How To Travel Abroad Without Spending A Bomb
by Arushi Nayyar
It’s the season of scenic profile pictures and destination check-ins. The time to create stories full of enterprise, coupled with the spirit of adventure. As winters are arriving and your wanderlust starts to kick in, we have compiled a few ways to help you turn your world of dreams into reality.
Here are a few ways you can get abroad without burning a hole in your pockets.
1. Home Exchanges
A window of opportunity for the more dynamic and adventurous kind, home exchanges are a way to explore different countries without spending a dime on your lodging, and saving a fortune on restaurant meals and transportation. Swapping your homes, cars or even your pets is a concept prevalent all over the world.
Although it’s definitely a leap of faith to have a perfect stranger sleep in your bed and cook their meals in your kitchen, remember that your feelings are mutual and hence, respected.
Websites such as homeexchange.com and homeexchangeguru.com help enthusiastic travelers from all over the world to meet their kind and carry out a well-planned vacation with a thorough pre-agreement.
Along with the massive cost reduction, it also gives you a true feel of the local culture which would otherwise lack in a hotel or a resort. If you have some time to plan your vacation and crave a homely feel, a home exchange might just be your way to go.
2. Travel Credit Card
The dream of seeing a foreign land often fails to take flight because of the airplane expenses. While we may have mastered the art of cutting down on our living expenses by bunking with a friend or living in a dorm, the airline ticket prices are often inflexible. A smart solution to make air travel affordable can be convincing your parents to switch to travel credit cards.
Out of all debates that deliberate about credit cards being a bane or a boon, this one is definitely a boon for travel enthusiasts. A typical travel credit card rewards its user with a specific number of miles when it is purchased and subsequent rewards as and when it is swiped. The number of rewards depends upon various company policies and the kind of purchase made .
For instance, JetPrivilege HDFC Bank World Credit Card lets you earn 6 JPMiles on every Rs. 150 spent on retail expenses and 18 JPMiles on every Rs 150 spent on every flight ticket booked on jetairways.com. So, if your parents spend Rs 3 lakh in a year, you can get free ticket to Singapore.
The only limitation is that most of these cards have tie-ups with an airline and you can buy a ticket of that specific airline with the accumulated miles. So, you lose out on any special discount given by another airline for that route.
Like all other forms of plastic money, travel credit cards too have additional benefits such as access to the airport lounges or on-going discounts on flight tickets. It’s probably time to borrow miles from your parents instead of cash, if you’re planning to add travel on your bucket list.
3. The Study Route
To many, a scholarship seems to be a long shot and they reserve its place in their minds for the athletes and the prodigies. However, there are various scholarships available for averagely faring students too. All grants and scholarships may not give you a completely free-ride but they make your traveling and learning abroad a smoother journey, in financial terms.
Majority of these are specifically for students from developing countries that different governments offer for diverse purposes. Such short-term education scholarships are common in Australia, Netherlands, Japan and China. A major chunk of the fellowships are for research based fields such as physics or medical sciences.
The prerequisites for every grant or scholarship varies from knowing a certain language fluently to having expertise in a particular dance or art form.
4. Volunteer Abroad
Many organizations provide a wide array of opportunities which allow students to travel abroad and contribute to fields ranging from photography, to social awareness, to healthcare. What makes such volunteer programs so popular among students is how they can visit and work in exotic destinations around the world for a very low cost.
Every organization and volunteering opportunity varies in its requirements and procedure. A typical volunteering program or opportunity would include accommodation, meals and in some cases, travel expenses for extremely subsidized or absolutely no cost. A stipend, although rare, would only prove to be the icing on the cake.
The number of opportunities available for students are virtually limitless. AIESEC, being one of the leading organizations, sends an average of three thousand students to various countries in a year.
There are loads of other ways of cutting cost while on trip too! Do your research well and choose your destination wisely. For all of us travel enthusiasts, all hurdles are too insignificant when we have bigger borders to cross, even budget.
#PassOnTheExperience #GlobalVolunteer
