By Roadjunky, Posted Nov 25, 2006
Sections: Travel Virgins The Young Travel Virgin The Mature First Time Traveler Travel Essentials Common Fears Unplug from the Matrix Coming Back Home
 Less exciting than embarking on your pilgrimage http://www.flickr.com/photos/spakattacks/ |
This is the hardest part. You’ll have changed so much on your travels that everything will seem insufferably small. Your friends will be in the same boring routines and, whilst you’ll be a novelty for the first week or so, people will soon tire of your travel stories.
Living with your parents or sleeping on a friend’s sofa, you’ll soon remember that to pay the rent and buy food you need money. Money comes from getting a job. And that requires you to do more all day than read the odd book, learn guitar and roll a joint first thing in the morning.
Coming back from traveling is synonymous with the taking drugs. You still have the high alive in your memory but the present seems bleak and uninspiring. The trick is to integrate all of your visions and experiences with your everyday life. Anyone can dream a dream but how many can make it real? The proof of what you’ve learnt isn’t what you think or say but what you do.
Try not to spend weeks moping around wishing you were on the other side of the world. It’s best to get stuck into something fast, to hit the ground running. That way you keep yourself active and don’t fall into a stagnant nostalgia. Start making money and get involved in something worthwhile and you’ll be in a better position to travel again if you feel the urge.
The road is always there waiting for you if you want to go. For most people travel is a rite of passage that they only need to take once or twice. It’s very but very hard to really make a life on the road. Even if you find a way to make money abroad you’ll most likely come to need some stability at some point. Travel is just one of the elements and the rest need to be taken care of too.
But you’re the only person who can gauge that. Maybe you will become a fully-fledged travel addict but remember: no matter how much you imagine that you’ll want to travel all your life, most Road Junkies end up in rehab sooner or later.
Road Junky is run by travelers who would rather write poetry on desert dunes in moonlight or smoke a chillum in the Himalayas than sit in front of a computer ...
There was a feel-good article in the Guardian the other day about laughter classes in Tehran.
God knows there’s lots to laugh about. Here’s a comic speech given by the ...
