I love a guidebook.

My guidebook series of choice has always been the Rough Guides. I’m partial to the maps of museums and other sites of interest (the map of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo was an absolute godsend, or I might still be lost in its halls) and historical and cultural notes.  On the other hand, Marc prefers the Lonely Planet series, and I admit that these sometimes have the edge over the Rough Guides in terms of locating accommodation and dining.  We usually travel with one of each, allowing Marc to find dinner and me to anoint myself as our unofficial tour guide.

Our usual isn’t going to cut it for our trip to Africa.  For one,  our rough plan will take us through perhaps 15 countries, and carting around 30 guidebooks between the two of us is just a hilarious idea.  When we traveled through Southeast Asia in 2008, I carted the Rough Guide to each Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia (not to mention some pages I surgically excised from an old Rough Guide to Southeast Asia), and that was almost too much to carry around.  (Marc took a much more reasonable approach with a single copy of the Lonely Planet Southeast Asia on a Shoestring.)

So what do we take?  We’ve surveyed the options, and our choices seem to be: 1) a book covering the entirety of Africa; 2) books covering Southern and Eastern Africa; or 3) individual and grouped country guides.  We dismissed Option #1 fairly quickly; we would be carrying around pages on countries we have no intention of visiting (on this trip, at least) and the coverage of the countries we are visiting is fairly summary and abrupt.  We also are ready to dismiss Option #3 — at least as our sole method — for the reasons mentioned above.  We are figuring Option #2 represents our best bet: taking along two region guides, which will provide more detailed coverage than Option #1 but not be as cumbersome as Option #3.

Of course, the cumbersomeness is only an issue if we are carrying physical books.  We have always traveled with physical books (supplementing our research with the internet), but is it time to switch to electronic books?  I have complicated feelings about electronic books in general (I proclaimed I would never use a Kindle, then fell in love with a Kindle, but found my love of used books is no match for my Kindle), but my romanticism of physical books might have to be set aside in the interest of economy.

If we carry electronic books, we can carry as many as we want, eliminating any question about whether to sacrifice the coverage afforded in a country-specific guide for the convenience of a region guide.  Links in electronic books also make switching between sections easy.  On the other hand, electronic books need to be plugged in and using an electronic book in a public area might attract the wrong kind of attention.  Physical books, while heavier than electronic books, don’t need to be plugged in, aren’t particularly flash, and are better for note-taking (at least in my opinion).

Which kind of guidebooks should we take on our trip?  Have you used electronic guidebooks?  Or do you prefer physical books?  Let us know in the comments!