How to travel Namibia on a budget: A solo traveler's guide

Namibia is one of the best destinations in the world for road trips but it's also the second least densely populated country in the world located in southern Africa its remoteness means that although the country's goods are affordable if you have a strong currency gas and renting cars is not cheap this makes Namibia a destination that can easily cost one to two hundred US dollars per day even more if you join the tour I was shocked by how little I spent I travel full time and this has been by far my cheapest month traveling all year I'll do a quick breakdown at the end of the video and it gets even more expensive if you're traveling around on your own which is what I did I literally flew out to Namibia no expectations whatsoever people warned me against them they said don't go you're going to spend a lot of money and I told myself that I was gonna find a way to do it so let's start with number one so what I did is I knew that I needed a group travel with and that was going to be really hard because I'm on my own so I started going online Facebook groups couch surfing different local groups in Namibia trying to find people to travel with now I got extremely lucky because there were there was one couch Surfer who he himself was organizing a group and he was and the dates match perfectly and so I sent them a message we started talking I jumped on a call with him actually got me to get introduction from the three other people that were joining the group in order to make sure that I failed safe and comfortable and that was something that was really important to me because at the end of the day like I'm traveling with strangers and I know that you can just go through a travel agency and travel with strangers but there is nobody in charge except for the person that I was traveling with in the group that he'd set up and so I arranged all that I felt really comfortable and I decided to join this group if I hadn't joined this group what I would have done is I would have flown out to Bendix which was my plan originally and from there what you could potentially do is go to different hostels if you haven't been able to find people online and believe me there are people online to travel with like this is the number one thing that people do if they're traveling alone if not I would have just gone to hostels where they have boards and you can actually either post or write down that you're looking for people to travel with you can give people like a general idea of what your schedule is going to be like or the things that you want to do and you can organize a trip together with other people that's really going to keep your expenses down now if you hire an agency we're talking at least camping right um anywhere between 150 200 per day if you join an agency so if that's not an option you can join one of these agencies and it's much much much cheaper to book it on the ground so the next tip would be spontaneous can you actually travel to Namibia without any plans knowing that it's going to be a lot better for you and a lot more affordable if you just go on the ground and start asking for prices on the ground because if you're looking for prices online they're gonna know that they can charge you more however if they're you're already on the ground you will always get cheaper prices whether it's a combination Transportation or even a travel agency if you need to join one so that's what I did I was spontaneous and it paid off but it really depends on the time of the year if you're traveling during High season which is December January then yes you will find a lot more people but then prices will be a lot higher um I was there during the winter months no maybe it's winter months it got very lucky but again it's a risk it's a risk I did come across a few people who had a really hard time finding people to go with um to certain destinations when it comes to car rentals again if you can do it in person that would be a lot better but it really depends it depends on the season because if it's High season chances are there won't be any cars available so that's something that you're risking but I believe that you will always be able to find a car now the brow that you're taking might not even be advised but if you're going into really really remote areas you're gonna need a big car and you're gonna need a 4x4 the interesting thing about Namibia is that the biggest problem is not Cars breaking down the biggest problem is the sand which we actually got to experience ourselves when we got stuck and thought that we weren't gonna make it out of the Forbidden region that was very very interesting to say the least probably one of the most traumatizing days of my life happened in Namibia and then some of the best days of my life happened in Namibia so you never really know what you're gonna get the next tip would be once you've got in a car even if it's a small car I highly suggest you do camping whether or not your car has a tent attached to it or not make sure that you actually can if you go to designated camping areas you're going to have to pay for the camping areas every day now maybe uh what makes it so beautiful and so special is that you can pretty much camp anywhere we use the app iover letter to find camping spots and it was beautiful it was absolutely stunning just being in a place all by ourselves and we got to see wildlife without even trying because we were camping most of the time it was it was beautiful so I highly recommend you do camping no matter what if you're going to be camping don't go to designated camping areas what we would do is we'd camp we do wild camping and then during the day we needed to use a toilet and maybe we'd stop at a camping site to use a toilet wash our stuff another thing that's really important to take into account is the fact that you can camp in all the major national parks but that's gonna cost you that's really going to cost you because there's a difference between paying for the entrance to the national park in comparison to actually having to stay overnight at the national if you want to keep expenses down my suggestion would be Camp right outside the National Park and get up first thing in the morning and be one of the first ones to enter the national park and in the evening again be one of the last ones to leave the National Park camp right along the national park and if you're going in again the next day then go in but make sure not to stay in national park because that's when it comes to food a camping so go ahead buy food from the supermarket if if vegetarian options are scarce is it possible yes definitely no questions asked but they're not a lot of vegetarian options if you however eat meat the quality of the meat is absolutely incredible and Namibia I personally am not much of a meat eater and I was eating meat in Namibia very high quality very very low prices and so that's if you want to keep expenses down while you're traveling I highly suggest that you cook as much as possible if you would like to splurge every now and then then I highly suggest you go to what we were doing you can go over to The Lodges the Safari lodges or just any of The Lodges they're beautiful high-end lodges and you can actually use their facilities and amenities without staying there so that's what we did a few days where we were tired of being out camping and we just wanted a little break and so we'd head out to these beautiful lodges chill you can just go literally go for a cup of coffee and some cake you can have a meal brunch dinner whatever you like it all depends on what your budget's like and how much you're willing to splurge but that would be my personal recommendation when it comes to and last but not least travel during low season that's really going to keep you the low season in Namibia is what Northern Hemisphere considers uh Summers by mid July up until the end of August it's High season in Europe and people are looking to go down south so that's what it's going to get into we were there during the month of June and honestly we came across no affordable compared to how expensive it normally is it got really cold at night I'm not gonna lie temperature would drop below freezing sometimes so just make sure that you get a good sleeping bag and you layer up and if you do that you should be completely fine during the day it gets very warm very very warm um high 20s low 30s um so 90s even up to 100 degrees Fahrenheit and so there's some really we're talking about like a huge huge change in temperature here so as long as you layer up and you bring all the necessary clothing you should be completely fine traveling during low season meant that we were able to deal with the heat of the day it's a desert after all most most of the movie is a desert and it can get extremely intense during the summer during Namibia summer months but by traveling during winter yes it got hot but the weather was still pretty manageable and then it just get really cool so that meant that we were able to skip the crowds and have many of the places that we normally see online all to ourselves and that was completely Priceless so if you want to keep prices down go ahead and travel there during the early summer months late May June to make sure that you make the most of the practically no crowds and low prices and now for the total expenses I spend most of the month of June in Namibia I use a travel spend app to keep track of my expenses I spell 1270 in June but I was in Oslo the first few days of the month that's where I flew out from that would be a total of 1040. 690 of which wear for the 10-day road trip our car had a few damages so about 80 was spent on that the rest were used in accommodation hostels or private rooms and guest houses transportation and meals have a wood came from the supermarket I don't really drink but I did go out clubbing One Night in swappable and this is how I spent a fraction of what people normally spend 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Channel: Go Global with Sibu

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Length: 10min 29sec (629 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 26 2023