What is it like to travel long-term? Well, in a word…..exhausting. But fulfilling.
The longest I have continuously travelled without returning home is 2 years. In the grand scheme of travel bloggers, that is nothing. There are loads of people out there who have been travelling for 10+ years. But in comparison to a large majority of the world who have done little more than an annual beach holiday, it is quite a long time. So what happens when you are away for that long and is travelling the world all it’s cracked up to be? Here I share all the weird things I experienced when travelling long-term.
1. Everything becomes normal
It is amazing how quickly you adapt to changes in your life when travelling and everything becomes normal, perhaps even boring. Sleeping on an airport floor…..normal. Brushing your teeth next to half a dozen strangers…..normal. Not knowing where you will be tomorrow…..normal. Everything bizarre and far removed from your routine back home becomes so normal to you. Your friends and family may still think it’s weird and can’t understand it, but to you it’s just become your normal everyday life.
2. You get bored of new places
I remember travelling through some of the Southern states of the USA on an organised tour and we had several days of visiting absolutely stunning national parks in an area of the country which had a lot of natural rock formations. First we went to Zion National Park, then we saw Bryce Canyon, Monument Valley then finally the Grand Canyon. By the time we got to the Grand Canyon, I was bored of having a week of seeing the same type of landscape.
Now I am not saying that the Grand Canyon wasn’t beautiful, but after days of seeing similarly awe-inspiring rock formations, it just didn’t have the same wow factor, compared to if I had flown there straight from the UK. It’s not that I didn’t appreciate how lucky I was to be seeing this natural wonder of the world, it’s just that when you travel long-term you get used to seeing spectacular sites on a daily basis, that you almost become numb to it. To avoid this, try and vary up your itinerary so that you are not seeing similar places all in one go. For example, do a few days in a city followed by a beach day, then a hike in the mountains, to avoid your trip becoming too mundane.
3. It’s tiring
Long-term travel can be both physically and mentally tiring. Everything from hiking up a mountain one day, to making small talk at yet another new hostel, to trying to look for work so you can continue travelling for longer. It is a physical and mental drain on your body. Things that excited me at the beginning of a trip wore me down by the end. I remember 1 month into my 2 year trip seeing a guy in our hostel room watching TV on his iPad in the middle of the day and thought, ‘that’s so sad, why is he wasting his time when he could be outside exploring and enjoying the hot weather’. Fast forward 18 months and I had bought a mini DVD player and was watching it most evenings as I was too drained to go to the common room and be social or go out exploring.
4. You will become fully immersed in the local culture
As someone whose long-term travel adventure mainly revolved around exploring one country, I became fully immersed in everything Australian. I knew what supermarkets and clothes shops had the best deals, who their government officials were and what issues the countries were facing at the time. I got used to seeing kangaroos everywhere I went and couldn’t wait for the next episode of MasterChef Australia. It is surprising how quickly you start to feel like a local, however if you are country hoping then it might be a bit harder to get immersed in every country that you visit.
5. Your travel partner will annoy you
Long-term travel with anyone, whether it’s a friend or partner can put a strain on a relationship. Think about it, it’s not normal to spend all day, every day, with one person, regardless of who they are. You definitely wouldn’t do that at home. I travelled with my husband Jon for 2 years and for a lot of the time we spent every moment living and working together. About a year in I snapped and wanted to break up, even thought we had been together for 8 years at this point. It wasn’t anything he was doing, it was just that it’s not normal to spend that much continuous time with anyone, whether it’s your partner or just a friend. Thankfully we managed to work through it and are still together today, but it took us moving to different parts of the country for a little while to be able to get through it. If you are travelling with a buddy, then remember to give each other space to do other things and try and avoid always having the same job as each other. If you do things separately, then you will also have more to talk about which helps keep your relationship interesting.
6. You crave alone time
Even if you are backpacking solo, it is rare to find moments where you aren’t surrounded by other people. At home, people may live by themselves or have periods of time where they are alone in the house. You might also have periods of alone time commuting to work in your car, or lone working at your job. When backpacking on a budget, you have to stay in the cheapest accommodation and use the cheapest transport. This often means travelling by crowded public transport or staying in hostel dorms surrounded by people. People are also looking for connection and companionship while travelling, so inevitably there will always be someone around who is looking to strike up a conversation or invite you to hang out with them. All of this can leave you will little time to yourself and I found I ended up just craving any moment I could have by myself. There gets to a point where you have to say no to things or ask your friends for some alone time, just to have some rest and relaxation and to keep your sanity.
7. You get used to saying goodbye to new friends
Hopping from place to place and staying in shared accommodation means that you often make new friends on a daily basis. The first time you have to leave them is hard, but as the months and years on the road slip by, you get used to having friends only for a certain amount of time. That’s not to say it isn’t sad each time you leave them, but you adjust to having to say goodbye to friends regularly.
8. It is impossible to maintain every friendship
When you return home you will think about all the good times you had, and the people you met along the way. The fun couple you met in a hostel, the tour guide who you spent months with or the girl who became your best friend. All these people will have shaped not only your travel experience but your life as well and you may want to try and stay in contact with them when you get home. This is definitely possible with some people, especially if they live close by, but with others you just have to accept that they were just a ‘holiday’ friend that you will probably never see again.
I lost count of the amount of people I have met and become friends with across years of travelling. Even if I dedicated every day to catch up with a different travel buddy, I still wouldn’t get around them all in a year. The sheer number of people you meet along the way, where they live, or a change in people’s circumstances can mean that you just have to accept that you may never see them again.
9. You get comfortable looking a mess
Unless you are just travelling to well-maintained cities, or are going to stay in 5* resorts, your appearance will probably start to change over your journey. From hiking through mud, to sleeping fully clothes on public transport, to the wear and tear of your clothes, you will find that backpacking is not glamourous at all. At the start, people often try and maintain their nice appearance by putting on make-up, ironing their clothes and straightening their hair. But, after months of sleeping wherever you can, having accommodation with no running water or electricity or slapping on suncream and bug spray for the 100th time, you just get fed up and tired of trying to maintain a put together look. The upside is that this happens to everyone so you don’t feel left out. For the first few days I was camping in Southern Africa with a tour group, we all tried to look nice, but eventually the elements won and quickly we all had the same orange dust stains on our clothes and the same stench of sweat and bug spray.
10. Life moves on without you at home
I am not one to get home sick when I am away, mainly because I am not a fan of the UK and I am not overly close to my family or have a tight circle of friends. But I did get sad when I saw people at home getting married or having a baby and I couldn’t be there. My first and only nephew was born when I was backpacking and by the time I returned to the UK he was 18 months old. You also realise that your friends back home are in a completely different point in their life than when you left. Sadly, this means you may have less in common with them when you return, which ultimately can lead to the breakdown of friendships.
11. You develop an accent
I didn’t hear it, but after 2 years of living down under, all my family and friends said I sounded like an Ozzie. I didn’t have a particularly strong accent to begin with, so I think if you don’t have a strong accent, you naturally pick up the local accent quicker. This is probably also true if you are speaking another language for a prolonged period, you are more likely to pick up the local accent.
12. You crave stability
The constant movement from place to place and the excitement of not knowing where you will be next or who you will meet, starts takes it toll after a while. I started to dream of just settling down when I got back home. I looked forward to working a full time, permanent job again, meaning that I would have steady paycheck and be able to rent my own place. I enjoyed the thought that I would finally be able to make plans far ahead instead of the constant uncertainty that comes with travelling. Although this feeling lasted for quite a while when I returned home, I soon got restless and wanted to travel again.
13. Going home is a relief and a curse
There are so many things about your own country that you start to miss, from the food to the landscape, to the TV. When I knew we were going home soon, I started making lists of all the things I was going to do when I got back and people I wanted to visit. Sadly, after the initial excitement of seeing everyone and doing all the things on my list, I was left with a sad hollow feeling and kept wondering when I could go back and what was I supposed to do with my life now. Family also started quizzing me and Jon about what we were going to do with our life and asking whether we were now finally going to ‘settle down’. This meant it was an incredibly stressful transition back into our normal UK lives.
14. You forget things about your home country
When I was travelling in a country which drove on the opposite side of the road, I completely forgot which way the traffic went when I returned home and would often get confused as to which way to look at crossings. I also had a mental blank with British money when I got back to the UK and kept having to flip over the coin to read what denomination it was. I also know people who have forgotten words in their own language because they have spoken a foreign language for so long while travelling.
15. No one back home will understand what you have been through
Growing up in a small Welsh town meant that very few people close to me had travelled long-term, apart from the stereotypical Brit holiday to Spain. So when I returned, people were very interested in hearing stories, but couldn’t understand the complexity of what I just went through and how it had changed me as a person. My parents went back to asking me where I was going all the time and what time I would be back, even though I was 27, and friends just didn’t understand why I wasn’t as eager to hang out at the same boring local pub we had been going to since we were teenagers. The sadly reality is that unless you surround yourself with people who have been through a similar experience, no one will ever understand and you can find yourself feeling lonely and drifting apart from people you knew back home.
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