Tips for long term travel | the joys, challenges and learnings
I’ve had a lot of discussions about long term travel during my adult gap year (aka sabbatical) - many of us aspire to travel full time or be a digital nomad (think about all the amazing places you would get to experience, all the time!) and I definitely put this lifestyle on a pedestal.
While it has truly been amazing and I’m so grateful that I’m in a position where this is possible, I want to share some of the joys and the challenges, and how you can approach them.
A beautiful sunset from a beach in Ao Nang, Thailand.
Expected it to be fun - but not without discomfort
I love travelling. I love meeting fellow travellers, exploring new places like minded people, trading stories and experiencing new things.
But there’s only so many tourist attractions, so many old buildings and museums you can visit until they start to feel the same, and after the excitement of travelling starts to wear off, so does your resilience to things like early wakeups for cheap flights or poor quality sleep with bad pillows.
Then there’s also the stress of how much you’re spending and whether you’re going to run out of money (unless you have infinite savings or passive income, which is a different story). I once heard someone say they treated their discomfort like a currency, which helped with making decisions on comfort vs cost.
For me, the first few months were so much fun - full of memories with friends, making new connections, spontenaiety, dancing until sunrise (I was very very tired afterwards). Some of my favourite memories involve last minute plans in new cities with people we really connected with.
Travel started to get uncomfortable around month 3. I was starting to question the purpose of travel, what I was doing with my life and having a breakdown about lack of progress in my career.
Month 4 was when I realised I really missed routine (sleep, exercise, diet), and month 5 was a turnaround with a much slower pace and a lot of rejeuvenating time with friends and family.
Now I’m grateful that it was all part of the journey (see 5 life lessons from 2024), and that I have a clear idea now of how I like to live, how I want to holiday in the future, and can be more purposeful about my spending.
Tip: I’ve always found it helpful to expect that something will go wrong, whether that’s a delayed flight, the accommodation or your room mates are not what you expected, or you don’t get to do everything that you planned.
Homesickness & fear of missing out (FOMO)
Life at home doesn’t slow down when you leave, which means you’ll sadly miss things like birthdays, events and other milestones.
With the hyperconnectivity of social media it’s easy to feel like you’re missing out on experiences your friends are having back home, and there will be times where you’ll feel homesick.
Tip: In these moments, I’ve found it’s good to set up calls with friends and family back home, take yourself off social media and focus on the joys of your current situation and why you decided to go on this trip in the first place.
For me, this tends to happen when I’m feeling run down and ill, and I don’t feel as comfortable or as confident in my body as I haven’t had my usual routines of exercise and diet.
It’s ok to rest
As a maximiser, it’s easy to feel like you have to make the most of your time whilst overseas because it won’t be like this forever.
Unfortunately, this style of travelling is not very sustainable and what I’ve learnt over time is that it’s important to have rest days, days where you sleep in, eat food and watch a movie - and you plan this into the schedule.
I found that I wanted a rest day every few days, and in the second half of my trip it changed from rest days to ‘let’s do one thing a day and chill for the rest’.
Pacing yourself is also important - I like spending at least 3 nights in a place, and if possible every few weeks spend a week somewhere to have time to chill, do some planning, and not move too much (and slow down the cycle of constantly packing and unpacking).
Tip: Be gentle to yourself. Plan rest days and a slower pace. You might even want to consider spending a month somewhere so you can really settle down and get to know a place.
Planning a trip? Read this first: How to Plan a Backpacking Trip | Advice for Getting Started and Solo Travel
Breaking the productivity cycle
Backpacking for 6 months was always something I thought was really cool, but never expected to be something I did myself. Coming from an immigrant family background and high-achieving social circles, the expectation was always go to university, get a respectable job and earn money - a gap year was never even on the table.
I always thought I would travel Europe by basing myself out of a city there, travelling around a work schedule (which now sounds too hectic). I never considered I could take this much time off work and travel full-time (most people would say 2 months is a long time!) until my partner suggested that we do it.
Even as we were travelling, the first two months I felt really compelled to be doing something in my free time - whether it was obsessively updating Instagram, writing or heavily researching the next segment of our trip. It felt wrong not to be working on multiple things at a time, otherwise would I have achieved anything?
As time passed, I became more ok with the idea of setting intention and focusing on one thing at a time, and letting go of other goals that were unrealistic. I didn’t dance or train for months, because I recognised that I could only have 2 focuses outside of the day to day activities - travel, and writing.
Tip: Doing nothing is really hard. Instead try focusing on one thing at a time, or try observing nature or your surroundings, noticing the details in the space around you. What are other people doing? What colours do you see, what sounds do you hear?
One of my favourite past times became sitting by the ocean and watching the sunset, or by a lake or a river, sipping a beer and watching the ducks in the water. I loved how simple it was.
By the ocean somewhere, Thailand. Note: It was hard to enjoy the sunset whilst also taking photos, but we didn’t do this every day on purpose!
Accepting that your path is different to someone else’s
I’ve really come to understood the meaning of ‘comparison is the thief of joy’ - even though I have the opportunity to spend 6 months exploring the world, I look at my friends who are thriving in their work life and I wonder to myself what I’ve achieved in this time. I’m sure the opposite is true as well.
Just because you’re not doing what everyone else is doing doesn’t make you any lesser, in fact it’s actually the hard path where you have to make the decisions for yourself and commit to what you choose.
Tip: How you choose to spend your time and energy has a big impact on your overall wellbeing. If it’s important to you to have goals or something to work on whilst you’re travelling, spend some time identifying what that will be. Maybe that’s focusing on being more present, learning a new language or developing your skills.
For me those were being present and connecting with people, learning & reflection through books and podcasts, dance/teacher training and developing this website.
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