Explore your backyard: travel your own country podcast
This podcast is part of our community week on Indie Travel Podcast, exploring what Indie Travel Podcast Community members are up to, the places you go, and the places you explore while close to home.
There are lots of reasons why overseas travel might not be appropriate for your next trip — maybe you’re limited by time and a long plane trip will eat up too many of your precious hours. Maybe that same plane trip is prohibitively expensive. Or maybe you’re just not in the mood.
But staying in your home country or state doesn’t have to be a second-best option. Thousands or millions of tourists probably visit your home area every year — why shouldn’t you be one of them, even if you are a local? There’s probably heaps to do within a two-hour radius of your home: go and explore.
Why stay home?
To listen, hit play below or find episode 231 in iTunes, Stitcher or Soundcloud:
1. See the sights
The tourist hotspots are hotspots for a reason. Tourists come to New Zealand for a lot of reasons, and most of them aren’t in our home city, Auckland. But Queenstown, Wellington, and Christchurch are all just short flights away.
2. Transport might be cheaper
When we travel around New Zealand, we often go on roadtrips — using our own car saves on hirage fees, and taking friends with us means we can split the petrol. But even if we’re flying, we usually spend a lot less on internal flights than we would if we were travelling internationally. We recently paid just $30 flights for flights to Christchurch, compared to a minimum of $150 to Australia, or around $600 return to one of the Pacific Islands.
3. Company
Since you’re not heading too far away, it might be easier to convince your friends to travel with you. We’ve travelled with friends both at home and abroad, and people seem to agree more readily to a local break. Or maybe it’s just that our friends like roadtrips!
4. You know the systems
Travel at home tends to be easier than travel abroad because you know how things work. You speak the language, the currency is familiar and you have a rough idea of how much things cost, which makes it easier to budget. You get the new experiences without unpleasant cultural misunderstandings. For us, experiencing a different culture is part of the fun of travel, but sometimes it’s not what you’re after — and that’s okay.
5. No currency or passport issues
A lot less planning is needed for a local holiday because you don’t need to change currency or organise a new passport to replace the one which has invariably just expired.
Travel at home can be a great experience — do it! Take a look at how to explore your own city, in How to be a tourist in your own backyard.
To listen, hit play above or check in iTunes, Stitcher or Soundcloud.
I agree — it is so easy to overlook your own region! But also, at least in the USA, there can be a huge amount of regional variability. I always feel like I’ve gone to a different country when I leave New England, because the US is just so VAST and diverse!