The reason many people don’t have a travel culture is that they believe you must be rich to travel. Of course, there are a lot of costs associated with travelling but there are also ways around it. One of them is travelling cheap on a budget and the other is travelling for free!
Now let’s break these two down so you can have a good idea how to achieve this in Nigeria.
Travelling Cheap
Not everyone on a budget travels cheap. Some budgets are large enough to accommodate high maintenance itineraries. E.g. someone who travels once a year may have a budget that allows him to travel out of the country to America, Europe or Asia. And just because someone travels to another African country, doesn’t mean the trip is cheaper either. Some African countries are just as expensive as travelling overseas. For instance, travelling to Egypt or Morocco is almost more expensive than travelling to Dubai or Benin Republic.
So when we stress “cheaply” on a budget, we are referring to using up less of your budgeted travel savings. To travel cheaply, choose off-peak periods to travel, do your tourist activities on weekdays rather than public holidays or weekends, befriend the locals and ask them for cheaper alternatives with equal quality of food/tourist sites, etc. Cook your own meals in a studio apartment rather than eat out throughout the trip, use railways and buses for intra-city transportation as opposed to cab services like Taxify. You can also choose to share a room or stay in a hostel when you travel abroad because it is cheaper than having a room to yourself. To get cheap flights, you can compare airline prices and use the most affordable one for your budget or you could get travel credits from your interstate travels with a particular airline and trade it for a flight ticket.
Travelling Free
This may sound impossible but it’s not. If you have a friend who is driving to Lagos or any other state, you would like to visit, you can hitch a ride with them. That already removes the cost of transport fare from your list. If you have relatives in the town you are going to that removes accommodation from the list of travel expenses. If they have a car, you can hitch a ride in or if they are willing to handle your intrastate transportation, then that’s another travel expense off your list. You could even meet up with some good friends who will want to show you around town and take you to the hot tourism spots for a good time while paying the bills. That’s free tours for you too. The only problem is it involves relying heavily on others.
Abroad there are services like travel hacking and Couch surfing that make flights and accommodation free for travelers. But that is yet to become a thing in Nigeria. The best you can hope for is to get a job that covers your relocation costs or sign up with an NGO or Parastatal that is looking for volunteers and will cover transportation and/or accommodation for free in exchange.
Now you know, there is no more excuse for not embarking on the trip of your dreams.