Calen Otto is the author of “The Art of Unruly Travel on A Budget: A Guide to Traveling the USA on a Small Budget as Ethically & Creatively as Possible”. They have travelled all over the US leveraging couch surfing, work exchanges and other low cost means to travel despite having little to no budget. I was really inspired by their journey and hope to use their tips on my future travel! Here are some questions I asked them before they headed out on a recent trip to London:

Who or what inspired you to travel and live out loud like this?

Before I ever traveled across the USA, when I was 19 years old, I went to South America for a year. While I was graduating high school, it seemed like everyone else knew what they wanted to do whether it was go to trade school or go to college or whatever it was. And I literally had no idea what I wanted to do. And I thought that it was really strange and quite intimidating that other people knew what they wanted to do.

I just thought, “How could I possibly know what I wanna do for the rest of my life? How could I possibly know what to go to college for?” Because it's so expensive, my parents had some money saved up in a college fund for me, but they didn't have enough just to go to college and be able to pay for it. One of our family-friends’ daughter had been an exchange student and they were like, well, why don't you be an exchange student?

I had never traveled, I grew up in rural Ohio and I'd never traveled outside of like [going to] Pennsylvania and spent like a week on a family road trip in Florida for the summer. That was about the extent of my travels. I was like, be an exchange student? Oh my goodness, that sounds so intimidating. But I ended up talking to the family friend. Her name was Haley and she was just telling me like how much she learned from being an exchange student and how much fun she had. She also made it sound like a big party when actually it was really, really hard. So that inspired me to be an exchange student.

I was actually extremely ignorant on where other countries were, what their cultures were like, what languages they spoke, all of these things. I just kind of picked Chile on a map in South America. I ended up going there for a year and I lived with the host family and their daughter was sent to the US. So it was a true exchange. I didn't speak any Spanish; they didn't speak any English. I grew up, with a family friend who was like a sibling, but with no biological siblings. Now I had two, one who was older than me, one who was younger than me. So I was in this completely new place and it was a huge struggle. But the one thing that kept me going during that time was that I made friends with the other exchange students that were in the country. And we started backpacking together, going to different countries together. And that is when I caught the travel bug.

My whole world opened up from rural Ohio where my education wasn't that great, there wasn't a diverse group of people and there weren't a lot of opportunities. Going to another country, blew the doors in my brain wide open as to what is out there in the world. So that's why I caught the travel bug.

Later on, when I biked across the US, there wasn't quite one person that I looked up to who was doing something similar, but I knew I wanted to travel. And at the time I actually had a broken foot, that was healing. I was teaching yoga and I couldn't teach yoga during that time. So I was just like a broke young person living at my parents' house. And I wanted to travel. I didn't know how.

I went to this social group one time and someone just said to me, “I knew this woman who traveled across the USA and she just worked for things as she went”. And I was like, okay, if she can do that, I can do that. If someone can do that, I can do that.

So that's really where the roots grew for my bike trip. And then I found Rob Greenfield online and he was also biking around, you know, he was always talking about social justice issues through travel and trying to minimize his impact on the environment. So I started watching his videos. If there was someone I kind of looked up to, I guess, that he would be someone that I learned from.

I am a very anxious person and I'm not the most confident person in the world, but I would say that I'll have brave moments and that's where I will, you know, book the trip or book the flight for the next place or schedule the trip or commit to the big thing and force myself to do it later on. But I've also realized over time that traveling for me, it comes with so many different risks and it's really scary, but the outcome of all the different people you get to meet and how quickly you grow and learn and all the beautiful places you get to see has always been worth it for me. So I think that's what has inspired me: all those gems I've found over the years while traveling.

How do you start planning for a trip?

I don't plan super well, to be honest, I just got to London today and I literally have nothing planned except the day I'm picking up a rental car and that is about it. I also have a hard time planning for a trip, but I guess I plan for a trip by knowing that I'm not really gonna plan for it. I plan to get there and talk to the locals or talk to people that I meet while I'm traveling and people that I meet while I'm traveling and plan my itinerary from there.

After they tell me the coolest things to do, because I've realized if I just try to plan everything ahead of time by what I see on the internet or even reading a guidebook, it's never as good and as like raw and juicy and wonderful as what someone who has actually done it in person is going to tell me. But to keep costs low, which takes a little bit of planning ahead, I really like using couch surfing where you can sleep on people's couches for free.

I've really liked WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) over the years. I use WWOOF because you can do a work exchange and you put in so many hours a week and they give you a place to stay and they're supposed to feed you as well. So those things do take a bit of planning, but they do keep costs low. I have also used dating apps as a way while I'm on the go to meet people, to stay with, or like have a local tour guide to hang out with. And that's usually how I find things to do as well. I do the work exchanges and I meet people while I'm doing them. And they usually are pretty adventurous too. So we either hook up with the locals or we go off on adventures by ourselves.

So basically my planning is to say that I will plan a few things. For example, for this trip to London, I, at the last minute, booked our first Airbnb in London, and I have the rental car booked for a week. But I don't know where we're going during that week in the rental car, you know? I just know that we're going to be camping and backpacking and things like that. So I'll have a little bit of a structure. And my favorite thing is just watching how everything kind of falls into place. So that's the most planning that I ever do.

What are things you look for to make a successful trip?

For me, what completes a trip is meeting someone who I instantly have a connection with, because I feel like that happens really easily when you travel solo and you're around other travelers that makes a trip successful to me.

When I eat really incredible plant based food that makes it successful to me. And it doesn't have to be the most expensive or even something that I've never had before in my life. But just like, how are the locals doing vegan food? How are they doing plant-based food? What can I get on a budget? What new things can I try? What's the atmosphere like at the restaurant? Food does a lot for me when I travel.

And I also feel like a trip is complete for me when I've gone on a really epic hike or I've spent a lot of time submerging myself in nature. So I would say that meeting incredible people, eating delicious plant food and anchoring myself in nature really completes a trip for me.

How do you keep track of your travel? How do you document your experience while experiencing things?

I also have to find this balance between not being so sucked into my technology that I miss out on the moment, but also capturing it so I can remember it later. I'm actually someone who doesn't have the best memory. Pictures and videos, if I go back and see them my brain starts to go around that memory and fill in what happened the rest of the day and who I talked to, what I ate, what sounds and smells I experienced. So pictures and videos are really important for me as well.

I think that I just know in my head, what is important for me to document and I ask myself, am I doing it for me or am I doing it for someone else? Because if I'm doing it for me, because it's really special and I wanna look back on this and remember it, I feel like it's always worth it. Even if I'm kind of out of the moment or I annoy people taking pictures of my food or something like that.

But if it's just for other people, cuz I'm like, “Ooh, I just wanna share this” and I'm just sick of being on my phone or my camera I can feel in my body that I need to get off, like “Calen, you need to calm down, you need to be present”. When I feel that urge to just put my camera down or my cell phone down, or whatever I'm using to document, because I'm starting to annoy myself, then I really try to be present and take a mental snapshot to come back to later. Which doesn't always work cuz I forget a lot.

What made you fall in love with travel?

It's really hard for me to wrap my brain around the fact that not everyone has the desire to travel because I feel like it's so hooked into my body. I feel like it's like the essence of me. And I think maybe it has to do with how I relate to the feeling of being home, because I feel at home when I'm traveling.

I feel at home on the road, I feel at home with my backpack, and waking up in strange places. I feel at home with the activist group that I meet while traveling. I feel at home practicing my yoga to kind of anchor myself when I'm really stressed out while traveling. And I feel at home with people that I love and I love people all over the world.

So I think that being on the road, not all the time, but you know, even a third of my time keeps me from getting homesick in a way, even though it might be the reverse for other people because I keep getting to go back to those places that I love.

I feel like life, in my brain, is so short and there's so much that I wanna do. There's so much that I wanna see. And travel, for me, really feels like the only way to do that, because I feel like it's living life in full color. I think what got me hooked was that I really felt at home when I started traveling and I felt so deeply in love with the people that I was traveling with that I feel like I saw a completely different side of people. I met a whole different group of people and it opened a lot of doors for me. So I think that it was probably a rush all at once with being really overwhelmed by how vibrant life can be in a way that I didn't quite see before. And I think that's what got me hooked, honestly.

Thank you to Calen for sharing their experiences and knowledge with me! You can follow them on Instagram @unruly_traveller and their blog Unruly Living at wanderwoman.online