How do you really feel during your travels?

Hello Wendy 😊

Yes, there are times when I am bored while travelling especially if I have no books in English to read. Also there are times when I feel lonely and miss people from my own culture who understand me more than people who have never lived in a Western country do.
It would be too much of an expectation to think we should feel on a high all the time while we are travelling.

Mel Reply to this

This is a good topic! I was away for 15 months and it was always a mixed experience. I had a brilliant time, and fantastic experiences and adventures, but there were times when I felt really lonely - a lot of the time I hooked up with other travellers, not always, sometimes I was fine with my own company and sometimes I really craved company and just couldn't enjoy what I was doing. I'm not sure I got bored, but at times I did get very tired with moving on all the time, and didn't have the energy to go and see stuff all the time or make the most of my time, just experiencing what was going on around me. I found writing up my blogs a really good distraction from this! some days if I was lonely or didn't have much energy, I'd just sit in an internet cafe all day and write my blog and upload photos.
I think sometimes there is this expectation (more from ourselves even than others!) that we have to be having a fantastic time every minute of the day, and life just isn't like that, even when you're travelling - and travelling in itself is challenging as well as amazing - it's tiring, and sometimes lonely if you're a solo traveller. It's natural you might feel bored sometimes because there isn't the structure to your life that you have back at home.
Right at the start of my trip when I arrived in India, I arrived on Diwali. I was in Mumbai and in the evening there were loads of fireworks and celebrations going on for hours and hours - but I was too scared and overwhelmed to go out! I felt like I 'should' be out experiencing this, but I just couldn't. Again a few months on, I was in Pushkar and it was Holi, another of India's main festivals and a real celebratory one with dancing in the street and people throwing paint at each other. Someone I'd met there had just moved on, and I was on my own - it was a real traveller's town, but everyone was in their cliques and I felt so lonely all day - some days I could overcome that but that day I couldn't, and in the end I just came back to my guest house and missed most of the celebrations - I was the only one around town who didn't have paint stains on them. But .... so what? At the time I felt really low about it, but now I think, it was just what happened - and now back home, I treasure all of the experiences I had, the good ones, the tough ones. Sorry, seem to have diverted off from boredom into loneliness - interesting topics! 😊 Reply to this

Thanks for all this feedback. There are days when i am spending way too much time in internet cafes just to pass the time. Its not unusual for me to be in an internet cafe for 5 hours plus just surfing various mundane sites when natural beauty is minutes from me. I'm sure this is becuase i have no real structure to my days & like you say, sometimes no energy go sightsee etc. It is brilliant being off work & abroad in foreign climates but boredom & lethargy certainly do feature into it even when they don't have to. Right now i'm in Laos & have the opportunity & the money to do a great 2 day trek but i hav'nt, just been on the internet all day doing trivial mindless things. But then again, whos to say its right you should be doing exciting stuff all the time. Reply to this

Different people like doing different things and it depends what flicks your switch at the time I suppose.

I have been away for 6 months now, 3 in Thai, Laos and Cambodia and 3 in NZ. When I tend to loose interest in where I'm at and what I'm doing I get a move on and look forward rather than linger a round, keeping it fresh unless I'm with great people somewhere in a great place loving it.

I think when travelling alone meeting and connecting with good people is one of the biggest factors, which the chances of will vary depending on where you are. I have felt lonely sometimes while on the move and at first didn't miss home but now I am missing my closest from back home like mad. However along my trip there has been people in the same boat who I have just clicked with and end up loving it. Ups and downs, part of the ride!

This is the longest I have been away and plan to be back home in a month, satisfied of having a good experience. Appreciating what I got back home in comparison with the likes of Cambodia and knowing I belong somewhere with good people. For me travelling is good for a while, a long break to experience new things but not forever. Some I have met have been travelling for years on end, everyone is different! Reply to this

yes I agree! I was thinking just that yesterday and was going to write it - that the travel experience can also be about having distance from your life, and the general experience of being 'away', as well as the experiences of where you actually are. I always found it interesting to talk to people and listen to why people had come travelling - most of the time I found people didn't just say it was because they really wanted to see and experience certain places and cultures (though this was part of it); it was also because people wanted to make changes in their lives, had often hit a rut back home, and travelling and being away was partly a way of getting that distance, blowing some cobwebs away etc. In about the second and third month of my trip I hit a sort of block where I could hardly do anything - I was in India, where I'd longed to go for years and years, and yet had hit this point where I hardly had any enthusiasm for it - I felt in a bit of a internal crisis - like, my own reasons for going away had been mixed, partly wanting to travel, partly needing to get away, and I felt like I was failing - like I'd come on this big travel trip and wasn't appreciating it. Then after a few weeks it just cleared and I felt all this energy I hadn't felt for ages. I think what was happening is I was de-stressing and everything had come up to the surface, all the stress I'd carried from home, and while it was going on, I couldn't really do anything - but it was just part of a process that had to happen - this was the great thing about getting that distance though at the time it felt crap! Hang in there and just go with however you feel, don't judge yourself. After all, who's watching? - anyone in your mind from home that you think might judge you, is thousands of miles away! They can't see! Enjoy the freedom Reply to this

Those are good points Mell - I also found that a lot of my most precious memories from my travels are from all the little 'incidentals' that happened along the way, more than the sights I saw or treks I did or whatever. Like when I was on a beach in South India, thinking really I 'should' be exploring India more - and a guy from one of the nearby shops ran down to me calling, 'madam! madam! wait,' - he'd noticed that my deck chair wasn't put up properly and I was just about to sit on it and it would have collapsed - I couldn't believe that he'd (a) noticed, and (b) cared! It was a real touching experience.
Also when you take buses and trains to and from places - these are as much part of your experiences as anything else - people often wish them away and get very frustrated that a bus or train is late, delayed, broken down, because it's eating into their time for when they arrive at the next place - but often those experiences are the richest. I took a bus from Goa into Hampi in India, it should have been 9 hours and was 18 hours because the brakes failed (while we were driving over the mountains!) plus lots of other delays. Everyone on the bus was really angry and irritated (all of us were tourists) and saying now we had wasted a day when we could have been in Hampi sooner etc etc. But for me it was a real adventure, it was my first long bus journey in India and it was so entertaining watching the several drivers (and their friends) in the front of the bus, and just experiencing the bus break down and having to stop at the side of the road for hours and there was nowhere private to pee so we all had to go at the side of the road where all the passing traffic and local villagers could see. And I bet all the people on that bus now have that as one of their favourite travel stories: 'the nightmare journey to Hampi' ! Reply to this

You should all be ashamed of yourselves!! Travel is fun! You can't have negative feelings about it! Bored! Come on!! Ha, ha, ha... Just kidding!!!

I get bored quite often, especially when I am travelling alone... And lonely sometimes too, though not so much, I am pretty good at keeping myself company :-) I just look in the mirror and start a conversation... Ha, ha, ha...

No seriously, the worst times are ,when travelling alone that is, when I am having a meal... It is so much nicer to eat with somebody... When I am alone, I just scoff the food away and leave... Sometimes I get the feeling everybody is staring at me wondering why I am sitting alone, but that is most likely paranoia! Ha, ha, ha...

Now i'm travelling central and southern India and 3 days ago was the first time I talked to some other western tourist (had the chance to chat, finally) in 5 weeks! There were just not many of them, I didn't see any for 3 weeks and a few the last two weeks, but they were always in groups and hard to approach... I can tell you I was quite happy to strike up a conversation with them and for 2 days we travelled together... What a revelation not to be the only one to be stared at on the bus and not the only one to be asked the same question over and over again... The one thing I really appreciate when returning home is the annonimity! Nobody looking at me or talking to me... I could never be famous, what a horrible life that must be!!

The advantages of course are also plentiful, you meet more locals, some of which you can have really good conversations with... That is not the standard, what your name, country name, job etc.. conversation... And in the end those are the most precious experiences I think... Sights are nice of course and I can really enjoy walking around a beautiful ruin or temple, especially early morning and off season when I have it all to myself, but things that linger on in my mind are the small things... A little kid coming up to me and explaining to me in perfect English about the history of an ancient monument, or a student telling me about his future plans, the difficulties and the hopes he has, while sharing a crowded general class train carriage... That is what I remember the most... Actually it is true what they say, just getting to a place is mostly more fun than the actual place!

And as for having to always do something when travelling... A load of bullocks, I often just hang around and do nothing even if I could be more 'productive' and do a beautiful trek like everybody else, or see this or that ruin in town... If I would do all that my brain would get an overload and I suspect I wouldn't even enjoy it... At times I don't enjoy things as they are now, that is when I need to take a break...

Nough said! Reply to this

I,m finding that while my travels are not full of partying and sightseeing, the most valuable things i am getting are the frequent opportunities to address and deal with 'demons', i-e things you have niggling away at you but never quite manage to master. I am finding difficulties are not getting brushed under the carpet or substituted in some way but with a touch of reluctance, being faced head on. So i guess while i.m not experiencing the nightly partying with the 20 year olds i will return to the uk richer in ways that are hugely beneficial to me. Thanks again guys X
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I am currently having another one of those negative travel feelings. Apprehension! I am going to Kyrgyzstan in September and am periodically having nervous attacks about it. When I feel nervous I console myself with the thought 'how weird can it really be anyway? Afterall people live there. ' Luckily I have traveled enough to be able to not think about it at all most of the time.

I generally feel like that when I am planning to go to or on my way to someplace ''scary''. I usually force down the nerves to buy the ticket and then again to get on the plane. Then during the flight I have the panicky thought that the only way out of this plane is into the scary country. Reply to this