How to Travel Almost for Free:
Workaway, House Sitting & the Exchange Life

Five years. 46 countries. 121,300 km. And the question we get asked more than any other is not « where’s your favourite place? » — it’s « how can you afford to do this? » The honest answer: a big part of our journey costs almost nothing. Here’s how.

We are not wealthy. We did not sell a startup. We left Switzerland on August 1st, 2021 with a modest amount of savings, a motorcycle named Falkor, and a simple idea: instead of paying for accommodation wherever we went, we would try to exchange our time and skills for a place to stay. Over the last five years, that idea turned out to be one of the most transformative decisions we ever made — not just financially, but in terms of the experiences it unlocked.

This is not a guide to « travelling for free » in the clickbait sense. It is an honest account of how the exchange economy works in practice, what platforms make it possible, what we give in return, and why — five years in — we would not change a thing about this approach.

The Day We Discovered That Asking Costs Nothing

It started even before we found Workaway. We had left Geneva the day before — tearful farewell, tin cans dragging behind Falkor, Nathalia desperately trying not to be sick after the party — and camped wild by the Rhône after 57 km. The very next morning, riding along the canal near a little village called Chanaz in Savoie, we spotted a camping resort across the water with incredible overwater bungalows.

« We laughed about it at first. Then we looked at each other and thought: why not just ask? The worst they can say is no. » — Nathalia, Chanaz, August 2021

So we crossed the bridge, rode up to the reception, and pitched an idea: we would create a promotional video for the camping in exchange for a few nights’ accommodation. Julia, the communications manager, said yes on the spot. No money changed hands. We got three nights in a tent on the edge of a lake, filmed the whole place with our drone, and handed over the footage before we left. That was the first exchange of our journey — and it set the tone for everything that followed.

The lesson was immediate and permanent: the exchange economy starts with simply daring to ask. If they say no, you are exactly where you were before. If they say yes, a door opens that you did not know existed.

📍 Day 2 on the road. A leap of faith and our first exchange deal — before we even knew what Workaway was. France, August 2021.

Discovering Workaway: The Platform That Changed Everything

A few weeks later, we arrived in Sète, settled into a café with WiFi, and opened a website someone had mentioned on a forum: Workaway. We scrolled through it for an hour with growing disbelief. There were hundreds of hosts within a few hundred kilometres — farms, guesthouses, artistic projects, families, NGOs — all offering free accommodation and meals in exchange for a few hours of help per day.

We immediately had two candidates: a Buddhist monastery in the Pyrenees, and a family called Alie and Matt who ran a rural property called La Taillede. We called them. Twenty minutes later, we had a place to stay for two months.

📍 La Taillede, Ariège. Two months, one caravan, one family and a lot of firewood. Workaway at its best.

Morocco: Building Bricks, Gardening in the Desert, and Three Weeks at the Edge of the Sahara

By the time we reached Morocco, the exchange model had become second nature. We found three Workaway stays in quick succession — and each one gave us access to a version of Morocco that no hotel or riad could have.

The first was near Fès, with Omar, where we became gardeners, handymen, and occasional tour guides for visiting travellers. The episode we made there still makes us smile — Vins with a wheelbarrow and absolutely no idea what he is doing.

📍 Ksar El Boya, Morocco. New friends from the desert, Workaway, Year 1.

The second was Ksar El Boya, near Erfoud at the edge of the Sahara. What was supposed to be two or three days turned into nearly three weeks. We were guests of Redouane and his family, and alongside other international volunteers, we made bricks by hand in the desert, helped restore a traditional Moroccan ksar, and ate every meal together under a sky full of stars. The episode captures it all. This is the kind of experience that costs thousands of euros on a commercial « volunteer tourism » programme — and that we lived for the price of our time and effort.

Sailing the Atlantic: How Volunteering Puts You Inside Experiences Money Can’t Buy

This is the concept that keeps surprising people, and it is the one we believe in most: the exchange economy gives you access to experiences that would be completely out of reach if you tried to pay for them in the conventional way.

The clearest example from our own journey: sailing. Buying a boat costs tens of thousands of euros. Learning to sail through a certified school costs thousands more. We had done neither. But in 2015, through a crew network, we joined the Amphitrite — a 43-foot Wauquiez — as volunteer crew for a transatlantic crossing from the Canaries to Martinique. We helped with watches, cooking, maintenance and navigation. In return: 6,000 km of open ocean, the most physically and emotionally intense experience of our lives, and a sailing education we could never have afforded.

📍 The Amphitrite, mid-Atlantic. Zero sailing experience, 6,000 km, and a story we still tell ten years later. Read the full story →

The same logic applies to the sailing volunteer stay in Greece during Year 2, where we joined a family on a Workaway basis to help crew their vessel through the Greek islands — learning as we went, anchoring in coves that no charter tourist ever reaches, and doing it all for the cost of our time.

TrustedHouseSitters: The Platform That Gave Us a Home in Thailand

Workaway is about contributing skills. TrustedHouseSitters is something different: you look after someone’s home and animals while they travel, and in return you have a free place to live — no work required, just reliable, caring presence. The two platforms are complementary, and together they have covered a third of our journey.

Our first TrustedHouseSitters experience was in Taipei, during Year 4. A 25-day house and pet sit in one of Asia’s most expensive cities — at zero cost for accommodation. We had found the platform almost by accident, and within a week of signing up we had our first confirmed sit.

But the sit that truly defined what this model can offer came in Year 5. Through TrustedHouseSitters, we connected with Sigrid, a German woman living in the coastal village of Nairai, near Rayong in eastern Thailand. Her husband had fallen ill and she needed to return to Germany urgently — she needed someone to look after her home and five dogs. We stepped in with one week’s handover, and then she was gone.

Our five charges in Rayong: Mayo, Leo, Blacky, Foxy and Daisy.

Morning walks on the beach. Every. Single. Day.

The Real Cost of 630 Free Nights

We track every night of this journey on Polarsteps. After five years on the road, here is what the numbers actually say about accommodation.

To put that figure in context: €11,340 is roughly what a couple would spend on 13 months of average budget travel accommodation in Europe. We did not spend it. We spent it in time, skills, care and presence instead — and in return got experiences, connections and stories that no amount of money could have bought.

Every Exchange We Have Done: The Full List

These are all 29 documented exchanges from our five years on the road — Workaway stays, TrustedHouseSitters sits, sailing crew positions, couchsurfing nights and direct host invitations.

Everything You’ve Asked Us About the Exchange Life