already built — visas, borders and days in each city — ready to fine-tune with the controls in section 7.

Taking a route you found into the planner

All three tools work out the route on their own screen: until you transfer it, the planner knows nothing about it. The transfer goes like this:

1. On the screen of the route you like, press Use this route (the transfer-to-planner button).
2. It takes you to the planner. Above the itinerary you now get a reference strip with one tile per month and the country due in each: that is the transferred plan.
3. Configure the trip if you have not already (passport, nationality, starting country and city, date). The strip is only the reference; the trip itself is still empty.
4. Press Generate itinerary to let the application build the actual stops, or build them yourself, using the strip as your guide to which country is due each month.

9. Generating an itinerary automatically

With a plan transferred and a configured trip with no stops yet, the Generate itinerary button turns the plan into a full journey:

• Each country is visited in its planned month; consecutive months in the same country merge into one stay.
• The trip starts in the plan's first month — a May-to-July plan starts on 1 May; only full annual routes start on 1 January. A winter plan (December–February) rolls into the next year in its natural order.
• The year is chosen so the trip lies ahead of you: if the plan's first month has already gone by this year, the itinerary starts in that month of the next year. A December–January route generated in September starts this December and crosses into January of the new year.
• The first stop is the country's main airport city — the likeliest port of entry.
• Roughly one tourism destination per week, chained by proximity and finishing near the exit towards the next country.
• It enters through real border crossings where they exist; otherwise by plane.
• It requests the right visas for your nationality before each entry.
• When a stay exceeds the best available visa and a crossing into an enterable neighbour exists, it plans visa runs: one day out across the border and back on a fresh visa. They appear in the itinerary marked Visa run and summarised in the report; only when no neighbour is viable does the visa-too-short warning remain.

When it finishes it shows a report with the generated legs and everything that does not add up: stays longer than the best available visa, off-season months, countries with no visa for your nationality. The result is an ordinary itinerary: reshape it with the controls from section 7.

10. When to go: climate, seasons and festivals

All the climate and season information is grouped under the When to go menu option:

• Best time to visit: the when-to-go guide, in pages that are easy to read and to link to. Its front page is a country × month table in the heatmap's colours; click a country to see its whole year (its best months summed up in one sentence, climate, tourist season and festivals) or a cell to read that country in that month. Each page links to the sample routes that pass through the country.
• Climate heatmap: the country × month grid — the whole region at a glance, green where the season is good and red where the monsoon rules. Hover over a cell to read the month's notes and click a country to open its map.
• Monsoon by Month: pick a month and see every country's rating — where it is high season and where it is not.
• Monsoon by Country: one country's full year, month by month, with its climate description and tourist season.
• Tourist Season by Month: pick a month and read, country by country, which tourist season it is in (high, shoulder, low) and what that means for prices and crowds.
• Festivals: the festivals and events that shape a trip, with a country picker. Each carries the month, an impact tag (celebration, closures, high prices or "book ahead") and a note. At the top there is a year picker (2026–2030): each year has its own page (/festivals/2027, or /festivals/2027/thailand for one country) with that year's dates in order.

Festivals and events (Songkran, Tet, Nyepi, Ramadan…) have their own page in the menu, and also appear under Monsoon by Country alongside the climate. Many are lunar feasts and move every year. So the festivals page explains which rule each one follows (for example, the full moon of the twelfth lunar month) and, where it can be worked out reliably, gives you the dates for the coming years. For those that hang on an official announcement, the dates are a guide: confirm them closer to the trip.

The planner also warns you per stop: when a stop falls during a festival, its itinerary row shows a tag (🎉 celebration, 🔒 closures, 💸 high prices, 📅 book ahead), and in live trip mode the warning also appears in the banner for your current stop.

This is the same data the route finder, the generator and the planner's warnings run on.

11. Your account: saving, managing and exporting

Browsing and planning require no account. With a free one (Register) you can also:

• Save itineraries with Save: you name the itinerary and can keep several at once — saving again updates the same one, or tick save as new to keep the original.
• Manage them under My itineraries (user menu): open, rename, duplicate and delete. The one currently loaded is marked. The Starts column shows each trip's first day.
• Get email reminders before you set off and before each journey. They only work for saved trips, and use the last saved version: that is why the planner warns you with a strip when there are unsaved changes.
• Export and import itineraries as a JSON file, to take them elsewhere, keep a backup or move them to another account:
  1. In My itineraries, tick the ones you want to take (the same boxes you use to compare). Tick none and they are all exported.
  2. Press Export: a travellernomad-itineraries-….json file downloads.
  3. Wherever you want them back, press Import and choose that file. Each itinerary is added as a new one; nothing is overwritten.
  Share links do not travel with the file: share the itinerary again if you need to. If an itinerary uses destinations that do not exist where you import it, it is skipped and the message tells you which.
• Change your password any time at /Account/ChangePassword. If you forget it, an administrator can reset it: you get a temporary password and the site asks you to set a new one on your next login. Several consecutive failed attempts lock the account for a few minutes as a safety measure.
• Share them with a link: from My itineraries, the button mints a public read-only address with the map, the numbered stops and the day summary — perfect for travel companions without an account. Next to the link you get its QR code (the button) to show from your phone and have it scanned on the spot. Stop sharing disables the link instantly.
• Export to PDF: a printable dossier with a cover, one page per stop, the calendar and the climate.
• Every saved itinerary carries a 0–100 score that combines three factors:
  • Season (40%): how much of the trip falls in good climate, avoiding the monsoon. 100 = the whole trip in season.
  • Visa (40%): starts at 100 and subtracts for visa-counter alerts (each red alert −30, each amber −10). No visa issues = 100.
  • Pace (20%): how far you move per day. Relaxed (≤ 25 km/day) = 100; frantic (≥ 120 km/day) = 20. The fewer daily kilometres, the better the pace.
  The formula is Season × 0.4 + Visa × 0.4 + Pace × 0.2 (e.g. 100 · 100 · 20 → 84). Hover the score to see its breakdown. Tick two itineraries to compare them side by side — score breakdown, dates, countries, stops and distance — and decide which one to keep.

Calendar export (ICS) needs no account: the ICS button downloads a file you can import into Google Calendar, Outlook or your phone, with one event per stay and per travel day, and visa-expiry reminders a week ahead.

12. Favourite destinations

Star the destinations you like () and they're saved to your account. You need to be signed in; if you tap the star while logged out, we send you to sign in and then back to where you were.

The star appears on:

• Each destination page (next to the title).
• The cards in Explore, a country's top destinations, and the nearby destinations carousel.

Your favourites list

Explore → Favourite destinations shows the full list, with photo and country. Those in good season this month carry a In season tag. The number next to the menu shows how many you have; to remove one, tap its star and it drops off the list.

Favourites on the map

On the country map and the planner map your favourites are marked with a gold star. You can hide or show that layer from the layers panel (Favourite destinations).

Nearby destinations

At the foot of a destination page there's a nearby destinations carousel, ranked by straight-line distance from its coordinates.

13. Language

The whole application is available in English, Spanish and Simplified Chinese: switch with the Language menu. Destination, visa and climate descriptions appear in your language wherever the translation exists.