I found about Couchsurfing when I was reading the book ” The Four-hour Workweek” from Tim Ferris. He explained how he travelled the world with minimum budget exploring the local culture and people. I always love interacting with new people around the world, and felt this could be an excellent opportunity to connect with different people around the world by meeting them and sharing personal stories.
After trekking to Annapurna Base Camp and Gosaikunda the best thing I have experienced is not the beautiful scenery but the people from around the world and getting the opportunity to meet and connect with them.
So, Why I am using Couchsurfing and meeting people?
1. Making new friends
Earlier I used to have only friends who are mostly from the schools or the locality but Couchsurfing has helped me to make friends from around the globe.
2. Increase language and communication skills
So, If I need to talk about the advantage from my perspective this is a great opportunity for me to learn to increase my English and communicating with people. I have been freelancing as a kindle publishing assistant, General Virtual assistant and this kind of opportunity help me to increase my ability to communicate well.
3. Helping And Learning to save money
One thing I have noticed is that many travel agencies and salespeople are charging too high to foreigners and also wanting money for small help. I have seen and experience this kind of things and felt that if I could just share my local knowledge with people I meet it will help them a lot.
Saving money is an essential part of travelling solo and I felt that I could help people to travel like a local and experience the things that are not much popular to tourists.
And the best thing about this is I am so lucky that I have also met the people who want to work with me so I always felt this is WIN/WIN situation.
4. Expand my perspective about the world
When I was trekking I met people from different part of the world and listening to them was one of the best things I could ever get for free. It helps me to know the different perspective of the people and their opinions.
Couchsurfing in Nepal is still not so popular to local people like us. This platform is not for making money but helping each other while travelling but here in Nepal, this platform is mostly used by travel agents and hotel owners so their main motive is to only earn which might be ok from their perspectives but I think people use this platform to connect, learn and share the experience.