What I wrote was true. Travel is hard, and can suck, and is very different from how it's often painted on social media. It feels like the other side of it, the negative side of it, is never talked about. Like how sleeping in dorm rooms means you rarely get a good night sleep; you're either kept up by someone snoring, or woken up by someone leaving. It leaves you so tired, you're often pushing through exhaustion just to do something with your day.
Writing about it was difficult though, because I know how trivial these things can sound.
"Oh you're tired, so what, you're on the other side of the world! Do stuff anyway!"
"You had a long day? So? I had work all day today and I can still function at the end of it! This is a once in a lifetime opportunity!"
"People at home would love to be where you are right now, and yet you want to be back here? You should suck it up and enjoy it!"
Like anything though, doing the same thing day in and day out can grind on you. Yes, it is fun, it's incredible, and even when we hate it, we still love every single second of it. But it is tiring and it is difficult and it's not fair to pretend otherwise.
It is possible to do so much and be so tired, that when you are stood in front of something incredible, you can almost not care that you are there. It feels like sacrilege and you will force yourself to take photos and pretend that you're loving it, but it will remain slightly tainted by the fact that you are burning out.
That was the beginning of my realisation that I simply can't do things the way it feels everyone is telling me I'm supposed to. When you can stand in front of something breathtaking, and wish you had stayed an hour longer in bed, you know that something has to change. You start to realise that you actually don't want to do half the "must see/must do" things that everyone talks about, and by trying to do them all, you're stopping yourself from being able to properly appreciate those things you actually do want to see/do.
When I first began to think that, I thought it was just me feeling overwhelmed or something similar. I tried to write it off because what if someone told me I was doing something wrong, that I was missing out? I have actually heard other people outright tell someone "You have done so and so country if you haven't done that." I didn't want to be on the receiving end of that attack.
Here's the thing though. Travel is a really personal thing. It's your own journey, your own experience, and as long as you go somewhere, there's no way of doing it wrong. The people who can't see that are people you need to walk away from. If they've done everything they say they've done and still haven't become open-minded enough to see that everyone is different? You're not going to enjoy a conversation with them anyway, let alone value their opinion.
~
The real turning point for me came one morning early on in our trip. We had spent the evening before listening to the funniest stories of someone's nights out all over the world. I love listening to drunken antics stories and these were the kind that had you holding the table, wiping tear from laughing.
We saw them again late the following morning. Tired and slightly hungover, they had started their day late and were trying to plan their time before going out again that evening. They were still there when we came back from wherever we had been, still planning (although I'm sure it was the evening they were planning because the day was half over).
They had a lot of great drinking stories from what felt like every corner of the world, but not much about actually sightseeing or anything like that. They didn't seem to be that interested in walking around museums or local parks or guided tours or things like that. They unapologetically liked visiting somewhere to experience the night life, then moving on.
"But, what about being able to say you've seen the things that make that country what it is? The history, the landscape, the markets?" - I struggled with this for a bit. I'm not the biggest fan of going out on nights out. I love the occasional one, and I always enjoy drinks in the pub, but the idea of night after night of going out on the piss makes me want to curl up and sleep for a million years.
It was the first time I realised that you don't have to do everything. You only have to do the things that make you happy.
That for me, was a revelation. It was the first time I properly began to understand just how much bullshit is spouted whenever someone tells you what the proper way to travel is. You have to buy a car, you can't book anything more than 2 days in advance, you have to go on nights out (backpackers are drinkers!), you have to visit this place or this place or climb this or that or blah.
Travelling became a lot more fun once I realised that it could be whatever I wanted it to be.
Forget the should's. Forget the "you have to's".
You are the one travelling. You are the one who feels tired or happy or sad or homesick or free or any other of the whirlwind emotions that travel can make you feel. You are paying for this. You will be the one remembering it.
Do what you want to do.
Travel isn't just living out of a backpack for a year or more. As long as you go somewhere, travel is anything you want it to be (and that can simply be reading an exotic book if it needs to be).
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Once I realised that, the struggle between "what I want to do" and "what I feel like I should do" became a whole lot easier. I struck a balance: 80% of the time I do things the way I want to do them, and ignore anything else. The other 20% of the time, I do those "must see" things that I might not necessarily want to do, but I do because there is a reason someone has suggested them (e.g. I can find some museums really boring but if they're important historically, I will visit them).
What I want to do is drink coffee in local coffee shops, wander around museums and art galleries, wander through neighbourhood shops, visit Farmer's Markets, sit by the sea or a lake or a stream.
What I don't want to do is go out and drink (it's so expensive!), sleep in a car, or hitchhike (for every traveller who tells you you should do it, there's two locals telling you why they never would). And I don't want to feel bad for not doing any of those things or feel like having to justify not doing them.
Good for them, not for me - that's the motto to go by.
~
Wrapping up this post became a lot harder when it went off on that tangent up there...
I think what I'm trying to say is this:
Travel is hard. Really hard. I think it's unfair that no one ever talks about how hard it is, while still trying to tell you there's only one way of doing it. It's even harder when you think you have to do it a certain way as well. Once you forget that kind of thinking though, it becomes a lot easier and a lot more fun. It's important to acknowledge that it isn't great every single second of every single day because nothing ever is. But I didn't want my last post to leave you thinking I was hating this whole thing, because I'm not.
This whole thing is fun. Insanely fun. I can't believe I get to wake up in New Zealand every single day with the man I love and go out and explore this incredible country. I can't believe the things I'm seeing or the things I'm doing. I am so grateful for this experience, so lucky to be able to do it, and so glad I made the choice to come out here. It isn't perfect but it doesn't have to be.
This is the hardest thing I have ever done but it is also one of the best things I have ever done.
And I think that's important to say as well.
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