Travelling Against FCO Advice

Posted by Natasha Edwards 24th May 2016
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We often get enquiries from our travellers about contravening Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) Travel Advice. With many places in the world becoming safer over recent decades, travelling against FCO advice is something we now only do on a small number of our tours, very different from our situation years ago. However, we hope to put clients at ease by addressing some of their issues, from security to insurance.

Q: Surely if FCO advice is against travelling somewhere – doesn’t that mean I can’t go?

It doesn’t prevent you going to these places – it just means that greater planning and consideration is needed to go into your trip. Things like insurance, for instance, could be a little bit more complicated. Yet by travelling with a tour operator like us, you can minimise the complications as this is something we are quite used to handling.

Q: But surely the FCO advises against travel to places for good reason?

Yes and no.

As a government body, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office can’t afford to take any chances so are always going to err on the side of caution. Sometimes the advice is just, other times we feel that their advice is ambiguous, over-cautious, out-dated and covers too large an area.

Political factors can come into play too. Sometimes, as the case was with Iran, the delay in lifting FCO advice was practical – it couldn’t be lifted until the British embassy had reopened in Tehran.

Furthermore, travelling with us you are not a lone traveller. We feel that so long as we are duly diligent, seek local advice by consulting our numerous contacts in each region and are flexible with our route and itinerary, trips to even the most 'dangerous' of destinations will almost certainly pass off safely.

One of our partners for example, Control Risks, is a consultancy company who analyse Global Risk and have agents on the ground assessing the situation. They are entirely unbiased experts in the field providing us with information from areas outside of the FCO scope.

Q: So what’s the deal with getting insurance?

We have established special contacts who can arrange insurance, which is why it is handy to travel with a reputable tour operator like Wild Frontiers. There are some more stringent limits on insurance in these cases, such as a usual upper age limit of 78. But even problems such as this can be overcome. Read more about our insurance policy here and don’t forget, if anything doesn’t make sense, you are always welcome to call the office to discuss it further.

Q: What countries do you go to that contravene FCO advice?

Some of our trips in Kashmir still contravene FCO advice. So too do some of our trips to Pakistan and all of our Afghanistan tours. It is important to remember that FCO advice is constantly changing – with both new regions being added in and other regions taken out, such as Tajikistan earlier this month, so it’s important you keep abreast of these changes by visiting: https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice

Q: I’m not from the UK - what about me?

Every country will have their own guidelines, so for ease of mind it’s a good idea to check these yourself. For our US travellers, information is available on travel.state.gov.

At present, US citizens travelling to Iran with us are able to use Swiss consulate for some of the services they would usually receive from a US embassy, not currently open in Iran. This has not deterred several US travellers from enjoying our tours in Iran tours and they have fed back how pleasantly surprised they were by their warm reception there.

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Of course at Wild Frontiers we take security on our trips and the safety of our clients extremely seriously, we are often in close contact with the FCO about these issues but we also believe there are some fascinating destinations which lie contrary to their general travel advice which if undertaken responsibly, can be safe to visit and shouldn’t be missed.

Please remember if you’re interested in travelling anywhere with us against FCO or similar advice, we are always at the other end of the phone to offer advice.

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