Drawbacks of Travel

Flight cancellation in Lhasa = complete and utter pandemonium

Intro

Traveling is awesome/fun/life-changing/eye-opening/best-thing-ever! Quit your boring job and start living life! You are wasting your optimal years on a 9 to 5 that is providing you with a cushy retirement, who needs that?! Discover new cultures, photograph indigenous people (French people wearing berets count, right?), eat food that might get you incredibly sick but will teach you a life lesson on the dangers of ice. All of this can be yours if you just try hard enough. Boredom will be a thing of the past and every single moment will be an amazing photo-op of you jumping in front of sunsets/cliffs/ridiculous landscapes. Trust me, traveling is all rise and no fall...say organizations that are trying to get you to spend money and sign up for their customized tours. 

I've already written a bit on the downsides of travel (Travel for the Bad Experiences) and for this post I want to focus on how to make the best of sometimes bad situations. For those who have followed this blog at all or even just looked at the homepage, I am sure you know that I love traveling the world. I don't want to be doing anything else with my life. In order to live the life that I have (I am in the south of Turkey as of the publishing of this post), I have had to give things up. 

I am going to preface this by saying that I am incredibly spoiled privileged. I have never wanted for food or shelter. The danger I have been in is pretty usual (car accidents, potential rape/molestation situations as in watching myself during parties and taking care of friends who have been roofied, dysentery) and nothing especially life-threatening. I have wonderful parents who can and will take care of me if anything were to happen. I am luckier than many other people on this planet and I am aware that I have it quite good in the lottery of life. 

With all of that said, this is a post for people who do want to travel and can find/already have the means to accomplish this dream. Whether you are a trust fund baby or you have literally sold everything in order to scrounge up enough to go overseas (or overland), you have enough to afford a train, a plane, a bus or a combination of all of these. I still contend that traveling is not as expensive as people think it is (Planning a Trip), but you do still need to have some saved up to go. 

Now that you have your tickets booked and your giant medication bag all ready and you have headed out into the wide world, here are some of the negative things that you can expect to feel/experience.

1. Loneliness/Friends

This can be the case even if you are not solo traveling (Group vs. Solo Travel). This is more for those who are traveling long-term and living for long amounts of time away from their family and friends. Yes, you meet new people. Yes, you go on exciting adventures. Yes, you are trying all sorts of new things and making every person chained to a desk green with envy. However, when the work day is over, those desk jockeys get to go out for happy hour and have a few pints with their buds or coworkers. Those people you left behind are moving on with their lives with new relationships, marriages, children, promotions, friends and you are now living a very different lifestyle that they most probably won't understand. 

If you complain about anything, they will likely just roll their eyes and say you've still got it better than them. If you get excited about anything, they might accuse you of bragging. Best case scenario, if people are genuinely happy for you and want to celebrate your travels, they still won't know your daily life no matter how many Instagram photos you take of your food.

Antidote-ish:

If nothing else, this experience will show you who your friends are. There will be people that make the effort consistently. There will be others who you don't talk to for months but it is always the same when you do finally connect. There will even be a group that you will become closer to because they are going through something similar even though you met only once at a party in university. Finally there are those who will become acquaintances and will gradually fade away. These can be your best friends in the whole world before you head out, but they will get swallowed up in their own lives away from you. 

All of these outcomes are okay. Some are painful and others are revelatory. How ever your friendships play out, all you can do is try your best at sharing your life. Use Facebook, email, Twitter, and Pinterest. Get a Vonage phone or use Facetime or Skype or any number of other apps that will allow you to communicate. Put in effort as long as there is effort put in back to you. If someone starts dropping the ball, confront them if it hurts you.

2. Family

The world is an uncertain place. Scary things happen all around the world perpetrated by all sorts of people. Scary things also happen through accident, disease and age. One of my favorite Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes of all time is entitled the Body. It powerfully shows the horror of everyday death and loss. Depending on how long you are abroad and how much contact you have with the wider world, you might risk not being able to say goodbye to someone you love. Hopefully you will never have to experience this, but it is something that could happen when you are separated from your family.

Third Culture Kids have lived with this risk all of our lives since we rarely grew up near family or relatives. There are plenty of First Culture Kids who deal with this as well.

On a less dour note, the same drawbacks apply to family as well as friends. You grow away from people and it can be hard to keep in touch. You might miss out on celebrations and reunions and it can be pretty hard to make up for that when you get back.

Antidote-ish:

Tell people you love them. Try to call regularly and do your best to stay in touch using social media. Understand that your family loves you. They love you for pursuing your passion and they stand behind you. It can be hard to be far away, but do your best and live your life so that they will always be proud of you.

3. Expectations

If this is your first time abroad or if it is your first really big round-the-world trip, you might have expectations as high as the Burj Khalifa. Every moment should be awesome and new and life-altering. You want to come back with stories that start with, "This one time when I was standing on the edge of a giant waterfall..." or "And then we almost died, but it was awesome because..." 

I hate to break it to you, but there will be periods of boredom. There will be times where you will be cramped and uncomfortable. There will likely be many, many, MANY times of stress and exhaustion when your plane/train/bus is cancelled/taking you somewhere it's not supposed to/careening around a blind bend on a VERY high mountain with only one lane. 

Antidote-ish:

By all means be excited and think that you will be the exception to this, but maybe keep a couple of books around to distract you just in case. Definitely try to make the most of any situation and bring along a camera or a sketchbook or anything that will keep you occupied when life slows to a snail crawl or you need to drown out the screaming passengers of yet another canceled flight.

4. Alienation

This is mostly for those readers who haven't really traveled before. When you go to another country, mostly those who don't speak your language or whose people don't look like you, you might feel a bit of alienation at being different. You will no longer be able to listen in on random insipid conversations in Starbucks. You won't be able to rush to your comfort food the moment something goes wrong. Transportation will run differently than where you live. You will probably say this phrase at least once,"But this wouldn't happen in _______________!!" 

Antidote-ish:

Keep in mind you are no longer in _________________. You are a guest and as such you need to be able to operate within the rules of the society you are in. I know it's hard and frustrating and that life is unfair, but consider this experience an exercise in patience and worldliness.  

If you really feel yourself ready to burst with rage/sadness/loneliness, try to talk to a friend from home or seek out a bar/restaurant in town which caters to expats. 

If you are spending a long time in one place, try learning a bit of the language. You may only learn ten phrases, but you can communicate ten more times than before and that is a win.

5. Travel Companions 

I'm sure you have heard that one of the biggest tests for a couple is whether or not they can travel together. While I completely agree with that, it doesn't just apply to your romantic relationship. It applies to all the connections in your life. Who you choose to travel with can make the difference between a crappy trip spent sulking in your room in a rain-soaked city or going on a watery romp to explore all that the streets have to offer.

If you choose your travel companions poorly, you will end up embittered and resenting the trip for forcing you to stay with this person. You could have been best buds before you got on that plane, but going overseas will change that. The list of things that you can fight about multiplies exponentially when you travel. A poor travel companion will drain you and suck all of your enthusiasm dry. 

Antidote-ish:

Choose wisely. Start with small, short trips and test the waters if you are already friends/dating. If you are solo traveling and you happen to fall in with irritating people in your hostel, "accidentally" leave early or late and make your own schedule. 

End

I hope that this list was a reality check for some and the cause for a lot of head-nodding for others. Would you add anything to the list? Do you contest anything on the list? Let me know in the comments!