Budget Travel

Foreign markets, exotic foods, buzzing cities, fabled ruins—you don’t need to be a jet-set high-roller to experience it all. As the world gets smaller, the opportunity for low-cost travel gets greater, and these budget-friendly heavy weights certainly pack a punch. Traveling on a budget will keep you off the beaten path and away from the big names of well-trodden, and often steeply priced, destinations. So grab your sense of adventure, and let these low-cost locales will bowl you over with their buzzing aliveness.

Walk through history in the walled city center of old Chiang Mai. Witness cultures intersecting and taxis nearly colliding in frantically fabulous Mumbai. See soaring sky-scrapers in Shanghai, Art Nouveau architecture in Prague and neoclassical monuments in Budapest. The thrill-seeking can scale cliffs and ride white waters in Yosemite, or trek to the ruins of a lost civilization in Cusco. The art-hungry can roam Mexico City’s museums, the culture-hungry can delve into Istanbul’s bazaars, and the plain hungry can feast on an array of international delights at, well, any of these destinations.

Head to pulsing metropolises, hill-perched historical towns, untamed wildernesses and irrigated desert development. Let your tongue twist foreign sounds, or leave your passport at home. Just don’t use the lack-of-funds excuse for not getting out there.