I spent years dreaming about travelling. I longed it, yearned for it even. I spent many, many hours imagining different trips, imagining the adventures I would have, the different people I would meet.
I think we all do this with the things we desperately want, whether it’s travel, buying a house, starting a family, we daydream and fantasize about how good life will be when we finally get it and sometimes we build the thing up so much in our minds that when we finally get what we want that thing doesn’t live up to what we imagined.
We often forget that there are downsides to everything, just because we have always wanted something doesn’t mean that there isn’t a cost associated with it.
This is what I’ve found with travel. Some of the realities of travelling are hard, and truthfully, in all of my daydreaming I simply hadn’t considered that I might struggle with these things.
Would I give up my life right now because of them? No, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t worth talking about.
So here is a list of the things I’ve learned in the last 6 months:
- Sometimes it gets lonely
I grew up in a large family, our home was always open and we often had extended family or friends staying with us. At one point I remember there being 12 people living in our house. This meant that sometimes peace and privacy were hard to come by, but it also meant that when you didn’t want to be alone you didn’t have to be.
In spite of growing up this way I have always been someone who enjoys my own company. I’ve always been able to take myself on little adventures or go to restaurants or to the cinema by myself, and it has genuinely never bothered me, sometimes I even prefer the solitude.
But the thing about solo travel is that sometimes there is no one to talk to. You can spend a lot of time with your own thoughts, and even for a self professed loner like me, that can get super lonely.
You also have no one to help you make decisions, to comfort you when you’re having a bad day, or to share the costs (lets face it, the singles tax is real and it gets expensive!)
And you will desperately miss your friends and family at home and you’ll often consider throwing it all in to go home and see their faces, sleep in your own bed and live in the relative safety of routine. - You are (almost) always out of your comfort zone
Sometimes you’ll be in a country where you don’t speak the language and somehow have to manage catching public transport or ordering a meal and navigating how to communicate can be anxiety inducing!
You are constantly having to put yourself ‘out there’ in order to make friends or to get a job and the social anxiety can be exhausting. - Solo travel can be expensive
I have wished on several occasions that I had someone to share the cost with.
I don’t mind staying in hostels, in fact I have stayed in a lot, but sometimes I just want a private bathroom and a large bed to spread out on but as a budget traveller paying for hotel rooms can really break the bank, and it would be so much easier if you could split the cost.
There are also a lot of tours that charge a singles surcharge which can sometimes be hundreds of dollars, so there have been several times I’ve ended up bunking with a stranger to avoid paying the surcharge. - Instagram has truly ruined some places
Have you ever seen a place on social media and thought “oh I’d love to see that!” only to get there and be disappointed?
It happens a lot, either because you get there and find that the videos or images were so highly edited that they don’t even remotely resemble reality or because the place has become so popular that it is overrun with tourists and influencers trying to get that perfect shot for the gram that you can barely get close enough to see anything. - You are always saying goodbye
You will meet the most amazing people, and you will have some of the best and deepest connections of your life, you’ll form bonds that will genuinely last a lifetime, you will find a home away from home in the most unlikely of places.
You will fall in love with people and places and you will never want to leave them, but you will, and your heart will break a little bit every. single. time.
The curse of the traveller is that you live with a sense of longing.
That longing to see what else the world has to offer, to chase adventure and live life to its fullest is the thing that drove you to start travelling to begin with but that longing is also the thing that breaks your heart, its what forces you to say goodbye for the thousandth time its the reason you’re always missing someone or some place.
So I guess that what I’ve learned so far is that travel is hard, in so many ways, but I wouldn’t change it for the world and I would recommend it to everyone.
All In Her Stride 