This is the place where I’ll talk about travelling. Sounds very vague yes, but I’m not talking about a nice little relaxing vacation. I’m talking about Adventure travel. Nomadic, random, exploring, adventurous spur of the moment, carpe diem style type of travel.
A bit about where I’m coming from. I started off a solo traveler. At 17 I got a backpack, spent hours meticulously planning everything I would put in it and bring on my first backpacking trip to the Hawaiian islands. I was like batman. I had everything on me, tie wraps, bungee cords, tent, velcro straps, etc. I didn’t know what to expect really. I was a noob.
Anyway I’ll talk about my first trip in a future update. It was quite an experience.
After doing a few trips by myself, I did my next long trip to Thailand, Laos and Cambodia with my girlfriend. Was my first experience travelling with someone else from home. All my other trips, I just met people along the way and travelled with them for a few days or a few weeks. But in the end, you always end up going different paths. Sometimes it’s because your new buddy’s trip came to an end and he must go back to work in his home country. Sometimes your next destination is one he already visited. Whatever the reason, the only person with you from start to finish is yourself.
So leaving with my girlfriend was very fun for this reason especially. It was great to be able to reminisce during and after the trip. “Remember that incredibly drunken women that thought we where from Qatar?” and then have a nice laugh about it! When traveling solo, I could not do that. I could be in my home town and see something that reminds me of a life changing experience I had overseas but I can’t really share it with anyone. Sometimes you just had to be there!
Also, you get to really know the person you are travelling with. Friends back home you see a few hours a week. You will see your hockey buddies when you are playing it. You will see your coworkers when you are at work. You will see your drinking buddies when you are going out. You see them in a specific environment. But when you are travelling, every hour of every day is spent with that person. You share a room, sit next to each other on the bus, plane, boat and taxi rides. You see them when they first wake up, you see them when they are extremely tired, you see them sober, drunk and hung-over. You see them ALL THE TIME and not only when they are in a good mood. You see them out of their element. In a foreign land where they don’t speak the language and can’t understand everything that is going on around them. If your relationship with that person survived this, it’ll be stronger then ever. And that alone is worth a trip!
Socializing is also much easier with a travel buddy. You can be talking about something with your friend when another traveler overhears you two and joins in your conversation. Effortless way to meet new interesting people right there. Not to mention it’s much easier to approach people when you are not alone.
I started liking the idea of travelling with a friend. And like Chris McCandless (Into the Wild) said: “Happiness is only real when shared”. Now I don’t think that’s true in every case but it sure made sense to me vis-a-vis travel. So I organized another trip to Thailand with eight (that’s right 8!) people but that deserves it’s own entry.
