The first time I went trav­el­ling I had a clear pic­ture in my mind about how it would be. A few months later I wished some­body would have told me these 10 things:

1. It’s boring

You bet­ter believe it. You might be in a for­eign and exotic coun­try but the actual pro­cess of get­ting from point A to point B can be mind­boggelingly bor­ing. I was sit­ting on a train from Jaiphur to Jaiselmer and it only takes about half an hour until you’ve seen everything there is of the desert. After that you only have another 10 hours or so left.

2. It’s dirty

Well, not trav­el­ling per se. It’s more your­self. Raise your hand if you have been trav­el­ling when you were at your dirti­est! I was sit­ting on the back of a pick-up truck from Poi­pet to Siam Reap for 11 hours straight, dodging potholes lar­ger than the Grand Canyon, and when we finally arrived the red dust from the road had melted into my skin. Three days later the water still turned slightly pink when I showered.

3. It’s exhausting

After a while, being in a new place every couple days takes its toll on you. Back home, before your trip, everything looks rosy. You ima­gine your­self jet-setting from one cool place to the next. Real­ity looks dif­fer­ent. You can get fed up with it and if you don’t pace your­self, trav­el­ling will exhaust you and all the fun you’ve had just dis­ap­pears into thin air.

4. It’s dangerous

Well, not really, but it can be. I have never had so many acci­dents while trav­el­ling. There were motor­bike acci­dents in Kupang, on Koh Samui and Koh Tao, a bus acci­dent four hours west of Ban­galore and just across the bor­der from Viet­nam in Laos and a diving acci­dent on Gili Trawan­gan. In Thai­l­and I had Typhoid Fever and I lost 4 toe­nails in total climb­ing vari­ous silly volcanoes.

5. It’s lonely

You can be in the most pop­u­lous nations on earth. There might be large num­bers of trav­el­lers and tour­ists around you and still, you might be the lon­li­est per­son on the planet. I think you have to be able to cope with being alone when trav­el­ling long-term. In Indone­sia I trav­elled east and didn’t meet a single english-speaking per­son for nearly a month. When I arrived back on Lom­bok I was gag­ging for a nor­mal conversation.

6. It’s bloody hard work

When you travel you do stuff like climb vol­ca­noes, hike 20 km a day and wait 8 hours in the blis­ter­ing sun while try­ing to hitch­hike. You sweat a lot and you also walk a lot, because you see a lot more that way. For me it was nor­mal to feel abso­lutely stiff at the end of a day. And let’s not for­get about all the bur­eau­cratic stuff like stand­ing in line to buy a train ticket or get a new visa almost every month.

7. It’s sad

For most people trav­el­ling is all about see­ing new, dif­fer­ent cul­tures. But some­times you just see so much that it gets hard to cope with. We can afford our long trips because we come from coun­tries with strong cur­ren­cies and mainly go to coun­tries where the middle class makes less money a month than you in a day. You see real poverty and what it does to people. In India, chil­dren still get dis­figuered so they can make more money begging.

8. It’s unhealthy

Let’s be hon­est here. We all love a bit of party once in a while. And then there are days or weeks where all you seem to do is drink booze and smoke the odd spliff. Is that wrong? Nah, cause everybody’s doing it, right, but it cer­tainly isn’t good for your body.

9. It’s ridiculous

Some­times I won­der what I’m doing out there in the big wide world. I had days where I asked myself if I’m still trav­el­ling for all the right reas­ons or if I’m run­ning away from some­thing that isn’t yet clear to me. This seems to hap­pen more often the longer I travel. Not that many people live the same life as me and my life­style doesn’t really con­form to what soci­ety expects from me. Some­times I have doubts about where it will all lead.

10. But still…

I wish someone would have told me these nine things before I went on that first trip. Now, that I know these things, I also know that there is a tenth point. And that is that in the end it’s all worth it. Trav­el­ling might be bor­ing and unhealthy and lonely, but it’s only occa­sion­ally like so. While I feel lonely I might have my doubts, but once I pulled through that, trav­el­ling gives me a buzz bet­ter than any drug you can ima­gine. Try it. You might find that you like it. And if you do, you’re hooked. Just like me…