Travel Guard International, a travel insurance company, has been collecting travel mishap stories. The purpose is threefold:

• To show the risks travelers take each day
• To suggest, of course, that insurance can provide protection for even the most unlucky traveler
• To give a nice prize to the least fortunate traveler with the best story

Tales from the Traveler Diary

Travel Insurance.org knows that many of you have had wretched travel experiences. But compare them against two of the ones recently submitted in this contest:

• One couple went on a Caribbean cruise. However, while cruising, the ship hit a disabled Cuban freighter. Then it split in two! As they prepared to get on the lifeboats, some survivors (three crewmen died) from the Cuban ship wanted political asylum. During what turned into an eight hour confrontation, two gunships were trained on the American ship.

• A solo traveler planned twelve days in Bhutan and another five in Japan. She arrived 24 hours late because of a delayed flight. As she hiked in Bhutan, she slid down a hill and had a knee injury. After all that, there was an uprising in Bangkok. That and a bombing in India causing locked down airports and jammed phone lines.

Eight days later, she received an emergency visa through Delhi and went around the world in the opposite direction to get back to the United States. She and her bad knee never did get to Japan.

Other entries include stories of food poisoning, lengthy flight delays, snowstorms in places like Las Vegas and other weather related mishaps.

When you read these tales, a few dollars for travel insurance seems like a pretty good idea!

Photo via Shine 2010