I’m not exactly sure when I decided to go travelling. Maybe it was in a fit of rage over a maths problem, or during another sleepless night labouring over my art folio.
Most likely, however, it was the night a family friend – only a few years older than me – brought a whole dinner table of adults to attention with her wild travel tales.
I must have been 21. She’d just gotten back from a four-month trip through India, and sets of heavy, gleaming bangles (from Chennai or somewhere equally exotic) clanged at her wrists. They were so worldly, so…bold, those bangles. It was the most confident display of accessorising I had ever seen.
As this cosmopolitan creature regaled a bunch of baby boomers (who’d marched against the Vietnam War and seen through the Sexual Revolution) with stories of overnight trains and desert festivals, the bangles reached across the empty plates and spoke to me.
“Hey” they said (they had a lot of attitude). “Yeah you. You wouldn’t believe the places we’ve seen.”
Step 1. Deciding to Go
Well, that was that. As soon as the last exam was done, I was ready for REAL school: the school of life. Travel. Winding roads, new horizons, unimaginable adventures with extraordinary people – I was coming for it all, just as soon as I’d put my pen down. Except not really, because first I had to make some money.
Step 2. Deciding Where to Go, Making Money and Then Going
I decided to travel to South America. I’d like to think the location choice was based on respectable factors like an interest in ancient history or a desire to learn Spanish, but really I just wanted to drink mojitos and dance la salsa.
I stayed at home for six months and worked a few random jobs while my friends started careers. Then, I set off for Cusco, Peru. I don’t think I’ve ever cried so much as I did on that ride to the airport. And then again in my parents’ arms at the gate. And then on the plane, into my travel pillow.
But then finally, after 20 hours and three delirious connections, the Andes appeared outside my window. In that moment, the high-altitude cocktail of feels I’d been battling all journey – the exhaustion, the anxiety, the what-the-hell-have-I-done regret – vanished as quickly as the mountains had appeared, and was replaced with a delicious, pure, full-bodied joy.
It was like no feeling ever. I was in Peru, baby.
Step 3. Being Gone
I travelled around South and Central America for six months. There were a few moments of homesickness (and actual sickness), but mostly, things passed in a blur of giddy discovery.
One time, I carried a family of guinea pigs in my lap all the way from the Sacred Valley to Cusco. Another time, I rode a horse through a lake in Patagonia, and watched as my Chilean guide chipped off a shard of iceberg, mixed it into a cup of Pisco, and downed the whole thing in one.
I slept in a hammock in the Amazon, peed in a park with a bunch of middle-aged Peruvian ladies, shook booty with a Cuban family in their living room, and made friends from all over the world, some of whom I still talk to today.
And while I didn’t purchase any bangles, I did find Jorje in a Mexican street market (or did he find me?) – Jorje, a twinkly-eyed, chain-smoking papier mache skeleton who somehow made it three months in my backpack without having his top hat crushed.
Step 4. Coming Home
The time to reflect on my life lessons and then forcing my experience on everyone else. By the end of my trip, I was ready to return to the nest. I missed my dog, my friends, my family and my local Thai restaurant. I was also broke as hell, but well ready for some more learning and making some money again.
I think I’d expected to come home knowing exactly what I wanted out of life. There’s this magical idea that travel makes everything clear, that it flushes any restlessness out of your system and illuminates the correct path to your future like a row of emergency lights on a plane.
But the trip hadn’t narrowed down my future at all. If anything, it had grown it exponentially – opening up new paths I’d never considered before, as well as new ways of thinking about the world and any notion of a single ‘path’. Confusing, maybe. Overwhelming? A tad. But totally, completely, 100% worth it.
Plan Your Trip
I don’t mean to be bossy, but if you’re considering travel or a gap year after school or university: do it. Please do it.
You don’t have to spend your life’s savings or disappear to the other side of the world on your own for a year. It could be a month or just a few weeks, and you can always make things easier (and more fun) by jumping on a small group trip.
You don’t have to command the attention of every dinner party you frequent afterwards, either.
It’s the experience of leaving the world you know – the people, the lifestyle, the environments – and seeing something different that makes travel so incredible, so important, so awakening. And such crazy mad fun.