Once a year, go some place you have never been…
Dalai Lama.
I was once having a chat with my cousin Kelvin (bro) about travel and how expensive he thought travel was. So many people have asked how i can pay hundreds of thousands to travel and i cannot help but chuckle. I also thought tickets cost a lot and well, they could, but with proper planning it is very easy to travel on a realistic budget. I follow a very simple plan that i will break down in the most basic form.
I pick a month i would love to travel and instead of inputting the exact dates for my travel, i select the whole month and pick the cheaper dates for my outbound and inbound flights. I will randomly pick July 2020 and my destination being Frankfurt in Germany.
I will then search for the flights, which will display most of the prices for each day i pick for both my departure and return flights, if you are a budget traveler then definitely pick the cheaper dates. I mostly pick the second cheapest flights because i am a Flying Blue member and i am garnering points/miles, i also use Emirates since i have a decent number of miles there. The beauty of having miles is that at some point you can upgrade to Business Class by using your cash plus miles (Hello champagne, comfort and class lol). So i mostly use Air France, KLM and Emirates to increase my Flying Blue and Skyward miles respectively (I will do a whole post on miles/points and upgrades).
I mostly avoid major holidays, Mondays and some weekends where the prices may be considerably high. But that is the technique i use to score cheap flights. It also helps to book your flight months or weeks ahead of your travel rather than too close to your date of departure. I mostly use Skyscanner, Momondo and Opodo as they have amazing discounts and if you go ahead to book a hotel or hire a car via their websites, you get massive discounts. It is important to note that depending on the hotels you choose, you could get more points that come in handy for upgrades, after-all, we all cannot afford to pay for Business or First class tickets on the spot.
I say you could fly to Europe from Africa at a paltry 446 pounds, i can see you rolling your eyes but trust me, for a measly 58,000KES you can fly from JKIA to CDG, Paris on a return ticket. People tend to shy away from cheaper airlines and i do understand the hesitation but Ethiopian airlines is a pretty decent airline though the Bole Airport at Addis Ababa, can literally drive you crazy if you have a short layover, second in line is Egypt Airlines which can sometimes be the cheapest and i was really intrigued to learn it is a Star Alliance member so why not try it out? Oh! And always scour for tickets on weekdays at odd hours.
As i had earlier mentioned, a Schengen visa basically lets you visit the entire Schengen area (kindly read your visa sticker carefully). You can always choose to drive to the next Schengen country, take a bus which is actually super comfy, take the ICE train and admire the scenery or, as i personally do, take a flight which is usually a 1-2 hours direct flight which saves on so much time on the road or rails. Once again, booking your ticket early comes in very handy in getting a cheap ticket. Imagine paying 5-6,000KES to fly from Copenhagen, Denmark to Oslo, Norway? Proper and prior planning goes a long way wanderlusts!!
Please remember to clear your cookies and always compare 2 or 3 sites before settling on one site. It is really important to note that in case you have to change your dates or destination the agent will charge a fee and the airline will charge the fair difference so always have travel insurance, secondly a basic ticket may be super cheap but if you foresee any future changes in your travel plan, kindly add that 15 euros or so to cater for this. The beauty of booking directly with the airlines is that changes are cheaper and easier.
Travel tales by Sheila 