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How to travel for free?

 There are many ways to organise free travel and companies that will help you travel for free. Travel doesn’t have to be expensive and it is possible to travel for free, or partially free. This post is on how to travel the world for free, in various ways! We all know the old mantra, travel is cheaper than staying at home, and it’s true, but who doesn’t want to minimise travel expenses to get maximum mileage from their dollar? We’ve been doing just that for years, supporting our travels on very little cash. These days there are many ways to travel the world for free or at least ultra-cheap. We give you several ideas and opportunities on how to travel the world for free in this post. Some you’ll know about, some you won’t. Let’s take a look at tips, tricks, companies and hacks, working your way around the world, and more, for free, cheap, or super budget.

You can travel the world for free by getting smart. It’s not easy, or everyone would do it, but if you know these tips or are prepared to work or exchange time for free travel, it can be done. The companies below give us opportunities to travel for free or super cheap. They may not make your whole travel experience free, but parts of it can be free. Employ tricks like Couchsurfing, volunteering, crewing, cleaning, farm work, hosting, and you can make a large part of your world travel free, or very cheap.

The Middle East and Far East pays particularly well according to friends of ours who do this. Sometimes free accommodation comes with the job.

Alternatively, fluent English speakers can receive free room and board during a period of conversational volunteering. Diverbo (see below) accepted English-speaking volunteers for their sites in Germany and Spain and provided some volunteers with full room, board, and transport.

Where to look: Diverbo. Read up on what it’s like to teach English as a foreign language here, young couple Andrew and Amy spent the last year teaching in Vietnam. Or check out Let’s TEFL for TEFL courses.

Travel The Seas For Free

If you’ve got your sea-legs, opportunities exist to crew on yachts or cruise ships. What an amazing way to see the world for free! You’ll have to work hard but plenty of job opportunities exist for chefs, entertainers, cleaners, and more.

Where to look: For cruise ship opportunities, go direct to the cruise line’s website, try carnival.com or royalcaribbean.com. To find crew posts on yachts try Crewseekers International, there was a joining fee, or crewseekers.net. Find a Crew is another site to try. Sailing skills are not always required. Skippers sometimes just need company, an extra pair of hands, someone to take turns on watch, and so on. Alternatively, head down to the port, find the yachties and ask around.

Travel For Free by Hitchhiking

In some parts of the world hitchhiking is common, normal and considered safe. For example in Romania locals in rural areas regularly hitch a ride and offer the driver a little petrol money.

Stay safe, use your common sense and trust your gut instinct. I regularly picked up hitchhikers back in Australia, often because I was worried for their safety.

Where to look: Check out Hitchwiki to find general rules of hitchhiking in each country.

Certain vehicle rental companies need cars, motor homes and camper vans moving to particular depots. This can be seasonal with specific destinations having a higher demand for vehicles at certain times of year.

This is rather like how relocation cruises work. Alternatively, the vehicle will have to be returned after a previous customer’s lease. You can often score these vehicles along with a fuel allowance from companies like those we mention below.

The catch is usually your time allowance. Unfortunately, you will have limited drive time to get your new home to its destination.

Where to look: transfercar and imoova are 2 examples of vehicle relocation companies.

Travel For Free as a Travel Blogger

Travel bloggers can and do travel for free, sometimes. Most of the ideas you’ll find for free travel involve exchanging work for travel, so it’s never totally free, there is a trade of services. Travel bloggers and influencers do the same.

I am a travel blogger but we rarely take “free” or sponsored stays. Some bloggers and influencers do a lot of “free” travel.

If you want to find out more just visit our blogging section. But remember, it only looks free to outsiders, we work very hard at what we do.

If you’re still looking for “free” stays your influence maybe isn’t great enough to be of use to the business hosting you. By the time you’re earning good money through travel blogging, you’ll likely prefer to pay your own way or be paid well to visit these places.

Past a certain level travel bloggers can even be paid to travel and share a destination, hotel, or attraction with their audience.These are sometimes called sponsored trips or stays. If not, then the money they make from their travel blogs can easily cover travel expenses.

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