When is a good time to travel?

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

– Mark Twain

You will never find the perfect time to travel.

You will either be in the middle of a project or someone in the family would be ill. Is a good friend getting married next month? You surely cannot miss the wedding, can you?

By the time the wedding gets over, your boss hands you another official project, which means no travelling for three more months.

Damn!

But isn’t there ever a perfect time when you can just leave home and have a great time discovering a new place?

Of course there is! THE TIME IS NOW!

Well, when I say NOW, I don’t mean you pack your backpack in 10 minutes and take the next flight out of your hometown! That is just impractical. But a good thing to do right now would be zeroing in on a date.

This date could be next week, next month, or next year. But this date cannot be pushed back. If you’re planning to go to Australia on Jan 1 next year, make sure you are getting on that plane, come what may.

So, now that you’ve set a date. What do you do next? If you haven’t decided where you’re going to go, zero in on your destination.

Once you know your destination, date of travel and roughly the number of days of your trip, you need to get a rough idea of how much the trip is going to cost you.

The major chunk of your costs for any trip would be transportation and sleeping. If you can manage to get these under control, your costs come down by a considerable amount. Apart from these, you need to consider the costs of food, visiting tourist attractions and miscellaneous spending.

Once you have  decided on the budget, start saving up.

Wait a minute! Do you think you’ll not be able to save enough? Fear not, because I am here to help you cut down on your costs and tell you effective ways of making the most of your money. I’m here to tell you how you can make your dream vacation work without spending a bomb. 

In 2012, I went backpacking solo for 35 days through west Europe and guess how much money I spent? INR150,000 (€2,185 at the then exchange rate), inclusive of everything!

I have done it. Why can’t you?