[SERIOUS] Scotland - Backpack Trip [\SERIOUS]

Anyone from Scotland or been there?

I am planning a backpacking trip to Scotland in the month of August for 10-15 days.Any tips? Any specific places that I should visit?

How do I go about doing it from Mumbai, India?

There's loads of nice places for walking in Scotland. Peronally I like the West and have enjoyed a few weeks on Mull. Walking along the banks of Loch Ness is good too. If you like a bit of history then Stirling Castle is well worth a visit. Also Edinburgh's very pretty as cities go.

If you can find a local folk festival or keileigh (I think that's how it's spelt) somewhere then go. The Scots do folk music very well.

Be prepared for rain! You're going to see alot of it.

I'm from the Netherlands, but I've been to Scotland once for a week.
Not really backpacking but travelling by train and staying in hotels.

The main cities Edinburgh (really beautiful) and Glasgow are not really big.
The other towns are small, but nice places to be if you don't go for the excitement.

Nature is rough and overwhelming, you really need to love hiking :)

It can be wet and cold, even in the summer.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/viator...b_3714626.html
http://www.roughguides.com/destinati...ot-to-miss/#/0

Actually Glasgow's worth a mention too. It's got a bad reputuation which is deserved for some districts but the city centre's nice and has some good museums. Just stay out of Paisley.

Oh is this Shaggy Hiker? :lol:

It very much depends on what kind of things you like to do. I'd agree with Dex about going to a ceilidh if you get the chance - they're always full of high energy. I'd also recommend going to a Highland Games or Highland Gathering (the one at Tain is usually pretty good); you should be able to find a few of them on Google. In fact, try here: http://www.welcometoscotland.com/thi...north-highland

As mentioned by others, Scottish cities tend to be pretty small, especially compared to Mumbai. Edinburgh is probably the prettiest and covers the cultural aspect pretty well with museums, visits to the catacombs, the castle etc, while Inverness has the best setting and would be a good base for visiting Cawdor Castle (home of Macbeth) and Loch Ness (home of the monster).

If you like hiking, I would recommend the North West, which is home to Scotland's most beautiful scenery and coastline. It's also a great place for spotting golden eagles and sea eagles, and a variety of sea mammals like seals, dolphins and whales (you'd almost certainly need to go out on a boat for them, though, and even then you'd have to be lucky to spot whales - they're pretty rare). A bit further south on the West coast is Eilean Donan, probably Scotland's most scenic castle (from those angles that don't show the main road, that is), and also Loch Lomond, which has had songs written about it for a reason.

The main problem is that as you head north, places are harder to get to unless you have transport - the train links aren't great (my family home is an hour's drive from the nearest train station, for example) and nor is the bus service. The good thing, though, is that people tend to be pretty good with hitch hikers - although you probably wouldn't want to rely on that.

Oh, and if you do head for the Highlands, then as well as the rain (and the wind, and the snow), you'll need to be aware of the midges. These are tiny blood-sucking flying insects, and they're particularly bad during the summer.

The Orkneys are worth a visit for the scenery and some ancient sites like Scara Brae and Maes Howe. (When I visited Maes Howe, it was simply a case of popping into the nearby farmhouse and asking if you could borrow the key, but I think it's now a much bigger enterprise.)

The main piece of advice I would give is that if you have a list of places to go or things to do, then plan the order you'll do them in so that you don't spent most of your time travelling between destinations. Scotland is surprisingly big and unsurprisingly empty; I remember once chatting to a coachload of (American) tourists who were aggrieved at how long they had to spend on the coach between stops. They had assumed they could do all of Scotland in a day.