Updated December 11  /  Marisol Ferrante

Documents

Twelve lines. The shortest list here and the one I would keep if I could only keep one.

This exists because of a wet passport in a boat off the Croatian coast and the discovery that between four adults there was not one photograph of one document. It took two days to fix and it should have taken two hours.

Before you go

• Passport expiry checked against the destination rule, not the expiry dateMany places want six months' validity beyond your return.
• Any visa or entry authorisation, printed
• A photo of the passport photo page, stored offline on your phoneOffline. A cloud copy is useless the moment you have no data and no passport.
• A second copy left with someone at homeSomeone who will answer their phone at an inconvenient hour.
• Travel insurance policy number written somewhere that is not an inbox
• Card issuer's lost-card number saved offlineYou will not be able to look it up on the phone you just lost.

Carried

• Passport, in an inside pocket, not a bag
• One printed copy, in a different bag from the passportThe rule is simple: the copy and the original never travel in the same pocket.
• Driving licence if there is any chance of a carPlus the international permit if the country asks for one. Check this weeks ahead, not days.
• Hire car booking reference and the named driver's licence

If it goes wrong

• Report it locally first, get the reference numberAlmost every replacement process starts with a local police reference.
• Then your own country's nearest consular officeTheir opening hours are shorter than you think and often not posted on the door.

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None of this is legal advice and rules change. The point of the list is not to tell you the rule, it is to make you go and check the rule while you are still at home with a printer.