About those travel struggles that make you stronger

“Never let a stumble on the road be the end of the journey”

Have you ever been far, far away from home in a country that surprised, scared or shocked you? Have you been challenged in your travels? Have the circumstances been difficult to handle?
Have you ever being in a country that you have dreamt endlessly to visit, wishing you could go back home, even if this feeling lasted for only ten seconds just to realised right away of your own stupidity for wishing such thing?

When your friend picks up his/her backpack and head towards the unknown, you are too right to admire this person. Believe me that whichever adventures or tales your friend brings back home, this person has struggled beautifully to accomplish a dream, to be awaken by other realities.

 

There are so many ways you can choose to visit the world but not all of them will present you with the same difficulties, therefore you must decide what kind of person you wish to be. Do you want to be a traveller or do you want to be a tourist? Whichever option you choose, I’m sure it will bring magic and surprise to your life, however I dare to affirm that there is one of those options that will change you forever where you will never look ahead the same way as you did before when you didn’t know what you were; a tourist or a traveller.

 

If you choose to be a traveller, then you choose for your journey to be design by spontaneity, interactions with strangers, random conversations and a desire to discover. You also choose to feel sometimes lonely, insecure, maybe scare, doubtful and fearing the freedom that lays ahead of you as this freedom sometimes feel too overwhelming to deal with.

There’s the world, right in front of you, you can do anything you want, go anywhere you wish….how beautiful and scary is that?

I can only tell you about my own struggles that have made me stronger and defined my personality.  Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, if you take your backpack and head towards a destination that you have only read about it, there will be moments that will present you with difficulties but those are the moments that will make you stronger and ultimately, fill you up with excitement because by being far away, alone, in a strange country and being able to go through any difficulty, that is the most wonderful powerful feeling that you may experience and durable life lesson.

 

I know now that I am much stronger, much more confident and much more spontaneous that I ever though I could be.

 

My daily life has not taught me that, neither college or commuting, this is something that I have learnt when I took my backpack and I travelled far away and got out of the plane and panicked for five minutes trying hard to look confident because I only had myself to help me if I got into trouble.

 

But myself did not disappoint. I got to know that I had a bravery that I never knew it was there. Until then.

 

Here’s why; because a life of routine is a life of comfort. It is not a life bad lived but it is a life lacking of vital stuff, the sort of stuff that wakes up your soul and makes you dance under the rain, swim on the Ocean at night and kiss a stranger. It is the intensity that takes you to live it and experience it like just like that.

 

In between intense moments, there will be plenty of them where you will travel alone and feel almost physical pain in your heart for not having a companion, for not been able to share a feeling, for not receiving a kind word on a tough day.

There will be days when there is not good accommodation to be found, buses will break down, no one to interact with or be kind towards you, you may fall badly, injure yourself or just a have a bad day and then, those ten seconds of stupidity will set in and you will desperately wish you would be home.

 

But the sun comes up again always, brighter days arrive and the trip continues and suddenly you find yourself in an enchanted little village where you feel you could spend the rest of your life and none of those things will matter any more because you have never lost the essence of the travel but learnt that there is no journey without struggles.