To ask if anyone else doesn't see the appeal of "Travelling"

[LornaDuh]

So many on MN talk about doing lots of travelling in their 20s. Or their DC "going travelling."

Anyone else not see the appeal of backpacking round Asia sharing hostels with randoms and eating authentic street food?

I've worked abroad but that was an office job not picking fruit or working on a cattle ranch in Australia.

I love going on holiday but like coming home after a fortnight ... months on the road don't appeal.

Anyone else?

How?

best money I ever spent. It’s more than the travelling - it’s being somewhere where no one knows you - where you can just explore with no pressure, speak to new people, eat different foods, be who you want, try new things. Experience hard times and get through them. Survive on a budget. Have no schedule. Do what you want. Wouldn’t want to do it now that I have a family and responsibility but at the time, when I was young, it was the best. Gave me perspectives that I was lacking before.

It looks like an amazing trip.

Ouch. Glad I'm not a slave to a mortgage now

@EmoCourt

It turned out she’d never been in a youth hostel before. We ended up having to renegotiate and scrimp on other things to afford B and Bs most nights. It turned out that the weepy friend had a weird fetish for ‘cosy touches’ like floral bedspreads, valances, little pots of breakfast jam etc.

Urgh. Call me unkind but I think that’s the sort of preciousness which realty needs knocking out of people in order for them to consider themselves as an adult. I couldn’t tolerate that.

Travell on the hippie trail isn’t for everyone by any stretch and I can’t blame people for not wanting to do that. It’s crowded, often full of drugs and alcohol and with a risk of sexual assault.

But learning that not everywhere you stay is going to look like your nan’s guest bedroom is an important rite of passage. There are plenty of ways to learn about the world outside your own bubble.

The hostel weeping caused me a moment’s murderous rage, followed by hysterical laughter when I caught the other friend’s eye. I do agree with you about preciousness. I caved on B and Bs on that trip because the others were doing the driving (I didn’t have my licence, but was putting in more to the petrol fund) and the third friend was a peacemaker. We did actually have a great time, even if there were more doilies involved than envisaged.

I wonder if she’s moved on to liking Scandi-style hotels with lots of stripped wood, waffle-cloth robes and expensive toiletries?

It does, but maybe not advisable right now!

We are away now in Greece for two weeks and as lovely as it is, I said to DH I would hate to travel! I find it exhausting, headache inducing, I feel grubby, I miss some home comforts and would worry about being ill in foreign country!

We did actually have a great time, even if there were more doilies involved than envisaged.

😂😂😂😂

I went in the early 90s, in my early 20s, pre-internet so had to rely on guide books etc. I was very shy and introverted, and a friend told me not to go alone as I would be lonely. I went for 3 years in the end.

Honestly it was the making of me. Saw so many things, met so many people from all walks of life. Yes some of the hostels were awful and the jobs I took not great. But there was such joy in knowing I could just pack up and go somewhere else. I made a lot of friends, some of who I'm still very close to.

I still like to go to fairly far flung places but more in organised tour groups. I wouldn't want to go in a shared dorm, or go away for months at a time any more.

I'm with you OP...I couldn't deal with the chaos of airports, train stations or trying to find my accommodation in very busy, overpopulated cities and remote rural locations. I'd rather have a 2 week river cruise holiday on the Mekong, than backpack around Vietnam and Cambodia for 6 months.

Mobile phones and internet have improved some aspects of young people’s travel but not all.
My ds travelled abroad during his gap year with a a couple of friends. One evening my exdh rang and said in a doom-laden voice “the children are missing”.
The mother of one of them hadn’t heard from her daughter for 36 hours and messages were unanswered. Not surprising since they were trekking through a forest in Columbia
Exdh said ‘we need to get in touch with the Foreign Office’
The next day their signal returned and they were furious (quite rightly so) at the fuss and panic going on at home. ‘A new low in parenting’ was how my ds described it
I imagine a lot of parents continually text “have you taken your malaria medicine? Have you got clean underwear?” Etc etc.
Obvioulsy it’s great if contact t is needed for an emergency.

I always think in my head that I wish I had. But in reality I know it would probably be exhausting and not up to expectations.

YANBU to think that people like to do different things, have different preferences and prioritise what to spend their money on. Whether it's a like/dislike of travelling, interior design, hobbies, exercise, etc.

The fact is, people are just different and surely that's ok? I can't get excited about the latest in fitted kitchens but some folk can talk about them for hours!

When you are young, on a tight budget and have barely been away from home then backpacking is a whole world of discovery. You meet like minded people, see some amazing sights and grow in confidence as you are forced to improvise, sort out logistics, live on a budget, occasionally rough it, occasion scared, often brilliant, the odd fling and generally climbing out of your comfort zone.

Superb.

I took a sabbatical about ten years ago and spent a year driving around Africa. Best decision I ever made.

You might be surprised. I think a lot of the time my expectations were exceeded, often in ways I hadn’t anticipated because I just had no conception of the way an alien place could be alien in completely delightful ways. There’s something intoxicating about different types of air, or birdsong, or traffic, or language, or vending machines, or the way people use public space. Or just little tiny things, not terribly ‘exotic’. I have a strong memory of driving into Damascus at night just before Eid and seeing all the herdsmen gathered around fires with their animals in the dark, when it could have been any era. Or the feeling of getting a bus up from the plains in southern India to a tea plantation at altitude and the air changing and all the Indians putting on big jumpers and woolly hats, and me being delighted with the coolness and walking for miles in the tea. Or the first time I got woken at dawn by a muezzin doing the call to prayer from the minaret of a tiny mosque I hadn’t even noticed the night before when I arrived.

OP maybe it’s to do with the fact that you used to work ‘on the road’?

I, too, worked on the road for years and also lived abroad in Argentina and some of Europe, bits of US. Since I stopped, even going on holiday abroad or flying somewhere has low appeal, feel like I’ve seen enough of the world and prefer Britain. Some of my friends live for travel/ holidays and they don’t get it.

Having said that, in your teens and 20s you want to see the world and I wouldn’t change having travelled so much and having been pretty much everywhere for nothing, and as a young person I’d do it again.

Backpacking in hostels is not something I’d have ever wanted but for some it’s the only way they can afford it/ peer pressure.

It's my idea of hell personally.

But I can understand why others want to do it. There is so much out there to see and do. So many different cultures. I suppose backpacking is a cheap way to see the world?

I would have loved to travel when I was younger but I didn't get e that group of friends. I'd have probably ended up hating it and wanting to come home.

We did it in six weeks, with stops varying from less than 24 hours in a city to five days. Our longest continuous stretch on a train was Moscow to Irkutsk, three days and four nights (train left Moscow 7pm).

I would love to travel but with money. Not backpacking.

When I win the lottery....

It's not difficult. (Or it wasn't then, it was pre-Ukraine war, so to be fair the Russia aspect is probably more complicated now.) It's overland the entire way, apart from the Channel, and we have a train for that. So it's London to Brussels or Paris, and from there you can get all over Europe, then probably up into Moscow, from where you can get trains right across Asia.

We also took trains the length of Vietnam, although that was later in the trip and not part of the continuous London to HK train trip. And then again from Malaysia down into Singapore. The vast majority of our travel in that six months was overland.

I loved my travels in Australia… wish i’d done more.Hostels were amazing not at all grotty for the most part. We were safe and had some much fun It was a great experience. Backpacking wasn’t easy but it was totally worth it and you soon get used to living out of one bag.

I’m still exploring the world and visiting place on a smaller scale due to life and cost rises. My holidays nowadays are still to different places with sight seeing etc. The world is a big place and there are plenty of ways and means to explore it.

It's just a long holiday tho isn't it? Neice has just returned from travelling, and basically just spent 8 months in the company of other middle class twenty somethings. I asked how her 'long hols' went, and she replied with a heavy side of vocal fry 'Travelling was sooo much fuuunnn'

Niece!