In the 21st century, travel is much different than it was back in the 1990’s. Nowadays, we all have this wondrous device called a smartphone. The internet has brought us many social networks to meet new people and stay in touch with old friends. The airline industry landscape has changed with new budget airlines to make airline travel compete with ground transportation between cities and countries around the world. These tools have made travel cheaper than ever before.
These days, we are also more in tune with meditation and mindfulness than ever before. Mindfulness has become a buzzword, and magazines like Time and Newsweek are even talking about it. Everyone seems to be meditating and doing yoga nowadays. When we take these concepts into our travel lifestyle, these tools will help us go deeper in our travel experience than we ever could before.
I recently spent a year traveling the world. I visited 24 countries on 38 one-way flights that averaged under $100 each. I stayed with locals for free in almost every city, and I deeply immersed myself in the culture by living like a local.
I used airline websites like kayak.com and skyscanner.com to find the cheapest deals on flights, and I learned how to ‘travel hack’ my way to lower fares. I opened up my itinerary to allow the price of airline tickets to guide me, and it let me visit several countries on my trip totally for free, just by being open to extending my layovers along the way. I became adept at using online tools to get the cheapest airfare, and I now consider myself a travel expert.
I used social networks like Couchsurfing.org and facebook to meet and stay with locals. These people showed me the culture of their country just by letting me live with them. We spent time together exploring the city, and I never got ripped off because I was with locals all the time. I became friends with these people, and I am still am in contact with almost all of them to this day through channels like Facebook. None of this was available in the 20th century, yet in 2015, this is becoming the normal way to travel.
With the advent of the shared economy with sites like Airbnb and Couchsurfing that give the ‘local experience,’ even hotels are being forced to adapt. Hotels and hostels are trying to jump on the bandwagon and give people the ‘local experience,’ when hotels were once a bastion of isolation. With the advent of budget airlines that offer their flights in one-way segments, even the behemoth airlines have been forced to change their pricing to offer cheap one-way flights instead of forcing their customers to purchase tickets in round-trip segments to save money. The travel landscape has totally changed in the last fifteen years.
I just published a book entitled "How To Spin the World Around: With Cheap Travel, Technology and Mindfulness." The book outlines how to use your smartphone as a personal travel agent to find the best deals as well as new local friends anywhere in the world. It goes over all of the most popular social networks, travel review websites, and smartphone apps to not only get the best deals, but also replace the need for any of those old big travel books you are used to carrying on your trips.
My book also goes into the fine details about how to use your mindset to help you get a deeper travel experience. It outlines how setting intentions about your dreams and following up with awareness of opportunity to manifest those dreams will help you make the most of your travel experience. Also, by carrying a state of gratitude on your travels, you will see how you will not only brighten the lives of everyone you meet, but you will also enjoy yourself more when you focus on the positive. A mindfulness practice will also help you get the most out of any situation when things don’t go as planned.
Indeed, the travel landscape has changed in the 21st century. We have an opportunity to see the world in ways we never could have imagined back in the 1990s with new technology, and an awareness of a mindfulness practice. With these simple tools, it is possible for anyone to travel the world both cheaply and deeply at the same time. Learn more about my new book at www.spintheworldaround.com or find it in bookstores online or ask for it at your local bookstore. I believe everyone can travel the world if they desire, and I’d love to show you concrete ways of how to do it.
Russell Eric Dobda circled the planet to visit 24 countries on 38 flights that averaged less than $100 each while he slept for free and lived an inspiring yearlong adventure. He had the time of his life without knowing a soul yet lived like a local everywhere he went. Along the way, he developed a system that others can use to see the world on a shoestring and create rich experiences at the same time. With half of Americans letting vacation days go to waste, Russell can use his expertise to help them enjoy the vacation they never they thought they could afford. He is an expert on how to make the most of travel technology and how to travel mindfully.