Ways to Travel Free Around the World

I recently wrote a couple of posts at Suite 101 that show you how you can travel for free around the world. Pretty much, anyway.

 In How to Travel Around the World for Free, three major ways of traveling free or reducing travel costs were suggested for budget travelers including couch surfing, volunteering, and how to hitch-hike or cut transport costs.

Here's an excerpt:

Volunteer for Free Around the World

One of the most reputable organizations in this field is WWOOF: World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms. WWOOF “links people who want to volunteer on organic farms or smallholdings with people who are looking for volunteer help.” They have farms all over the world from New Zealand, to England and Italy, to name a few of the diverse locations in which travelers could spend time living for free.

The way it works is that “in return for volunteer help, WWOOF hosts offer food, accommodation and opportunities to learn about organic lifestyles.” Potential volunteers contact the farm or garden directly and arrange their placement with them, after paying a token registration fee to join the WWOOF network.

More Ways to Travel Around the World Free includes links to a few great organizations that help reduce your lodging costs to almost zero.

Here is an excerpt:

Lodge for Free With Servas

Servas is another organization that offers visiting travelers an opportunity to stay in someone else’s home for free around the world. Servas has been operating for 60 years and states on their site that “Servas is an international, non-governmental, multicultural peace association run by volunteers in over 100 countries. We operate through a network of Servas hosts around the world who are interested in opening their doors to travelers and of Servas travelers who want to get to know the heart of the countries they visit.”

I hope you enjoy reading both articles and get something positive from them, especially if you're planning your next round the world trip. 

Top World-Wide Travel Bloggers

Here are some more fantastic travel bloggers from around the world. I've given a short note about each but I urge you to check out these blogs for yourselves, especially if you cannot decide where you want to go for your next vacation. These should give you a good start. Alternatively, if you're interested in travel writing, you'll also discover some excellent writers here.

Lets Do Something Different

Focus: A site mainly about travelling with children 

My thoughts: Sweet and simple and makes me want to go to England again, damn it! If you have children, check this out.

Ever The Nomad

Focus: Writing and Worldwide travel

@everthenomad

My thoughts: Top quality writing. Dreamy. Guest post section is great.

Happy Time Blog

Focus: Backpacking around the world on a budget

@happytimeblog

My thoughts: Great design and the journey makes me quite envious in a good way. 

Freewheelings

Focus: Travel - Adventure - Life outside the box - Currently in Alaska

@dustcantkillme

My thoughts: Awesome design. Looks like a Thesis Wordpress theme to me! Alaska Marine Highway in Photographs makes me wish we could teleport already. What's with that? Why has teleported not been invented yet?

Seat of Our Pants

Focus: Currently in Sweden. Next: Turkey, UK, US

@seatofourpants

My thoughts: Jesus, the food photos in these blogs are killing me. My favourite cuisines are all Asian: Japanese, Thai, and Vietnamese and I am very far from any of this, except Japanese. I love Introducing Mum to the Swedish Sauna. I guess you can see I'm skiving now. 

Alpaca Suitcase

Focus: California family spends a year volunteering, traveling and homeschooling their kids: 6 months in South America and 6 months in the Mediterranean

My thoughts: If you thought, "We can't do that," then read this blog.

Ballistic World Travel Bloggers

Lonely Planet has selected the cream of the travel blogger crop to take part in their blogsherpa Beta program. All of the bloggers below syndicate their content live to theLonely Planet website so that you can view their articles by location as you research travel destinations. The LP bloggers have banded together to bring you a complete, up to date view of the world by syndicating their world travel writing content live to this squidoo lens.


Here are some of the profiles over there:


Happy Time Blog
"Ever wondered what it's like to sell it all and go travel the world? - That's just what we did.Aaron and Georgie have been travelling the world since April 2008. We sold everything so we could experience something new everyday. We write about what we see from the road as we go, pictures and videos, tips and advice - Mucho Mucho LOVE Come Join In."


Free Wheelings
Navigating the road of the Unconventional. For most of a decade I functioned as an Engineer until the day that I finally threw my hands in the air and took to the road. This is the story of my experience finding my way from W2 to 1099, building a life and an income on the road and living outside of the box. Travel, photography and the story of how to get there written as I get there instead of afterwards.


And...one more for good measure. Somewhere else as obscure as Ghana, when you're not IN it...


Great Places in Bulgaria
Great Places in Bulgaria is a blog about alternative
tourism in Bulgaria - the natural beauty of Bulgaria you won't find in
travel brochures.