32 or 48 page passport?

Kicks4Free

I’m considering going traveling for up to a year. I’m undecided exactly where but won’t be going to Australia, New Zealand, America or Europe. I need to renew my passport and am trying to decide whether it’s worth my while getting a 48 page instead of the standard 32 page.

I know that how full my passport gets will depend on which countries I visit, but I was wondering how many people who have been travelling for that length of time have come close to filling up a 32 page passport? (Throughout the lifetime of the passport not during the 1 year trip!)

Also what are peoples’ experiences of the 48 page passport? I’ve never seen one but I imagine that they’re bulky and harder to conceal.

Thanks.

SW17

The first part of your question is a bit "how long is a piece of string?". What really tends to fill up a passport is visas, as they can often be full page stickers these days. So, it would be impacted a lot by how many countries you visited that required you to get a visa in advance.

As for a 48 page passport, they are of course thicker, but it's not that significant. I've got one, never had an issue with it being too bulky.

Gavin83

It's another 16 pages it really doesn't make much difference in terms of size.

I filled up my old passport mainly due to a years travel. It started getting quite stressful towards the end. I'd suggest going for the 48 page option. It's not much more expensive and it's better to have too many pages than not enough.

SailorSam

The jobcentre are sending me on some sort of training course next week and they've said i need to take my passport so as to prove i'm me. But i've lost it. I remember seeing it only a few weeks ago but i've been searching for over a week and had the house updide down.
So i don't know how many pages i've got. I even found my old blue passport from 40yrs ago. But no red one.

hugheskevi

I've done a couple of trips of about that length.

Last time I visited 17 countries outside Europe. Still got nearly 20 empty pages in my 48 page passport and it is coming up to expiry. The passport before that only lasted a couple of years, as I renewed it before going on the second long trip a few years later.

You can minimise space used by trying to get border officials to stamp pages that already have a stamp on them, and in particular try to get entry and exit stamps on the same page. Countries in south-east Asia seem excellent at ordering stamps so as to use as much of a page as possible before moving on to the next one.

I found travelling Africa used space much more rapidly than Asia and Central America, largely due to full page visa being common, plus entry and exit stamps.

If there was even a vague chance you would fill a 32 page passport I would choose the 48 page one - getting a replacement passport overseas is far more trouble than paying a small amount extra (having been with a friend who had passport stolen and got a replacement whilst still travelling).

Also consider where you might go in years after travel - personally I've used hardly any more pages as most of my travel has been in Europe. You might also visit some countries that get you problematic stamps and want to replace the passport even if it is not full.

Agree what others say that size doesn't make any difference - you will be using a cover anyway which adds a fair amount of bulk, unless you don't care about your passport getting dog-eared and fading.

Kicks4Free

Thanks for your replies-I’m definitely veering more towards getting the 48 page.

hugheskevi wrote: »

Agree what others say that size doesn't make any difference - you will be using a cover anyway which adds a fair amount of bulk, unless you don't care about your passport getting dog-eared and fading.

You call it dog-eared, I call it well travelled!

smudge56

Invest in the 48 page passport if you run out of pages when you are abroad you have to apply online and it can take months to renew depending on what country you are in. It's only £13 more to pay