Travel Insurance
Buy travel insurance for one reason above all the others: medical evacuation. A broken leg on a trekking trail in Nepal or a motorbike spill on Koh Tao can turn into a $50,000 to $100,000 bill once you factor in the airlift and the flight home with a medical escort. The lost-luggage reimbursement everyone talks about is the least important thing a policy does. The part that stops a bad day from bankrupting you is the part nobody reads.
We've been sending people around the world since 1999, and the travelers who came back grateful for their policy almost never mention a delayed bag. They mention the appendix that ruptured in Bolivia, the dengue that put them in a Bangkok hospital for a week, the parent back home who got sick and forced them to fly out early. That is what you're actually paying for.
What a good policy actually covers
The coverage worth having: emergency medical treatment abroad, emergency evacuation and repatriation, trip interruption when something forces you home mid-trip, and a baseline for theft and delays. Read the medical and evacuation limits first. A policy with a $10,000 medical cap is close to useless for a serious injury overseas. Aim for at least $100,000 in medical and $300,000 in evacuation, and check that the evacuation benefit pays to get you home, not just to the nearest hospital that can stabilize you.
What it won't cover, so you're not surprised
This is where most people get burned. Pre-existing conditions are usually excluded unless you buy a waiver early. Anything that involves alcohol or drugs voids most claims, including the scooter accident you walked away from. That $200 you spent on a wine tour you decided to skip? Standard policies don't reimburse you for changing your mind, only for covered reasons like illness or a canceled flight. And adventure activities, the whole reason a lot of you are traveling, often need a separate add-on. Scuba below 30 meters, mountaineering above a certain altitude, riding a motorbike without a license valid at home: check the fine print before you assume you're covered, not after you file the claim.
Why we point long-term travelers to World Nomads
We've partnered with World Nomads for years, and we send RTW and open-ended travelers their way for three specific reasons, not because they run the slickest ad.
First, you can buy or extend a policy while you're already on the road. Most insurers require you to be home when you buy, which is worthless if you're four months into a trip and just decided to add three more. Second, their covered-activities list is built for the way our readers actually travel: trekking, diving, surfing, and the rest, rather than a beach-resort package. Third, they cover travelers from more than 130 countries, so you don't need a US or Australian address to get a policy.
They're not the cheapest for a one-week trip to Paris, and we won't pretend otherwise. If you're taking a short domestic trip, compare a couple of options and buy the cheap one. World Nomads earns its keep on the long, complicated, multi-country trips where most policies quietly fall apart.
Full disclosure: if you buy through the links on this page, we earn a commission. It costs you nothing extra, and we only recommend World Nomads because we've watched it work for our travelers for over a decade. Get a quote and read the actual policy wording before you buy, every time.