Is travelling for everyone?

I have agonised over this for a long time. I’m 28 and I’ve visited only 10 countries in my lifetime. Obviously, I’ve visited some more than once, but I think my count is just 10. By today’s standards, that’s low. My generation and younger are the TRAVELLERS! They have backpacked across southeast Asia and interrailed through Europe. They’ve done a road trip through North America and popped over to South America. And of course, they did a year in Australia! Not to mention safaris in Africa.

In the age of social media, it’s easy to feel behind, especially in terms of travel (for me, at least). It’s not just the glorification of travel by YouTubers and influencers, it’s my peers who seem to always be on a plane, too. And it’s not just the basic trips my peers are taking. I’ve seen images of them in India and Colombia and Montenegro and Morocco, these more obscure/ uncommon places. It’s seem long gone are the days when Brits only visited Spain or Greece or France!

It’s amazing that this is popular, really. That so many people feel able and curious about seeing and experiencing the world. It makes the world seem more accessible. It makes humans seem more alike than we are different. It expands our understanding of others and our perspective on life.

Leena Norms on YouTube did a great video about the sort of odd and potentially damaging ideas we have about travel so I won’t go into it here. Give that a watch if you are interested. But I feel, after recently returning from Greece, that I am questioning my urge to join my peers in traipsing across the globe.

Why do I want to travel? Why really?

I love seeing things outside of my normSee different animals in their habitatTaste new foods I love learning about other cultures and customs Experience things I can’t at homeHear other languagesSee how other people liveIt’s a status symbolEscape my routine I want cool stories to tellTo enrich my mind and lifeTo be coolIt can be funKeeping up with the JonesesMy sister is a traveller so I feel in competition I love watching documentaries in other countries or reading books set in other countries

As I sit here writing this post, I can hear a plane taking off. We live near the airport so this is a regular thing. And I just feel worry! The reality is, and I’m just realising this all over again, travelling isn’t for everyone. Most people may say they want to see the world but the truth is, we all won’t. Not even my generation or the ones to come after mine.

Just like anything else, travelling is something that some people are good at and enjoy immensely, while others are bad at it and don’t enjoy it at all. Hard to believe, but it’s true.

Elements of travelling that you can be bad or good at:

Packing everything you need into bagsGoing through security without delay or panicSpeaking another language Knowing what you are going to eat / not worrying about food abroadNavigating a foreign space / using maps or asking for directions in another language Using public transport in another countryKnowing what to do and where to go to maximise the enjoyment of your short tripHaving a unique experienceSaving enough money / not going into debt to travel FLYING! / being trapped for hours and hours with no windows open and freedom to do what you want

In reality, travelling can involve a lot of worrying and rightly so. Making sure you have all the right documents, not getting into trouble or offending someone by mistake because you don’t know all the rules of this country, the claustrophobia of being on the plane, and rushing to use the time you have there.

I am drawn to the slow travel movement. Taking my time in a place. Not feeling so rushed that you have to cram your experiences into a week. However, we don’t all have the luxury of slow travel (spending weeks or months in a place). We don’t all have the luxury of travelling at all, in fact. Working in a school means I can only take time off during the school half term holidays. Which happen to be the most expensive times to travel, too. This is very restricting. Once, this used to upset me. I wanted to find another job so I could jet across the globe at my leisure but the reality is, for me, I don’t enjoy travelling as much as I’d like to.

GASP!

It must annoy my husband that I’ve cried over our lack of travel experiences and needing to go here and go there only to do a 180 and decide, Meh, travelling isn’t that important! I’m sorry! I think I’m just accepting who I am and the position I’m in right now.

Yes, I wish I’d traveled more in my early twenties. Travelled more as a kid, even, so maybe I was used to it and it didn’t effect me so much like it does now. But I can’t change the past. My circumstances were different to some other people who have had the opportunity to travel more than me and that’s okay. Now, yeah I’m 28 but so what? That’s still so young! I plan to look after myself and my body so that I can still travel into my 70s or even 80s like my Nan did. Yeah I won’t be backpacking or scaling mountains at that age, but I can still “see the world”. I can’t still have a long list of travel opportunities across a lifetime.

This means I don’t need to panic and try to fit in lots of experiences by a certain time. Even if I have children, they won’t stop us travelling unless we decide they will. So I have 40-50 more years of travelling in me (hopefully I live that long!). Even if I go away once a year to a new place, that’s a lot of the world I will have seen. Not all of it, but who cares? A lot of people who will be able to say they’ve been to every country or 60+ countries by the time they’re 30 years old won’t have actually experienced that place in depth. Maybe they sat on the beach or at the hotel pool in Mexico or the Dominican, but have no idea about the culture of those countries. And if that makes them happy, great! That’s them living their life. But I need to accept that there is no score sheet here. That their 60+ countries doesn’t have to mean much to me personally. It’s not a reflection on me and my inability to experience the world or live a fulfilling life.

I want to watch films set in other countries, created by non-English speaking people. I want to read so many books from around the world, translated for my enjoyment. I want to cook meals for us from around the world, too. This is my way of experiencing and understanding the world around me. And I think that may go further than jetting off abroad without knowing anything about the country other than it being the next one on an arbitrary list. Or because I want to have a cool obscure place to brag about having visited. I’m not saying that’s what other people do. I’m saying that’s how inauthentic my “need for travel” has been. It’s about a list and trying to tick off countries that sound cool, not places I even know a lot about. All to compete and compare and that’s just sad for me.

I like my home. I like my life. And I think if you do, there’s often less of an urge to escape it. And let’s be honest, that is often the case. We want to escape our mundane lives so we go abroad. And that’s normal. That’s okay. But maybe we can also make room for asking ourselves why we want to escape so much. What’s wrong with where we live and what we do here? What could we change on our home soil to make this a better place to be? The UK is known for being grey and a bit boring but people not from here still love to visit! So we do have things to offer it’s just they are our norm, so they seem boring or ugly to us.

The grass isn’t necessarily always greener elsewhere.

Our trips abroad may fill our cups, expand our horizons, teach us something new, and show a beauty unknown to us but don’t mistake that for life being better out there. That super cheap trip you had in Southeast Asia is often because that country struggles financially and was probably disturbed deeply by colonial rule (but I won’t get into that and get it wrong or offend). Alas, we might be able to find something beautiful right here where we live.

If you’re like me and you feel in competition with others to travel the world but you don’t think you’re good at it and it just brings you anxiety, or you can’t afford it, then I hope you feel less alone in that feeling now. I invite you to delete your travel to-do list like I have and just plan the trips you really, truly want with authenticity and excitement.

I want to go to Japan. I know that for sure. It’s the one country that calls to me. A place I know things about from watching anime and having studied the Japanese language for two years. So I will go there. But everywhere else? It can wait. I’ll get there or I won’t. I’ll plan each trip carefully so I go feeling like I know the place already and therefore I feel more comfortable and excited and ready. I won’t offend because I’ve learned. I won’t make them speak my language because I will make the effort to speak theirs. And I’ll see real culture and beauty, not just a tourism-focused snapshot that’s curated just for foreigners. Again, it’s difficult and there’s nothing wrong with a tourist being a tourist! It’s just a complicated situation that I feel drawn to question a bit lately. If we’re just going over there and being fed some processed version of a culture, how real is that? How fair is that? But is there even an alternative anymore? Is it safe to venture away from the tourist spots? And when tourism is some countries’ greatest source of income, does it even matter? And with the rise in travel, are we contributing to the emissions destroying our planet and is that okay just because we want to see the world? I don’t know.

Travelling is, like most things, a lifestyle choice. Where you go, why you go, if you go at all and what you choose to do. People living in poverty aren’t worried about seeing the world. They’re worried about where their next meal comes from. It’s a privilege to travel and that’s something I need to remember. And let’s not pretend the difficult parts aren’t there. I’m not saying that because I get very anxious when travelling that I won’t go abroad anymore. Or that it’s not my personality to be comfortable with it so I shouldn’t do it. Of course not! But I am being way more intentional and considerate about my travel decisions and consciously trying not to compare myself to those who clearly find it easier than I do (financially, mentally, socially, emotionally, personality-wise, etc).

Where are you off to next or where have you just returned from? Let me know in the comments.

Sincerely,

S. xx