Twitter
Advertisement

These cool travel tools truly give you some bang for your buck

For those who’ve always wanted that farm house to do some gardening, but don’t have one yet there’s WWOOF an online movement linking volunteers and organic farmers in about 120 countries, including India.

Latest News
article-main
FacebookTwitterWhatsappLinkedin

Barter for budget travel

In the past few years, the student exchange idea has been reinvented for budget travellers. If you have special interests and skill sets, you can generally barter them for food and accommodation by working for a few hours. For those who’ve always wanted that farm house to do some gardening, but don’t have one yet there’s WWOOF an online movement linking volunteers and organic farmers in about 120 countries, including India. They make it possible to take your kids too! A broader variety of farm-related options are available on HelpEx that facilitates work on organic farms, non-organic farms, farm stays, homestays, ranches, lodges, B&Bs, backpacker hostels and even sailing boats. You’ll find hosts mostly from Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and USA.

But if all that field work is not for you Work Away, present in 155 countries, may be what you're looking for. Apart from gardening and similar activities, you could build a house, baby sit, care for animals, cook, teach a language, help around the house, help with an eco projects, you name it. Sometimes, hosts may even 'Workawayers' to meet the country’s minimum wage standards. But how would you know what OR how much your skills are really worth? To help you calculate the right price there’s Barter Points by workingtraveller.com that helps you calculate the average cost FOR food and accommodation at the destination and the services you would offer; when you tally the two, you’ll arrive at a conclusion of what’s fair. What better way than work exchanges to immerse yourself in another culture, while also saving on some dough, right?

Bring me that from there, please

Rina: Hey, I’m going to New Zealand in December
Arshad: That’s great. Will you bring me a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc? The wines there are amazing. Obviously, I’ll pay for it. 
Rina: Sure!

To save courier charges, we generally ask friends and family to bring us something we want from a destination, if their baggage space permits, right? Well, now you can ask strangers to do that too. But, for a fee that would be significantly smaller than charged by professional courier services. While FlyteCourier brings together people travelling on international flights and those looking to send packages to abroad, AirFrov and Get.From.There. allow you to put out your wishlist and ask travellers to bring back what you need. PiggyBee allows you to 'crowdship' and 'crowdshop', both. While the rest are websites, a young Indian has also started a Facebook Group, Bring Me That From There, to facilitate this for both international and domestic destinations. What all can you send or request? Anything airlines will allow one to carry and anything travellers agree to accommodate with their luggage.

Offsetting your travel emissions

For the environment conscious, various websites have free calculators to help you sum up your carbon footprints resulting from vacations. CO2balance.com offers an airport flight calculator featuring most of the world's airports, carbonfootprint.com may be more accurate as it also takes into consideration stops in between and flight class. It throws in bus travel and all kinds of rail commute including trams, tubes, and more. There’s also sustainabletravel.org, which calculates the emissions created by your lodging. Most of these websites also allow you to offset the emissions by via donations to climate-care causes they are funding. If you’re sceptical about donations, but still wish to make up for the damage, you could travel more consciously, by looking up greener alternatives or participate in green initiatives and give back to mother earth.

Find your daily dose of news & explainers in your WhatsApp. Stay updated, Stay informed-  Follow DNA on WhatsApp.
Advertisement

Live tv

Advertisement
Advertisement