Tag Archives: budget tips

  A year long travel taught us the rules of budget travel. 10 commandments of a budget traveller Thou shall not stay in a place with air conditioners, mini bar or a hotel with any star Thou shall bargain for everything including petrol and medicines and of course water Thou shall not buy tickets from the hotel concierge (point to be noted: if your hotel has a concierge and it is called that, then you are not following the first commandment) Thou shall find the best deal on everything even if it means that deal finding left you no time to do the thing you wanted to do Thou shall eat at a ridiculously cheap place and get a diarrhea Thou shall never take taxis from anywhere to anywhere  Thou shall walk it even if it means that thou shall be in bed for two days after the walking Thou shall look for the cheapest laundrette in town only after number 9 Thou shall look for a bucket to do your own laundry  <<Are you a budget traveler? Help us figure out the tenth>>

This panorama defining hostel is set on a mountain in a quiet village of Gimmelwald. A few steps from the Gondola station, Mountain hostel offers views like a dream. You stand up close and personal with the Mount Eiger and can sit forever in a conversation with spell binding vistas on the terrace restaurant of the hostel and watch the snow clad giants in the backdrop. In the evening their lobby is buzzing with enthusiastic resident travelers, almost all of whom are American. People talk at length about their days’ spoils, how far they walked, what trek they did and where they are headed on their round the Europe tour. Yes, this place is very popular amongst American backpackers with a Euro rail pass and almost all of them end up landing here. Although food is cheap, but it is not as great as what a little more money can bring you to the table. But hey, they have a kitchen and you could do your own cooking. Don’t forget to bring your own pasta sauces and bread because when I went last, there were no stores around. All in all, Mountain Hostel is the perfect place to compare notes and find companions. If you are an American you will at home here. It is one of the cheapest options for food and stay in the area. Given its popularity with the backpackers, you may find a few things amiss and the employees and owners may seem a little brash with their policies and paid showers, but nothing beats the views of this place. It is truly one of the most stunning places I stayed in.

Remember the time your mother told you never to take anything from strangers and you thought she was probably being overly suspicious but you still agreed with the advise. Better safe then sorry, right? Probably no one ever offered anything to you. Maybe you did get offered a few things and nothing wrong happened. Was mother wrong then? No, never, mothers are never wrong and you are never grown up enough for her advise to not apply. We learnt it the hard way. Well, it could have been worse. One evening, the first evening of our South East Asian odyssey, we had taken a bus to Penang from Kualalumpur and found our self in Butterworth from where we took a bus to Georgetown. As we were looking for hotels a tall, bald man approached me (Ishwinder) and said he could show us a room for 22 MYR. Now that is about INR 440! “Great!” I thought. If you are in Malaysia, you should know that there is no such thing as budget! Most rooms were upwards of 40 MYR so we were happy that this guy who though a little dubious stopped us in the street and then walked a good kilometer with us to show us this guest house which at first we thought was his but later realized was owned by a Chinese man. It was at the edge of the Love Lane and was surrounded by multiple other more upscale guest houses. Although the whole place itself was falling apart, we decided to stay just for the spirit of budget travel and the smile of the man at the reception. It must have been someone’s old bungalow built in a colonial times and obviously it received no attention in the modern day. Anyhow, we still decided to stay …

Yes, traveling long term has made us thrifty and obsessive deal finders but these are five ways we don't save money on our travels.