What Travel Insurance Should I Get for International Travel?

What travel insurance actually covers

A real travel insurance policy is doing three separate jobs at once, and it's worth knowing which one you're paying for: emergency medical coverage (treatment abroad, and evacuation home if something is serious enough that local care isn't enough), trip cancellation/interruption (getting some of your money back if you have to cut a trip short or can't start it), and coverage for gear and baggage (relevant if, like us, you're traveling with cameras and lenses worth more than a casual sightseeing kit).

The medical piece is the one that matters most and the one people underestimate. Your regular health insurance — if you even have it — very often stops covering you the moment you leave the country, and a lot of destinations don't have reciprocal healthcare agreements with the US. An ER visit or a medical evacuation without coverage isn't a "bad trip," it's a five- or six-figure problem.

What to look for in a policy before a long trip

Duration flexibility matters more than people expect. A lot of standard policies are built around a two-week vacation and either don't offer longer terms or charge a steep premium for them. If you're planning something closer to a few months (or, in our case, 17 months), you want a provider that's actually built for long-term, multi-country travel — not one where you're re-purchasing coverage every few weeks and hoping nothing falls through the gaps between policies.

Adventure activity coverage is the other thing worth checking line by line, not just skimming. Standard policies routinely exclude anything that sounds remotely active — hiking above a certain altitude, scooter rental (extremely common across Southeast Asia), diving, and so on. If your trip includes any of that, read the exclusions list before you buy, not after something happens.

And check how claims actually get filed and paid. A policy is only as good as how it behaves when you're trying to use it from a hotel room in a country where it's already midnight — look for 24/7 support and a claims process that doesn't require you to be back home first.

What we actually used

We had World Nomads for the entire trip — every country, every leg, no gaps between policies. It's built specifically for long-term, multi-country, activity-heavy travel rather than a standard two-week vacation, which is exactly what we needed given the trip's length and how much of it involved being outdoors chasing photos in places without the easiest access to care.