The dull stuff you’ll be glad you know.
We write about ways to travel. Sleeper trains, house sits, farms, ships going the empty way home. Some of it takes a weekend and some of it takes a season.
This one is the admin.
Not because it is thrilling, but because insurance is the one part of travel where a straight answer is almost impossible to find. The policy runs to forty pages and is written so that you won’t read it. The comparison sites are paid to rank. And the forums are the same dozen questions, asked over and over, answered by people who are guessing.
So we went looking for the answers instead. Not what you should buy — that depends on you, and anyone who says otherwise is selling something. Just what these policies do, what they quietly don’t, and the questions people keep asking.
One thing to say before we start, because it runs through all of it: where you live changes the answer more than anything else about you. The same trip, the same age, the same health, and a reader in one country already has half of this for nothing while a reader in another has none of it. So we have written the questions to be answered against your own paperwork, wherever that was issued.
It might. It really might.
In some countries an ordinary home policy includes travel cover: doctor, hospital, and the flight home with a nurse beside you. In other countries the same policy covers your belongings and nothing else. Two neighbours in different countries, same price, completely different answer.
So don’t assume either way. Open the policy, search it for the word travel, and read the paragraph you find. Five minutes.
If it is in there, you are not shopping for a whole policy. You are shopping for a top-up, and that is a much cheaper evening.
Every policy stops somewhere. Thirty days is common. Forty-five, sixty and ninety are all common. A credit card can stop after a fortnight, or after a few days once you are past sixty-five.
It is not a warning you get. It is a line in the document, and after it the cover simply isn’t there.
And watch the word annual. An annual policy does not mean a year away — it means unlimited trips in a year, each one capped, usually somewhere between thirty and a hundred and eighty days. Ninety is the commonest cap, and day ninety-one is a horrible place to find that out.
Two things follow. Find your number before you book anything long. And if you want more days, buy them before the first lot runs out — almost nobody will sell you day forty-six on day forty-six.
There are only four kinds of thing here, and knowing which one you want saves the whole evening.
And the difference that confuses everyone: travel insurance is built around a trip, so it covers cancellations, delays, bags and emergencies. Health insurance is built around you, so it covers being ill, including the ordinary unexciting sort. Long trips often need the second one. Short ones rarely do.
Quite possibly, and it is the question nobody thinks to ask first.
If you need a Schengen visa, the application itself requires proof of medical cover of at least €30,000, including repatriation. No proof, no visa. It is a document you have to produce, not a precaution you might take.
The long-stay visas go further. Italy, Spain and Portugal all want private health cover in place for the whole stay, and consulates have been known to reject a monthly nomad policy as not being proper health insurance — which, as the answer above explains, is a fair reading of what it is.
So if a visa is part of the plan, find out what it demands before you shop. It may make the decision for you, and it is cheaper to discover that now than after you have paid for a year of the wrong thing.
Yes, though not from everybody, and you pay for the privilege.
Several insurers sell a policy to people who are already abroad. There is usually a waiting period first — a couple of days, sometimes a couple of weeks — and nothing that has already happened is covered. If you are away now and uninsured, this is still worth doing today rather than next month.
Yes. This is the one that costs people everything.
If you don’t declare a condition and then claim, insurers can refuse the whole claim — not just the part connected to it. A broken leg, refused, because of something unrelated you didn’t mention.
Two things worth knowing. Every insurer defines pre-existing differently: some ask about the last two years, some about your entire life. And if you are waiting on tests with no diagnosis yet, a lot of policies will not cover you until that is settled. Ask before you buy, not after.
Declaring costs you a slightly higher premium. Not declaring costs you the policy.
Probably not, and this is the single most common refused claim among long-stay travellers in Asia.
Nearly every policy requires two things: a licence that is legally valid for that machine in that country, and a helmet. Plenty of people ride all year on a licence that doesn’t actually cover them, and never find out until the claim.
So check what your licence permits where you are going, before you get on anything. It is usually a small piece of paperwork at home and a very large bill abroad.
Every policy has a list of activities, and the list is the whole answer.
Walking and snorkelling are almost always in. Diving is usually covered to a stated depth with a recognised certificate. Skiing is often an add-on, and off-piste is often out even then. Ropes, altitude and anything with a motor usually need a specialist policy.
Don’t guess from the brochure photograph. Find the list.
It depends entirely on how the flights were bought.
On one ticket, the airline owes you the rebooking. On two separate tickets — which is how most cheap long routes are put together — the airline owes you nothing at all, and you are relying on your policy having missed-connection or travel-delay cover. Those usually require a minimum gap between the flights to begin with.
If you build your own routes, this is the paragraph to read before you buy the policy.
Cancellation cover pays out for a list of named reasons, and bad weather is usually on it.
The catch is timing. Insurance covers things that were not foreseeable when you bought it. If the storm was already forecast, or the strike already announced, it is generally too late.
Which gives you the rule: buy cancellation cover when you book the trip, not the week before you go.
Most policies follow your own government’s travel advice. If your foreign ministry advises against travel to a place and you go anyway, cover there usually falls away.
If the advice changes while you are already there, most insurers will cover getting you out, but not your disappointment about the trip.
Worth checking whose advice your policy follows — insurers sold in different countries follow different governments, and they do not always agree about the same place.
Usually, but for less than you hope.
Baggage cover has a limit per item as well as in total, and the per-item limit is often a few hundred. Anything valuable may need to be listed by name, or insured at home instead. Nearly every policy wants a police report within a day or two, excludes things left unattended, and excludes valuables packed in a checked bag.
If you travel with a camera you would cry about, sort that out separately.
Partly, and the gap catches house sitters in particular.
Personal liability cover — for harm you cause to other people or their property — is in most travel policies, and the limits are generous. But damage to property you are staying in, or that is in your care, is very often excluded. That is exactly the house-sitting situation.
If you are looking after somebody’s home, ask the owner what their own insurance says about guests and sitters, and read your liability section properly. It is a five-minute conversation that saves a very awkward one.
No, though it is genuinely useful.
Cards and reciprocal agreements get you treated in the public system on the same terms as a local, for things that cannot wait. That is worth having and worth carrying.
What they don’t do: fly you home, pay a private hospital, refund a cancelled trip, or work outside the countries in the scheme. They are healthcare, not insurance, and they were never meant to be both.
One more that hardly anybody knows about: if you draw a state pension in one European country and move to another within the EU or EEA, the S1 form transfers your healthcare entitlement to the country you have moved to. It is free, it is not insurance, and for anyone spending winters somewhere warmer it changes the entire calculation. Ask your own pension authority about it.
And if you are reading this in North America, there is no equivalent to find. The US has nothing of the kind. Canada has nothing federally — its own travel advice says flatly that the government will not pay your medical bills. Quebec is the single exception, with agreements covering eleven countries, and even those only apply if you are going there to work, study or train. Not to travel.
Half true, and the half that is true is very true.
Across much of Asia, walking into a good private clinic and paying yourself is cheap and quick — a consultation, an X-ray, stitches, a week of dressings, for the price of a decent dinner, and you are seen in twenty minutes. Insuring that is a paperwork hobby.
What you cannot pay for is the aeroplane. Anything that needs a bed on a plane and a doctor sitting beside it costs tens of thousands. The US State Department puts a medical evacuation at twenty thousand to two hundred thousand dollars.
So pay the small things yourself and insure the aeroplane. That is one policy, not two, and it is the cheap end of the market: medical and evacuation cover with a high excess. Skipping the clinic is sensible. Skipping the aeroplane is a bet.
Somebody will. It just won’t be the companies advertising at backpackers.
The monthly nomad policies are built for people in their thirties and close their doors somewhere in the sixties. Then the category ends, and travellers assume the whole market has ended with it.
It hasn’t. There is a specialist industry with no upper age limit at all — not a high one, none — which looks at your medical history instead of your birthday and covers well over a thousand named conditions. The trips it writes are longer than the nomad policies ever were.
North America has its own version of this, built for people who spend winters somewhere warm. None of those insurers has an upper age limit either.
They do something different instead, and it catches people out. Rather than asking your age, they ask whether your health has been stable — usually meaning no change at all for the ninety, hundred and eighty or three hundred and sixty-five days before you leave. No new medicine, no change of dose, no adjustment, sometimes not even an improvement. Have your blood pressure tablets changed in February and a March trip may not be covered, although you feel perfectly well and nobody mentioned it.
So if you are buying in that market, ask about the stability period before you ask about the price. At least one insurer there has dropped the clause altogether, which is worth knowing if your medication has been fiddled with recently.
If you are anywhere near these ages, wherever you live, the move is the same: get into something renewable while the door is open, rather than re-shopping every single year.
Not automatically, and this surprises people every time. Cruise cover is an add-on or sits only in the most expensive tier, and it is what pays when you miss the ship or need to be taken off one.
If your plans include a repositioning crossing, that is a box to tick before you pay.
Usually not. Travel insurance rarely includes it, which is why the rental desk can sell you theirs at the counter for a startling amount.
A standalone excess policy bought in advance costs a fraction of that. Just check it is valid in the country you are driving in.
Then you need three things, not one, and this is where ordinary travel insurance quietly stops being relevant.
The boat is insured separately — hull, third-party, salvage. Your health needs a long-term international policy rather than a travel one, because the moment the boat is your home rather than your holiday you are not on a trip any more. And getting an injured person off a yacht mid-ocean is not an air ambulance from a hospital car park, so evacuation is often bought on its own.
The number to know: the Royal Yachting Association, which sells nothing, says most standard travel policies do not cover sailing at all, and those that do usually limit how far from shore you may be. Around thirty nautical miles is a common line. That is a great deal closer to land than it sounds when you are crossing something.
Be careful with that, and here is why.
Travel insurance pays some of the highest commissions in travel. Two or three companies pay the best and have the smoothest sign-up pages, so they are what appears at the top of every search, in every list, in every “honest review”. A lot of those reviews are written by people who have never made a claim, and some do not mention the commission at all.
We are not above this. There is one link on this page that earns us something, and we have told you which — and we still would not put it first.
So read the reviews for the part that actually matters: what happened when somebody claimed. Selling a policy is easy. Paying one is the product.
Something quite different from what gets advertised, and it is worth knowing before you spend an evening comparing the wrong things.
The common shape is this. A catastrophic policy with a high excess — real cover for the disaster, nothing for the small stuff. Then paying cash for ordinary doctor visits, which outside the most expensive countries is genuinely affordable. Then, if the trip warrants it, a separate evacuation policy, because that is the bill nobody can absorb.
And most of them buy it through a broker. A broker quotes several insurers at once, costs you nothing extra, and is not paid more for steering you to a particular one. Nobody markets this arrangement, for the obvious reason.
Two sailing travellers we read, Jason and Nikki Wynn, publish their actual numbers — a catastrophic plan at just under $2,100 a year with a $5,500 excess per incident, bought through an agent — and then write the sentence that tells you they mean it: “We don’t get anything if you click or buy insurance through him.”
That is the tone to look for in anybody giving you insurance advice, including us.
Checked against each company’s own pages in September 2026. Terms change, so treat this as where to start rather than what you will be quoted.
A cheap policy plus one of these memberships is often a better answer than one expensive policy, because the transport is the part that ruins people and the part that ordinary cover caps hardest. Nobody suggests this, because there is no commission in it.
These are the ones with no age ceiling, and the reason the question above has a hopeful answer. Most require you to live in the UK, and True Traveller takes European residents too.
The comparison site you should use is decided by your address, not by your trip. That one sentence saves more time than any ranking.
So find your policy and read the travel paragraph. It takes five minutes, and it tends to end one of two ways: you discover you already have more than you thought, or you discover exactly what you need to buy.
Either way you will know — and knowing is what turns we’ll see how it goes into we’re staying until March.
If you have used one that actually paid out when it mattered, we would like to know — and we will add it to the list above. Drop us a line.
— Birgitta & Anders
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