I’ve sat outside an airport or a train or bus station more times than I care to remember, crying my eyes out or feeling generally just like crap, because a loved one or a friend has just left. Over time I’ve developed a few habits to deal with leaving or being left while travelling.

#1 Make no promises

Never ever make any promises. I know you’d like to see your latest one-night-stand again after a good nights romp around the bedsheets (who wouldn’t), but if you’re not at all serious then a peck on the cheek and a big-bear hug will be enough. Should you actually meet up again, then that’s just great, but don’t make it harder than it should be for the two of you. Basically, anything apart from what you’ve had so far will be a bonus…

#2 Only say it once

Pretend that there is nothing unusual about you sitting in a coffee shop or a McDonalds at an airport and only one of you has a plane ticket out of the country. Just treat each other like you’ll be seeing each other the next day. This might seem like a bit of a lie (well, it is), but it will help with the transition. Never ever mention the word (or anything to do with it) starting with ‘good’ and ending with ‘bye’ just before it is actually time to say goodbye. It will only pull you in deeper. You’ll run out of things to say and it’ll just be unbearable. There will be tears. I promise you. Only say “GoodBye” when there is nothing left to say!

#3 Leave early

Continuing from the last point, you have to leave as early as humanly possible. Why people like to drag the inevitable out for as long as they can is just plainly beyond me. Maybe it’s a sado-masochist thing, who knows. You arrive at the airport 3 hours before the flight and the check-in lady just told you your flight has been delayed by three hours. Don’t make your relatives and friends sit around for ages waiting for your flight to be called up. After you checked your bags in, you go and check yourself in. Go clear security, let em take all your shampoo and shower gel bottles off you if they feel like it and get the latest John Grisham novel to read while waiting for your flight.

#4 Get drunk

Now that all the other points are out of the way, it’s time to get serious. Should you be the one that’s leaving then you’re in a bit of luck. On most long-haul flights you can still get booze for free, so get your tickets worth of alcohol down your throat. If you’re the one staying then you’ll have no choice but to pay for your own. Leaving, or being left, is never easy and it should be dealt with accordingly. Copious amounts of alcohlic beverages should dull your senses enough so that, after you have survived your hangover, you can get over your loss.

Of course, if you’re in love, then consider all of the above points as useless as Barack Obama getting the Nobel Peace Price minutes (it seemed like) after he became president…

How do you deal with saying goodbye while travelling?

It’s that time of the year again. One day left in this year, in this decade, in fact. I hope all of you have had a great year, seen some new things, met new people and simply had fun.

2009 has seen some of the best travelling I have done up till now. A year ago I was stuck in Kuala Lumpur, waiting for my Indian visa to be approved. I didn’t have anything planned for the night, except watch the fireworks. In the end I met a couple really nice people and I ended up in the Reggae Bar and still can’t remember how exactly I got home. I might have gotten in a fight with an Air Asia pilot, who’d recently crashed his plane, but my memory of that night isn’t exactly reliable.

I went to the most boring rave ever in Goa, where the music had to be turned off by 10. You then had to rent headphones to continue dancing. A party can’t get any worse. What ever happened to that hippy paradise?

In Jaipur I was chased by a mob of street children and some dogs through the slums. I was ripped off on a camel safari in Jaiselmer, but met some really cool dudes along the way.

I crossed the craziest border from India to Pakistan at Wagha. I almost reached my melting point at 47 degrees Celsius in Lahore, almost froze to death while crossing Shandur Pass in northern Pakistan and would most likely have been blown up had I stayed a day longer in Peshawar. In Quetta I’m pretty sure I saw a Taliban.

The first 100 km in Iran I was protected by an 18-year-old police conscript without any weapons. He hadn’t started shaving yet and I’m pretty sure we’d seen him get smaller in the distance very fast should we have encountered any bandits. Five days later I ran out of money, 40 km from the border to Turkey.

Where have you been last New Year’s Eve? Let us know in the comments. Whatever you have planned for tonight I wish you all a fantastic party and a great 2010!

Why should we care about Afghanistan? It’s a valid question. You probably haven’t heard any good news from that place for a long time. It’s been at war since 1979. That’s as long as some of us have been alive. Maybe even longer.

I read a lot of stories from the golden age of travelling, when you could still get from London to Kathmandu on a red double-decker bus for a few quid. Ok, probably more than that, but you know what I’m trying to say. Not so long ago Afghanistan was a highlight on the infamous Hippy Trail. The hospitality in this far away country was unprecedented and now here we are. The country is at war. A war that officially doesn’t exist. Yet every day civilians and soldiers die. What happened?

The Russians happened, that’s what. In all fairness, it wasn’t all their fault. They kind of got sucked into that war much the same way as the Americans a few years earlier in Vietnam. They should have known better, though. Learned from their enemies mistake. You can’t win a war like that. Nobody’s ever conquered Afghanistan successfully. You could ask Alexander the Great what he had to say on the matter if he were still alive.

Afghan children in Kandahar province | Image by isafmedia

Anyways, in the beginning, the Russians were winning on all fronts. The mujaheddin, still freedom fighters, not yet terrorists, were losing across the board. Even then air superiority was the name of the game and the Hind, a Russian attack helicopter, was making mince meat of any opposition. Then something happened. The freedom fighters got hold of some Stinger missiles thanks to the Americans, and the table slowly started to turn. After all, the cold war was still raging on, despite of its name, and it’s always better if someone else’s soldiers die on the battlefield.

The United States was pumping millions of dollars into that war. The Saudi kingdom didn’t want to be left out, so they matched the Americans dollar by dollar. All of this obviously had to be done covert, so the Pakistani government volunteered as the middleman. It was a win-win situation for everybody. Except for the Russians. They started dying.

The Americans got someone to fight their war for them. The Pakistanis were hoping to get some kind of control over their lawless neighbour. Maybe it was even possible to channel some of these freedom fighters across the country to destabilize the Indian held part of Kashmir and Jammu. The Indians were, and still are, after all their primary enemies. That leaves us with the Saudis. Well, they did a good deed by helping out their Muslim brothers fight the Infidels. As a nice little side effect, some say it was their main reason, they were also exporting their own extreme version of Islam, called Wahhabism, into the poverty-stricken tribal areas of Pakistan and the bordering Afghan territories.

Afghan village elder in Dangam | Image by isafmedia

Now, what happens if you couple extreme poverty with religious zeal and then point them towards an enemy where they can vent their anger? You get yourself an army. People now have a channel to vent their anger. Guess what! It worked better than anyone could have anticipated. 10 years after the war started the Russians were leaving Afghanistan, utterly defeated. Now should have come the time to rebuild Afghanistan and restore it to its former glory. All that was needed was a bit more investment into the infrastructure and the education system. But of course that didn’t happen.

The border areas between Afghanistan and Pakistan have always been blurry. The people there consider themselves first Pashtuns and then, well, nothing really. The Pashtuns are one of the largest (and poorest) tribes on our planet and their once working code of conduct and honour had been utterly corrupted by 10 years of wahhabistic influence. The war was over, but the Pashtuns, and the rest of the Afghan tribes, still had a lot of pent-up anger. They turned on each other and eventually 7 years after the Russians left, a formerly little known organization called the Taliban emerged as the winner. They promptly formed a government that was only recognized by the Pakistani government. They were obviously still hoping for some Kashmir action, although that was never gonna happen.

Afghans in Rajan Kala | Image by isafmedia

The rest is kind of history. 9/11 happened, Afghanistan got bombed once again, the Talibs got their arses kicked and now soldiers and terrorists from all over the world are locked in a deadly cat and mouse game in the Hindukush, while innocent civilians keep dying. Will there ever be peace again? Will there be, once again, come a time when Afghanistan is the place to go travelling in?

I sure hope so. While I was in Pakistan I was thinking of crossing the Kyber Pass into Afghanistan, travel north-west to Kabul and then across the country to Herat. It was just too dangerous then (plus the border had been closed for all nationalities while I was in Peshawar) and I didn’t have the funds for flights. A friend of mine flew to Kabul, though (and survived to tell the tale), so it is possible to travel Afghanistan. One day, in the near future, I will go there, despite all the dangers. I want to see what it’s like…

I gathered lots of the above information from talking to fellow travellers, journalists and locals and reading the local newspapers while in Pakistan. I also dug around the bends of my brain to see what was left from my school history lessons. We didn’t learn much. I hope this has changed, although I seriously doubt it…

The first time I went off to travel Southeast Asia people kept telling me that I’ll become a travel-addict very soon. A lot of people use that analogy and there’s quite a bit of truth in that statement. You can take it quite far actually!

The last 10 years of my life I have basically been a junkie. Isn’t admitting the problem the first step or something? I was constantly on the lookout for my next fix, the next place to go to, the next country to explore.

Being away meant a constant high for me. I love the adrenaline rush of not knowing what I’ll be doing the next day, where to sleep this night or what’s around the next corner. By talking to other travellers I found out about other fascinating places and experiences. This talk was the fuel for my addiction. There is always another place!

I never even realized that I was addicted. I only knew that I did something I love. Coming back home was always something of an anti-climax. And it didn’t take that long for my drug to wear off. Then the withdrawal symptoms set in. That’s when I started planning that next trip and started saving up as much money as possible in as short a time as possible. During these times my social life was non-existant. Every Euro I spent meant another Euro that had to be earned again. Eventually my coffers were filled and off I went getting stoned on travelling.

But as we know, every drug has some nasty side-effects. The same is true for travelling, at least in my case. Travelling changes people, there’s no doubt about that. I’d argue that 99% of these changes are good. Some other changes you don’t really notice they happen so slow.

When I’m away I’m more or less self-sufficiant. There are long stretches, sometimes up to a couple months, where I hardly meet other foreigners. I quickly learned to be on my own and to not need another person. The more I travelled the more introverted I became I guess. Once I was back where there are other travellers, starved for a good conversation, it was always easy to hook up and meet other people.

Now that I’m back home my behaviour poses a problem. I’m still self-sufficiant, but it’s a hell of a lot harder to meet people, let alone meeting someone special, without them thinking I’m a bit of a weirdo. I also find myself lost for words. I simply have nothing to say to what people commonly talk about or I find their conversations really trivial. There simply isn’t enough of a common ground on which to base a conversation.

At first I thought it’s just reverse culture shock, but I’ve been back now for half a year and I still have that feeling of not really belonging. I do wonder if my long-term travels have made me slightly socially challenged in a normal setting.

So what am I going to do about it? The easy way out would be to get another fix and go travelling, but at the moment I really want to give a normal life a go. One thing is certain though. I won’t give up travelling completely. I think the way I travel will change. Not go away for a few years at a time, but do short trips of a few months each and keep a base here in Germany.

It actually might be time to settle down a bit. What do you think?

I was kind of hoping that eventually people get tired of the ongoing tourist vs traveller debate and it’s offsprings. It seems to pop up now and again on the blogosphere and loads of people comment on these blog posts and it gets really heated sometimes. I tried to stay away from starting one of these discussions myself, cause, honestly, it really annoys me. I mean, it supadupa annoys me. More than two years I held out (that’s approximateley how old this site is), but today I just can’t hold back anymore (damn these beers and half-drunken conversations!). Here’s what some sites around the web have to say on the matter…

The free dictionary has this to say:
A tourist is:

1. a person who travels for pleasure, usually sightseeing and staying in hotels
2. a member of a sports team which is visiting a country to play a series of matches: the tourists were bowled out for 135
3. the lowest class of accommodation on a passenger ship

The same site has this to say abut a traveller:

1. One who travels or has traveled, as to distant places.
2. often traveller (chiefly British)
   1. A traveling salesperson.
   2. A member of any of various groups of traditionally itinerate people living especially in Scotland and Ireland.

Answers.com tells us exactly the same thing, by the way. Have a look here and here. In both cases, it’s basically number 1 that is interesting. So, a tourist is someone who travels for pleasure and a traveller is someone who has been to distant places. Well, I have been to distant places, so I guess that makes me a traveller. I also do it for pleasure among other things, so that makes me what? A travellist?

Yep, I know what many so-called travellers (I think we stick to the clichés for the sake of this discussion) will think now! It’s not about the definition, it’s about the authentic expirience and a tourist just can’t have that on a 2-week holiday. As if anybody could have an authentic experience if you’re not a local! People act differently as soon as a stranger to their culture is around. There goes your authenticity!

As for the experience, it is true that many so-called tourists stay in their cosy resorts and work on their tan all day, but many tourists don’t. They might stay in their cosy resorts, but they do go out and meet the locals, have conversations with them and interact with their culture. Now it gets complicated. So a tourist can be a traveller. What about a traveller? Can he or she be a tourist? I’ve seen plenty of travellers admiring Wat Po in Bangkok or Angkor Wat in Cambodia. So, yes, a traveller can be a tourist as well!

What a bummer!

This whole discussion is just absurd (and this will be the last time I’ll mention it, promise!)! When it comes to travelling, the only thing that counts is what you make of it, whether it is during a 2-week vacation with a suitcase or during a round-the-world trip with a backpack. It is not dependent on how much money you have or if you can bear to stay in the dirtiest and cheapest guesthouse on Khao San Road. It only depends on what you want to get out of it.

But that changes as well. I’ve had times when all I wanted was to get down and dirty and stay as cheap and as minging as possible to save a few bucks and a few weeks later I treated myself to a nice clean room, maybe even with air con. Tourist or traveller, it all becomes blurry. Sometimes I’m that and sometimes I’m the other.

But today I’m a tourist and I’m damn proud of it!

The team at Travel-Junkie has strong ties to the area with the recent catastrophies, especially Indonesia. I lived there for almost 2 years and travelled all over it and it saddens me that once again a disaster has struck, almost simultaniously in various countries. Because of this we ask everybody, who has a little extra to spare to donate.

Donations do have their misgivings. We understand that. During the 2004 Tsunami I lived in Indonesia and have talked to many people who were there and gave their help. A big problem then was that some money didn’t even get to the disaster zones and that some NGOs had so much money, they didn’t know how to spend it and so spent it on anything they could think of, even though it didn’t benefit the communities in need at all.

Still, short of jumping onto a plane with a caseload of cash, donating something is still better than doing nothing. Just imagine what would have happened after the Tsunami if nobody would have given anything.

And please don’t cancel your vacation, if you are already booked on a flight to Indonesia, the Philippines or Samoa. You can always change your flight to another location within the country if you were gonna go to what are now the disaster zones. After the Tsunami in 2004, many people did just that with devastating results for the tourist industries in places like Bali, even though the island is far far away from Bandah Aceh. A while ago I wrote an article about just this topic. Check it out!

Below are some links to a couple well known organizations, so if you have a few Euros, Dollars or Rupee, then give a little! Thank you.

Medicins Sans Frontieres
UNICEF

Jaques

Jaques came into my office on Gili Trawangan to book a dive. I checked his credentials, sized him up, took his money and signed him up for a dive at Manta Point the next morning. He hadn’t dived for almost a year, but refused the offer of a little refresher. Fair enough. He seemed to be very confident and let’s not forget that a refresher plus a dive is the same price as two dives. You can’t force someone to do a refresher after all.

I only had three divers that morning, two of which had dived with us before. I gave an extra thorough briefing, then we jumped on the boat. On the dive site I did a current check, then hopped back on the boat to do a buddy check with Jaques, who was to be my buddy for the dive.

We jumped in and started to descend. Jaques had some ear problems, so we descended fairly slowly, but everytime I asked him if everything was alright, he gave me the ok signal back. We soon arrived at our initial depth of 14 meters. From now on we would follow the ground straight to the sharks at 21 meters. I turned round to Jaques and noticed quite a bit of fluid in his mask, so I told him to clear it. When the fluid came out it was a murky greenish brown. His mask slowly started to fill up again.

I asked again if he was ok. He pointed to his ears and said there was a problem, so we ascended a bit. His mask kept filling up further. Suddenly Jaques started to shoot up pointing wildly to his ears. I hang on to him and slowed his ascend, then made him look at me. I now suspected that Jaques had a nose bleed coupled with ear problems. That had made him panic. I motioned the other divers to come up with us and managed to get Jaques back on the boat in one piece. I put him straight on O2, just in case. It turned out that he hardly ever equalized all the way to 14 meters, even though I had told everybody to do so early and often many times during my briefing.

The Dutch Group

Four Dutch lads, Frank, Thomas, Richard and Bas, came into the shop to go diving. Richard and Bas already were Advanced Open Water Divers, while Frank and Thomas wanted to do that course. But all four of them wanted to dive together. The next day we went to Shark Point to do the deep dive portion of the course. It was a clear and brilliant day and you could see fish swimming around on the bottom at 30 meters. We geared up, did our checks and jumped in, all of us excited.

We quickly descended to 30 meters. I then did a few maths calculations with Frank and Thomas to find out what effects nitrogen narcosis has on each diver. Then we started to ascend a bit. I looked up. I had just noticed a gentle current that hadn’t been there before. 30 meters before us there was a wall of sand coming fast towards us and we were in a current that carried us towards the wall. The current got stronger and changed into a down current. I now switched direction and started to fin upwards along the bottom, hoping to get out of the current. By now the wall of sand was almost on us. I gathered the lads around me and made everybody hold on to me, just as the two currents hit each other and the sand engulfed us. Visibility was down to less than half a meter.

I told everybody that we would slowly go up to the surface. Richard and Frank didn’t react. Their eyes were wide open, I could barely see their eyeballs. Frank wasn’t breathing, so I punched him in the stomach. Richard had by now started to inflate his jacket and started to fin up to the surface like crazy, so I punched him as well. It had the desired effect. Everybody was breathing and moderatly calm. But we were still at 25 meters in a down current and I had no idea where the current would take us.

I checked everybodys air and ,although we had only been under for 15 minutes, we were running low. I started dragging everybody up and slowly we came up to 15 meters, while everybody was still holding onto me. Then I started to divide up the air. I still had plenty, so I put Frank on my second regulator and Richard on my primary. I was breathing from their depleted tanks. Then I pulled out an inflatable buoy and shot it up to the surface, hoping that the boat would see it.

By this time Thomas was really low on air, so I gave him Bas’ second reg, who still had around 70 bar. We ascended further and stopped at 6 meters for our safety stop. We didn’t quite make the required three minutes and reached the surface after 25 minutes total dive time. We had just enough air left in our tanks to inflate our jackets. Our boat was, strangely enough, directly next to us and our captains were smiling down on us and helped us into the boat. Everybody was relieved that we all got off lightly.

Later the captains told me that they could see the wall of sand from the surface. When the two currents hit we didn’t actually move much. We drifted around the boat in a big circle…

Leave a comment if you liked this post and tune in for the last post in this series. It’s about a whale shark!

Hwangnam bread box

Forget everything I have written above if sweet red beans are causing you stomach aches and if you have the opinion that red beans only belong in a Chili con carne. But if you are curious about it, go and get yourself a portion. You won´t be disappointed!

What is Hwangnam bread?

Despite of its name, Hwangnam bread is actually a small pastry with a sweet red bean paste filling. It is pretty famous throughout South Korea. In Gyeongju this local specialty is produced by several local companies and sold at many stores all over the city.

Open box of Hwangnam bread

The family owned Hwangnam Bakery claims to produce the original ones dating back to 1939 made by Choi Yeong-hwa. Hwangnam bread is handmade and this process can be observed right behind the cashier counter. A dozen people are standing at several tables with a huge chunk of red bean paste in front of them filling the pastry. Unfortunately it is not allowed to take any pictures of the production process inside the shop. But it is quite impressing and well worth a visit. You will definitely taste that they are handmade.

Where can I get Hwangnam bread?

There are several branches of the Hwangnam Bakery in Gyeongju, but the main shop is located at Gyeongju-si, Hwango-dong 347-1. The prices are starting at KRW 10.000 (a bit less than EUR 6) for a box of 20 pastries.

Single Hwangnam bread

If you belong to the lucky ones staying in Korea to study or work you can even let the boxes be sent to your address. Order before 3 pm and your shipment will be at your place before 8 pm the very same day. According to Korean friends, Hwangnam bread is also a perfect gift for Koreans as a little thank you or maybe as a birthday present.

Yummy Hwangnam bread

Enjoy your fresh and warm Hwangnam bread!

Some former students

Cesar and Brutus

Teaching kids how to dive was one of the most rewarding experience during my life as a dive instructor. Usually they’re not afraid of anything, but have enough respect of these new surroundings to do as they’re told. Brutus was different. A little 12 year old chubby boy from Switzerland who had to learn to dive because his dad, Ceasar, didn’t want to do the course alone.

Brutus couldn’t be bothered with sitting in a classroom. Every day was sunny and he could hear the other kids fooling around in the swimming pool. Duh, school was out, in case I had missed it!! So I moved our classroom sessions into the cafe on the beach next to our classroom. But it was still class and Brutus refused to even acknowlege me. So I bribed him with ice cream, but his attention never lasted longer than the one scoop he had in front of him.

Ceasar on the other hand was an examplary student. His homework was always done and always correct. He assured me that he would learn with Ceasar in the evenings and it seemed to pay off. Brutus managed to pass all quizzes and just about passed the final exam. During the swimming pool lessons, Brutus was more attentive, but it was still hard keeping him concentrated. We just about managed.

After two days in the classroom and pool we finally went diving for real. To Sail Rock, in the Gulf of Thailand, just northeast of Koh Pha Ngan. Not the best dive site for your first two dives, but as a normal dive instructor you don’t usually get a say in that matter. Sail Rock is a 30m deep pinnacle that can be brilliant on a nice day and really nasty and choppy on a bad day. We were unlucky and had a bad, dark and rainy day. You could hear the waves crashing into the rock and it sounded anything but friendly.

I carried a buoy with me to allow my students to descend in relative peace. There was a long rope attached, so it would also prevent them from being swept away on the surface if they held onto it. I jumped into the water first, then waited for other instructors to help Ceasar and Brutus into the water. Ceasar jumped first. I made sure he was alright, then told him to hold onto the rope. Brutus was about to jump in, when he ripped his mask off and stared wide-eyed at his father. I turned around. Cesar was trying to climb on top of the buoy, but never quite managed. He was hyperventilating and had the worst panic attack I had seen to date. He had spit out his regulator and got water into his mouth with every new wave.

By the time I got to him he had finally gotten a good grip on the buoy, stuck his head as far out of the water as possible and wouldn’t let go. He kept whispering that he didn’t want to drown, which would happen if he let go. I dragged him back to the ladder, assuring him, that he’ll be fine, but he was in a world of his own. I doubt he even saw me or the boat or anything for that matter. I tried to pry his fingers off the buoy, but Cesar was strong in his panic. In the end a boat boy jumped in to help me. Altogether five staff pulled and pushed Cesar back onto the boat. For him the diving day was over.

On the boat I turned round to Brutus to ask him what he wanted to do. And that chubby little boy was excited. He couldn’t wait to jump in. It looked like he found his fathers discomfort almost funny. We had two really pleasant dives that day. As soon as we got below 7 meters there was hardly any current and Brutus soon swam around like a fish. We even saw a shark that day. In the end Ceasar never finished his course, but Brutus was the proud owner of a Junior Open Water Diver certification…

If you enjoyed this post make sure not to miss part four where things go a little bit wrong!

My boss in New Zealand looking rather helpless at this huge fire

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…