Help for a first time traveller in Africa

I'm from the UK and have wanted to travel for some time and feel as though I am in an ideal situation currently. My job allows me to put in a lot of overtime and save approx. 150-200 GBP per week. I've always wanted to visit Africa, ideally starting in Ghana or somewhere busy and populated, my main desire is to get a real taste of the culture and also to experience the feeling of travelling alone and getting by.

Although it may sound a little odd, I'm approaching the trip as something to gain an experience and understanding from, rather than for enjoyment. Therefore, I don't want to be tied down to a volunteering project or a commitment to a single place, I would love to be able to move around at free will. I am looking at doing it as cheaply as possible, so no tours etc, essentially only spending on food and essentials. Wherever possible I would camp (although I am unsure of the safety of this alone?).

So, to sum up, I want to travel for about 3 months, at free will around Africa, more interested in culture and people than wildlife and sights. How much roughly will I be looking at needing?

Edited by: Blocko

Hard to say without knowing where exactly you are going. Some places in africa are obscenely expensive, others are dirt-cheap. It also depends on what kind of accomodation you fancy, what mode of traveling (e.g. taking some flights), and possible extras like safaris or the occasional treat.

You mentioned Ghana so i assume you'll just roam around west-africa. I don't know, but if you wanna hear a number i'd say 3-4k GBP for 3 month should do. That excludes, flights, visas, insurance and vaccinations. If you have more cash to spent, even better!

This is a good place to start your research as it has many info at a glance.

http://www.travelindependent.info/africa-west.htm

Also look into the LP guidebook to West Africa.

Thanks, this is very handy. I should have been more specific in saying i would be staying in west africa. I really want to know what the absolute minimum i can spend is, no safaris and very few treats, maybe a few beers here and there. Accomodation would be as basic as possible, camping if I can.

Blocko, this question what the bare minimum is almost impossible to answer as it depends on so many things to factor in.

Or, well, actually the answer might be really easy: The bare minimum is 0,-, of course! People have travelled for free all over the globe, wildcamping, eating what mother nature has to offer, bumming rides or walking/cycling and ask priests/missions for help. Now, that is extreme, but there's a fair few hardcore traveller out there, who manage to get along for less than $10USD per day, no matter what, no matter where, in the UK as well as on Fidji, India or Ghana. Take that one dude who is cycling the world since 20 years (name escapes me at the moment). He has been living of 5USD for years in all parts of the world. It is doable, but it's not very enjoyable for most people and even less though as a first-timer as it not only takes balls, but bags of experience to accomplish that. There's boatloads of travellor tales like that, people venturing out with $100 on their pocket only to return few years and 100 countries later!

A big factor on cost is how fast you travel. You might find dirt-cheap accomodation in some small family run guesthouse in some remote village, where they feed you for very cheap and where you can live on 10USD a day. But those are the gems that are hard to find and not everywhere. Of course, once you find a nice fishervillage, have some friends there and basically hang out long-term, things get much cheaper. On the contrary, if you move on every few days, things can get real pricey real quick. Transport can be expensive, you'll be ripped-off (especially with little experience), you have to pay bribes and sometimes have to take whatever accomodation that is available, no matter what.

So, to sum up, i think that $30 a day is absolutely rock-bottom everything considered for the shoestring-backpacker. That means $2700 or close to 2kGBP. But in your OP you state that you're able to save up 200GBP per week. So why not save up a little longer (e.g. 20 weeks (4k) instead of 10 weeks (2k)) so you have some safety margin and budget to work with. It's always good to have some back-up money just in case--you never know what happens. It'll certainly help to put your mind on ease when travelling as there's nothing worse than you running out of money somewhere in the middle of nowhere. I've had it once, on my very first longish trip (5month India 12 years ago) that i cashed my last USD50 travel cheque 2 weeks prior to my flight home. In Kerala of all places while fly out was from Delhi. I was too proud to call my family and ask for western-union money, so i somehow made it, but boy that was no fun and a tough & tedious ride! Not very relaxing that!

Also, if i'd ask you how much the minimum is to travel in the UK, what would your answer be???

First of all, I'd like to strongly advise against paying any bribes, to anyone, anywhere in Africa.
I spend a lot of time travelling around in Africa and I've never ever paid a bribe. If you do, you'll make it harder for the next person that comes through, as a bribe will come to be expected. Yoiu might also get yourself arrested, and spending any time in an African prison is not going to be a good experience.

Rant over. Now, what you need to live on. I spent 6 weeks in Ghana in 2010 with my bloke and this is a breakdown of what we spent, which should help to give you a rough idea of costs.

Sleeping - an average of £11 a night for a double room with bathroom.
That's fairly basic, but not uncomfortable, you can go cheaper but we're now in our 50's and need a decent sleep! I don't recall seeing any campsites, but maybe some places would let you put a tent up in their gardens.

Food - our next biggest expense, around £8 a day (3 meals daily, 2 people).
Beers are roughly £1 for a large bottle, and it's good, so we drank quite a lot of it.....

Transport - public transport is cheap, crowded and slow. We used buses, shared taxis and trotros (minibuses) and spend £100 in total, moving every 2 or 3 days and travelling the full length of the country, up the east side of the lake (Ho, Hohoe, Yendi) across to Tamale, up to the Burkina Faso border at Paga, then down again the other side of the lake (via Kumasi) to the coast for a bit - so quite a bit of travelling.

Add on another few quid a day for all the other stuff - entry fees, souvenirs and so on - we spent about £5 a day between us.

So, you can work out how little you can manage on, but unless you are desperate to get away asap, I definitely agree with marc_foo that the more you can save before you go, the better.
You never know what might crop up and it would be a shame to miss out on any opportunities just because you didn't have the cash.
Even more importantly, you don't want to be coming home completely broke and with no job, so some back-up savings would be handy. If you enjoy the job you have now, it's worth asking before you leave if they'd be prepared to employ you again after your trip - that worked for me for about 18 years, taking a few months off each year and working for the same company in between trips.

One last thing, brush up on your French before you go, Ghana is the only English speaking country in West Africa, other than the Gambia, which is not many people's favourite African country anyway.

It is one of the biggest misconceptions that Africa is cheap. It is - for the most part - not! Period. I mean, who knew that Luanda (Angola) is one of the top 2 or 3 most expensive cities in the whole world, only rivaled by Tokyo and Oslo??? A cab ride from the airport to downtown costs you close to $100 bones there!!!

The usual way people approach travel is to come up with a period of time and a budget. That's obviously what you are trying to do Blocko. They then start dividing time by money to come up with an average daily budget. Or as you are doing, try to figure it out in reverse. 'How little can I do it for?'

For me, trying to calculate budget and time are the wrong way to go about it entirely. Here's what you know. When the time comes, you will have X amount of money. That is fixed (unless you go into debt on a credit card). Time is NOT fixed. You may have a maximum time available but there is no minimum time.

So, you buy a one way ticket to A and start. You spend as much as you need to spend to get what you want out of each day, without throwing money away. When you have seen and done everything you want to see and do in A you move on, not before. When either the funds available or the maximum time available runs out you go home.

Travel can be as simply or as complicated as you choose to make it. I prefer simple. There is no need to work out itineraries or budgets. Just get on the plane to A.

If you really want to "understand the culture" you'll end up holing up somewhere that you like.

This is very cheap, you can stay in somebody's compound and basically become integrated into the family that's living there.

When you travel to a place like Ougadougou, for example, you may quickly meet somebody (usually a young male) who will offer you a situation like this quite quickly.

In general, the more places you go and the quicker you travel, the more expensive travel is. Stay away from the cities and you'll find you can live quite cheaply.

But the first step is to just go.