sofasurfers

We are Fleur and Ollie

What to do when faced with the threat of global depression, mass redundancy and general falling in of the skies above? Perhaps make like the Garbage Warrior and build an off-grid “earthship” out of old water bottles? Or maybe buy a hen and a rooster and get building that ark? Or - like we are about to do - go couchsurfing around the world. Ok, that’s an exaggeration - we’re off to couchsurf a continent. But what do we mean? Slobbing out on the deluxe pleather sofas of Kazakhstan, flicking through unintentionally comic local soaps? Quite possibly. But only as a byproduct of Mission Couchsurf.

In virtually every country on this earth, kindly folk are offering their couch/spare room/garden/body-sized pockets to travellers who subscribe to the burgeoning number of travel-networking websites, or “hospitality exchanges”. It’s a match-making site for the as-yet unpaired ‘have couch’/'want couch’ halves of the world. You can couchsurf in Antarctica. In Micronesia. And - happily for us - Russia, Mongolia, China and Kazakhstan. Is it quid pro quo, everyone asks? No! It works on the premise of Pay It Forward - those karma gods are watching… Couchsurfing is free, friendly, and, yes - thrillingly - entails staying with total strangers met online. Ollie and Fleur are go… (FB)

And where are they going? Well…click on this map to see: