9 Passages Every Traveler Can Relate To

There’s a reason why we, as travellers, love meeting and talking to fellow travellers. It’s because we get each other. We understand the highs and lows of stepping into new territories, understanding various cultures, living with the locals, making new connections, and, eventually, moving on. We find comfort in knowing that another human being knows how it feels to see new horizons beyond the confines of tourism. We exchange anecdotes, but more than that, we find inspiration to keep doing what we’re doing.

Here are 9 passages that every traveler knows to be true; from what it’s really like to leave, live, and come back:

We start off thinking of a destination or at least a route to take... then we make our way there.

When we are thrust into new lands and we become foreigners, we need to adapt. We learn that every now and then we need help. We learn to be more open to unforeseen circumstances, we problem solve, we trust the aid of people we don't know, and if we're lucky, we make friends.

Once we learn to let go of our inhibitions, we find ourselves able to communicate despite the language gap; through smiles, gentle nods, and perhaps a whole lot of acting out verbs.

Sometimes we go to cities and are immediately ready to leave. Other times, we can't wait to come back. Every now and then, we find a special city with a vibe, people and lifestyle we fall in love with and we find ourselves wanting to stay there indefinitely.

As how it usually is with long term travel, we find ourselves starting to feel at home in one place only to have to get up and move on to the next stop.

When we go to unfamiliar places (especially when we're by ourselves) where we don't know anyone, we learn to depend on our own abilities and instincts; we learn to live with ourselves.

In the beginning of a trip, we are psyched and enthusiastic about starting our journeys. When it comes to the end, we often find ourselves loaded with mixed emotions. We are grateful for a wonderful adventure, sad to have to leave the road and the friends we've made, happy to have had the experience, and thoughtful of what will happen next. As such, we fall quieter and quieter as we process everything, all at once... perhaps only speaking to our peers with our eyes and the gentle curve of our lips.

It's as though we leave a little bit of our being in every place that we visit, especially in those we come to love the most. We search for that piece of ourselves and recount the life that it is seemingly still living in the corners of our minds, separate from our present conditions.

And that is when it becomes tricky; when we get back to where we started with a fresh set of eyes, a whole lot of things we had to say goodbye to, and the challenge of reconciling the life we knew on the road and the stillness of home... having only people who have gone through the same understand us completely.

So we thrive in travel communities.

- KimberlyJY
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