How to afford to travel
Easy budget traveling: Money and accommodation
Many people ask me how we have so much time for traveling, how we can afford being almost constantly exploring around India — I, the one without a regular, well-enough-paying job, even more than my boyfriend. To be fair, I do have to note that especially in India the culture around traveling and wanderlusting is quite undeveloped, still in its baby hiking shoes. But the question pops up as much in chats with my Finnish friends and new people during my trips as here in India, where friends, colleagues and the laymen seem to think that traveling means expensive hotels and restaurants and requires bottomless pockets. Well, I do wish I could say I’ve won in the lottery, but…
I think we have as much — or little — time and money as any middle class couple without children in India, not to mention in the West. Often it feels like much less time on his part, or much less money on mine. He works around the clock six days a week, though can take time off quite flexibly, whereas I could take a flight to Timbuktu right this minute if I wanted to. Unless those flights are really expensive, since I don’t earn that much, but do still pay all my own expenses.
It must seem as if we have unlimited resources and because of common misconceptions about so much time and money being absolutely required I wanted to write this article. I used to tell myself my schedule was too inflexible and my wallet too light and I wish someone had concretely showed me how to travel. So I wanted to share my best tips and ideas on easy budget traveling and tell you that it’s not that hard and demanding.
It boils down to prioritisation and time management really. Both on and off the road. For us exploring as many new places and experiences as possible is right on top of the list after the expenses on food and living, so we make simple choices in everyday life that enable us to follow those priorities.
At home
We prefer to cook simple, organic meals with fresh, local ingredients at home and rarely go out to eat, excluding a weekly Sunday lunch biryani that has become a nice tradition of ours. We’re also both mostly vegetarian, which saves us a nice amount of money in grocery bills. We don’t hang out in fancy cafes or tea houses or drink much alcohol for that matter either. Thankfully we both agree that I cook better meals and serve a better cup (I mean mug…) of coffee than what’s available here in general, so it never feels like a sacrifice and that makes the choice very easy to repeat day in, day out.
For other purposes, we only shop out of necessity and don’t pay high prices for qualities such as brand or status, but find the things that give us most practical value for our need. I mostly walk everywhere instead of taking autos or Uber, when it takes me less than 40min. Otherwise my boyfriend runs all the additional errands on his way home from work. We don’t pay for any gym memberships or such, but do our individual exercising routines independently. And we also minimise the number of online subscriptions to different streaming services, audiobooks or any other apps. I would like to say that we have canceled all, but the truth is that I’m not ready to say goodbye to the wonderful ease of my Spotify Premium (10eur per month!), which I’ve grown so accustomed to in the past decade. But hey, none of us can be perfect.
The secret is in the big picture rather than every little detail anyways. It’s the same people, who spend several lakhs in fancy, impractical cars for example, who wonder why we, with a nice, big savings account, decide to buy an average, affordable car with just the basic accessories. And then in the same breath they ask how it is possible to travel so much.
Deciding the priorities, making sensible, practical choices accordingly and knowing where the money goes helps you a long way. Something that all our guests notice first time they visit our house is the list of our monthly expenses taped on the fridge. There are both our names on top as headers and below we list everything we individually spend on living expenses or if we lend each other money. And then at the end of each month we sum it up and split the costs equally. Many find it baffling and strange, but firstly it is the best way to keep tabs on the money (and to know what adjustments to make, if needed) and secondly I feel very proud that we are financially equal partners. I did let him pay the car though. It’s not like I’m allowed to drive in India anyways.
Now, we don’t count every single rupee and penny and I’m sure we could cut down our spending even more — I mean there are many avocados on those monthly lists and I wholly acknowledge my addiction to premium coffee. We don’t plan everything in detail and well ahead of time or even spend much time looking for the cheapest options and special offers. And even though I use the term budget traveling, we have never actually set a firm budget for our trips either. As much as we want to be economical with time and money, we also want to arrange our life to be as easy and stress-free as possible both at home and:
On the road
I always thought that in order to find affordable accommodation I needed to be well ahead of time with my schedules and bookings. With all the early bird advertising and memories from my childhood’s family travel packages I believed that the best options and special offers would only be available several months in advance. This misconception caused me a lot of anxiety initially, as I’ve always been unable to confirm schedules until the very last minute and don’t really like to follow a strict plan that has been made up months earlier, but rather chill and take my time finding out about the options and then wing it on the road, and I firmly believed this was not a sensible, budget-friendly way to travel.
My favourite tool to search for accommodation is Google Maps (!), especially when we are passing through a less touristy area or have more time to spend at the same location and go check out different options. Many people probably wouldn’t think of using Maps for the best options and deals, but as location is the biggest deal breaker for us after pricing, it’s very convenient to have all the options first on a map, where I can choose the best ones and then compare pricing and services. Also, many of the cheapest hotels and guest houses in India are not on any online travel sites and cannot be booked online, so I like to just find a place on Maps, either call them or go there, check the room out and haggle!
But sometimes we do want to “splurge” a bit more too and not stress much about finding a decent place only at the destination, so I also use Trip Advisor in addition to Maps. It gathers up a variety of options and great deals from all the popular booking sites, ranging from high-end hotels to more budget-friendly guest houses, and is easy to filter to fit your specific needs during the trip. Not to mention all the other great tips about your destination all on the same site! I prefer making the bookings a few hours before the check-in, because by that time the hotels and guest houses will have dropped their prices in order to get all the rooms full.
The online sites always give a fixed price though and often use “special discounts” up to 80% to get more traffic and purchases (I’m thinking of you Agoda), so I feel better about negotiating the price in person and making sure it does actually include all the utilities and services that were listed online. I’m not the most skilled haggler, but this is where an Indian boyfriend comes in really handy. But if you need to be able to tell a good deal out of the bunch yourself, I suggest finding out about the general pricing of the area/season beforehand and not just thinking something is cheap if you don’t have to pay as much as you would at home. As a thumb rule I’d say that during high-season in popular tourist areas such as Goa and Kerala, you can find even luxury accommodation (I don’t mean Novotel or such) for as cheap as 1.500–2.500rs per night the same day! Up in the mountains and on the road in the more rural areas of India, where all the options tend to be much more basic, but still decent enough, 1.000rs goes a long way for finding a nice room!
Remember to think about the purpose of your stay and the trip and ask yourself what are the necessities for you during that time. I prefer having an AC room especially in the summer months and a wifi, but many Indian people would rather have a TV in the room. In Goa where we spent a month it was crucial to find a room with a kitchen and pay slightly more for that luxury, so we were able to eat healthier meals and save some money by not going out for breakfast especially, which usually is very overpriced for the trendy western tourists requiring their brewed coffees in mugs and fancy smoothie bowls. I guess if I can’t survive a morning without avocado and granola I totally deserve it though…
If you have enough spare time, traveling by train inbetween destinations is a good idea budgetwise too. Take a night train and you’ll have a bed for the night just for the price of transportation! I would also suggest that if you have a wanderlust heart like mine, sometimes it is for the better to completely forget about even your basic level of criteria for the accommodation as for example in the rural parts of the Himalayas you’ll be lucky to get a small room with a very basic bed and blankets, a toilet and (cold water) shower. But I promise you, that is a region so well worth exploring that spending a night in a stone hut without any electricity, heating or running water will be just the most unforgettable experience of your life.
In this article I was focusing more on the financial side of traveling; how to save money to be able to afford a more wanderlust lifestyle and also make sensible, economical choices on the road with the presumably greatest expense, accommodation namely. I have so much to say on this topic that I decided to split this info into two parts and in the next article I will share my tips on time management, transportation and share our travel itinerary from our latest roadtrip across the heart of India. If you have any questions for me or your own ideas to share, I’d love to hear those in the comments! Hope you enjoyed this article and come back to check the second part too.
