How to Travel the World for Free – Including from Kenya

Traveling is great.

But traveling for free or having someone else pay for it… that’s heaven 🙂

In today’s article, I show you some of the ways you can travel for free, including from Kenya.

And free in this context means you’re not paying money for your travel.

But you’re probably paying for the free travel by other means such as time and/or work.

My greatest memory in my history of travel is that time in 2017 when Qatar Airways held a travel for free promotion where over a couple of few days and was offering what they dubbed “zero-fare golden air tickets” available to travelers worldwide.

And most recently, I got the privilege of flying from Nairobi to Geneva return for US$ 380 at the time when Kenya Airways was having their inaugural flight to the city.

And in case you’re wondering, you can actually travel for free including from Kenya.

Read on for all the tea…

Enter travel competitions

A great way to travel for free from Kenya is by entering travel competitions. And there are many such contests open to contestants worldwide including Kenyans.

I have traveled for free from Kenya courtesy to entering one travel competition after another.

The first travel competition I ever won was a fully paid for trip to Norway by the Norwegian Tourism Board VisitOslo and boy, since then, I am always on the look out for travel contests open to entrants worldwide.

And as a way of giving back, I make sure to list competitions for travel on this blog.

Start a travel blog

A second great way to travel for free is by starting a travel blog.

A travel blog gives you an opportunity to share your travel stories, dreams, tips, and hacks.

Over time, depending on how useful your blog is, and how uniquely you’ve positioned it, you’re bound to be noticed by readers, brands and other players in the travel space.

Through this blog, I have been able to travel for free, get free hotel stays, and even free tours like this Rovos Rail trip from Pretoria to Durban.

You can read all about it here on this link.

Subscribe to airline newsletters and socials

A third way to travel for free, including from Kenya, is by looking out for travel deals and error fares by airlines.

Most airlines world over have been known to offer free flights at one point or another in their business history. Well, may be charging only for the taxes which really doesn’t go to their coffers, but it’s sill a great deal.

In June of 2019 for instance when Kenya Airways launched its first inaugural direct flights to Geneva, Switzerland, and Rome, Italy, they had a ticket sale and though KQ didn’t offer free flights, they had some really super cheap bargains.

I managed to garner me a Nairobi Geneva return flight for KES 38,000.

And I have learned that the best way to never miss out on such travel deals is by signing up for notifications with all airlines that fly out from Nairobi as well as with various travel deal websites all over the internet.

I have also learned that the more of these airlines and travel deal websites you subscribe to, and their social media platforms you follow, the more likely you will see the latest travel free trip opportunities.

And one you have subscribe, make sure to visit their socials as often as is reasonably possible.

Like the travel competitions too, I also list on this blog travel deals that Kenyans and other travelers globally can take advantage of.

I also announce any deal that I land on on all my socials including Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram……and most recently on the EvaMtalii YouTube Channel!!!

Engage with others

Share with all your friends and family about EvaMtalii on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and even this blog and the posts related to travel for free, travel contests, travel related jobs, win a free trip, or travel competitions open to contestants worldwide.

The beauty of this is that should you ever miss a travel for free alert, then at least one or two of the people you told and know you about it will alert you!!

See, scratch my back I scratch your back!

Also remember to leave a comment on our various social media networks and here on the EvaMtalii blog.

This will be your first step towards building networks and learning a thing or two about how to find travel free opportunities for yourself.

Get your visas way before you need to travel

As you’re probably already aware, international travel on a Kenyan passport or any other ‘third-world‘ country for that matter is just as complex as it sounds.

Technically therefore, except for the about 74 countries that Kenyans can travel to visa free or get a visa on arrival, you pretty much need a visa to get everywhere else – read the remaining 125 countries.

And I can’t imagine anything worse than the lack of a visa standing between you and a free air ticket to some exotic location that you’ve always dreamed about.

But I found a work around and I talk about in details in this post here.

Personally, I ensure that at any one time, I my passport has a multiple-entry Schengen visa, Canadian visa, US visa, and UK visa; and all valid for at least one year or more.

So with my current 5-year multiple entry US B1/B2 tourist visa, I am now able to legally enter the United States + an additional 39 countries which I would ordinarily require 39 separate visa to enter. Click on this link here for the full list of the countries that Kenyan passport holders can travel to with a valid US visa.

With my 4 year multiple-entry Canadian visa, I can legally travel to Canada +11 additional countries that I ordinarily would have needed 11 separate visas to travel to.

My 2-year multiple-entry Schengen visa on the other hand grants me visa-free access for a maximum of 90 days (unless otherwise noted) to a whooping 26 countries in the Schengen territory + to an additional 15 countries that would ordinarily require me to get a visa before travelling to these countries.

I list all of these 11 non-Schengen territory countries you can visit with your Schengen visa in this post.

Evidently therefore, the trick here is to position yourself for any airline sale, a travel for free or free airline ticket notification and be ready to pounce on it because these bargains are usually time bound, are spontaneous, and sell out super fast.

Have your employer pay for your trip

If you’re one of the blessed few with a job that involves travel, however minimal, with proper planning you can travel the world for free.

Basically the gist here is to combine leisure travel with an existing business trip, significantly reducing your travel costs sometimes even to $0.

To achieve this, you will have to either arrive to your business trip destination a couple of days earlier to sight see or stay over for a few days and enjoy the city after the end of your business trip.

Its really up to you and will be determined by several factors both personal and business related.

I am a beneficiary of traveling on the employer’s dime😄.

No way am I flying all the way to Timbuktu and back without kujivinjari.

And guess what, its a win-win for both my employer and myself. I have a motivator to travel away from home for work and I never need any convincing…. like many others I know of… na sijataja mtu 😝

So basically what I usually do is take 2-3 days of my annual leave days either on days leading up to the business trip or after the business trip. And in such cases I only end up paying for my hotel stays and food for the extra days since the air tickets are already paid for.

Another option is to take a late night flight. This particularly works if visiting a rather small city so can be seen in a couple hours, or one you’ve been to before and just want to check out a few places.

On a recent work trip to Kigali for instance, instead of leaving on a morning flight, I toured the city for about 7 hours, and then left for Nairobi on a late night flight.

Organize a tour

There are many tour operators or tours companies in Kenya and everywhere else that will cover your travel costs and/or give you a free vacation if you take on the role of ‘sales man/woman’ for them.

With Bonfire Adventures for instance, if you bring a group of 35 people on their Egypt/Israel pilgrimage trip from Kenya, then you or your church pastor travels absolutely free!!!!!

(No, Bonfire didn’t pay me. I just stumbled on them while researching content for this article)

I am certain that if you employ at least one of these 7 simple tips, you’ll never have to cry over missing out on a travel the world for free opportunity, a travel competition or travel contest that you potentially could have taken advantage of!!

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