Before you book anything, it pays to check what the UK Foreign Office actually says about your destination. Right now, 72 of the 226 countries and territories with FCDO advice pages are flagged as no-go or partial no-go zones, and travelling anyway can invalidate your insurance and leave you without consular help if things go wrong.
The harshest warnings — advice against all travel to an entire country — currently cover 11 destinations: Afghanistan, Belarus, Burkina Faso, Haiti, Iran, Mali, Niger, Russia, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen. The reasons vary from active conflict to the risk of arrest for British nationals, as in Iran and Belarus, or terrorist kidnapping threats across the Sahel.
A much longer list of countries gets a partial red flag, meaning much of the country is fine but specific regions are off-limits. That includes popular holiday spots where the risky zones are far from the resorts: Egypt (the Libya border area and North Sinai), Turkey (a 10km strip along the Syrian border), India (Jammu and Kashmir and the Pakistan border), Indonesia (several active volcanoes, including Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki and Mount Semeru), Kenya (the Somalia border and parts of the northern coast), and Mexico, where warnings cover parts of 11 states including Sinaloa, Guerrero and Michoacán.
Elsewhere, the advice touches practically every continent. Israel and Palestine carry warnings for Gaza, several northern governorates and the Occupied Golan Heights. Ukraine is advised against everywhere except some western regions. Thailand and Cambodia both have border-zone warnings — within 20km of their shared frontier — following recent tensions. Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Djibouti and Eritrea all have border strips flagged.
There's also a middle category: 'all but essential travel'. The FCDO leaves the definition up to you — urgent family or business reasons may qualify, and it's your call based on your own circumstances. Currently this applies to whole countries only in Cuba (severe infrastructure disruption) and North Korea (rapidly changing security), plus parts of around 18 others, including Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Laos, Kosovo, Bangladesh, Malaysia's eastern Sabah islands and much of southern Thailand.
Why does this matter beyond the obvious safety angle? Because the FCDO list is what insurers look at. Book a trip to a region under an 'all travel' warning and your policy is effectively worthless — medical cover, repatriation, theft, all of it. Some policies also exclude claims arising from 'all but essential' warnings unless you can justify the trip. So if your dream destination appears on a list, check whether the warning covers just a remote border zone (as with Egypt, Turkey or Kenya) or the whole country — often the holiday you planned is still perfectly viable.
The advice changes as situations evolve, so re-check the FCDO page for your destination shortly before departure, not just at booking time.
Story sourced from The Independent Travel.
