Brisbane Skyline from Mount Coot-Tha .
Getting more value out of your travel.
I toured Europe earlier a couple of
years back. It was an organised tour through a travel company. It was guided in
every detail as to how/when you will
move , at what times you will leave a place, what time you will arrive, you
will get familiar food everyone likes , people around you will be people of
your culture only , and you will have same ones all around in your trip. There
was hardly any scope to alter your time spent at a place. I wouldn’t
like to sound offensive but I will say , It was a kind of herd tour.
My Australia tour was out of a
beaten track and I made my own way through the destinations I visited.
I realised I could get more out of
this tour as I ventured to live like locals, to be with different locals/
tourists of different nations every time
I joined a group . I just stepped in a cab with a group members I had never met,
and there was some kind of pleasant uncertainty , as to how I am going to spend
my day. Every member of the tour I joined had
a small story to talk in introductyion . To put it in short I was a ‘traveller’ and not a ‘Tourist’.
I was on a hike tour of Blue Mountains with an
Australian and a lady from US. I just hopped in to a village on my Blue
mountains tour and had some quick bites & coffee at a restaurant I would
never dream of, It had absolutely an Aussie flavour.
I bicycled around Cairns with a bike
of my host , and it elevated my spirits so high , that I bumped another guy
like me and he enquired if I am a Spanish guy. It took no time to sit together
for a glass of beer and exchange pleasantries.
In all four cities of East coast I
stayed at different homes , I had breakfast with my AirBnB hosts. I could chat
with them on their lifestyles, what they do for their living, how they find life in the place. I travelled by
local trains to meet my groups at different meeting points. On an evening I
went out just with a google GPS to reach Mount Coot-tha , to have a top view of
Brisbane . And there was a kind of misery in getting my way lost , knocking a house door ( as there
was no one on streets) , and then fun getting back to where I had to reach for bus.
And believe me there was a new found
knowledge right from my third day of the
trip when my host in Sydney made me understand how I should get the ‘Transit
System card’ , and travel where ever I wanted by train/bus on same card. It was
fun loading that card , and then saving money in the bargain. The biggest
surprise was to sell back the same card to a retailer ( Seven Eleven) , and get
back my loaded money from him !!
For a travel adventurer , you have
many portals like Visit-a-city OR
Viator.com OR for that matter AirBnB has its own experiences listed on their
site .
Believe me it not only gave me
multiple times the value that otherwise I could get from an organised tour ,
but at a much lesser cost too.
Don’t hesitate to check with me in
case you need some piece of counselling, for planning your next tour as a
traveller and not just a ‘Tourist’.
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