Exploring CouchSurfing

CouchSurfing is staying a night at the home of another person, especially a stranger, all for free. CouchSurfing is usually done when one visits a place away from his home.Garvin Kayizi, a Ugandan that has been couch surfing for three years, said his first couch surfing experience was in Rwanda in 2009. He shares his exciting thrill of couch surfing.“As most people know it, couch surfing is a hospitality exchange network but in reality it’s a social networking site just like Facebook, tweeter, Skype and many more but its major focus is on enabling fellow travelers to connect, share cultures and even host each other.Most importantly, it’s free and that’s what makes it widely spread. The process of becoming a member is quite easy as you fill out a personal profile with hobbies, brief background, passions, beliefs, places you’ve traveled to before etc. After becoming a member, couch surfing is made easy and available to you. If you are currently planning on traveling on your next adventure, you can utilize a wide variety of host profiles to get free accommodation.There are a lot of reasons why people couchSurf. It’s free and that makes it a lot much attractive. You can get you in touch with a lot of other foreign cultures and one gets to know the places worth seeing from their hosts.The things I love most about being hosted in another home, is experiencing the taste of foreign cuisines, exchanging cultures and making new friends.When he first visited Rwanda in 2009, I didn’t get where to sleep as couchSurfing still unheard of at the time. However, after three days of staying in a hotel, I found a couchSurfing family in Nyamirambo through the website.It’s not like I had met these people at a local bar or along the street while asking for directions. This family had flung open the doors to welcome me in.I felt part of the family and they were genuinely interested in my story, background and plans. They shared their couchSurfing experiences with me and gave me confidence to move on. It was the sort of visit that makes you want to call them every now and then just to make sure they are alright.”