What To Do When You’re Tired Of Travel

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Every traveller reaches this point at least once in their travels. For a moment everything stops being new and exciting, time starts to drag and even though you still love what you’re doing and wouldn’t change it for anything in the world, it has become a little less fun than it used to.

If this is happening to you then you may have Travelities.

Travelities is a serious and deadly infliction that takes over your brain and makes you think crazy thoughts like, how much you need a real job for your future and how you should give up this eternally travelling nature and get back to the real world.

You must do everything in your power to avoid getting a full case of Travelities, if left untreated for long enough it will disable you completely. Then without even really realising it pretty soon you will be back in that real job in the real world and you would have fully embraced your new found Chirpy mantra.

Also don’t forget that getting sick of travel isn’t for people exclusively on the road, you can be planning all the time and even before you set out on your grand adventure for a couple of moments you can think forget it and get rid of the idea entirely.

So with those chilling words in mind, take head of the following bits of advice so if you ever feel the creeping feeling of Travelities take over your mind, you can cure it immediately.

Take a break

If you haven’t yet escaped, and you are feeling the pull of Travelities then just stop. Focus on something else for awhile, go and bug a relative, if they get annoyed at you simply tell them you are going to be leaving for the world soon and honestly don’t they want to spend any time with you before you leave, how could they be so cruel. If you really want to have fun with it work up the drama and start bawling, it should keep you occupied for awhile, and by the time you have finished annoying them and/or got kicked out of the room you will be ready to go back to planning.

If you are already on the road and having the sinking feeling that you will absolutely hurt something if you have to take one more photo or talk to one more person when neither of you speak the same language, then perhaps you should stop. Hopefully before you throw a telephone at someone.

If you have been eating baked beans and living on couches for awhile give yourself a break, book a hostel or hotel room for a night and find something delicious to eat. You will surprised at how quickly you will feel better if you have some of creature comforts that you may have been going without.

Be lazy

Sometimes travel can be full on exploring/adventure/action all the time. You rarely have the time to be truly lazy when you still don’t know what’s happening around you. So going hand in hand with taking a break find a park, a bench and just sit down and do nothing. You’re travelling you shouldn’t have any pressing engagements. You may look like a bit of a bum for awhile but better to look like a bum and be really doing what you want to do i.e. nothing than rushing around to your real job.

Again this works if you are still at home; focus your whole being on doing nothing and having nothing happen to you. Sit down and watch anything, it should keep the brain power low enough until it can start working again.

Do something you haven’t done in awhile

If you have been staring at the beautiful scenery so much so that you honestly can’t tell which country you’re in anymore, take a different route and go and see some of the museums. You may not like museums, but that’s not the point, the point is doing something different so when you actually find something you like you will fully appreciate it instead of comparing it to all the other beautiful trees you have seen so far.

Still at home? Go to a place in your hometown that you haven’t been too before, or haven’t been in a good long while. It will make you realise that really your hometown isn’t as bad as you think and the wonder with seeing a new site will remind you why you are taking so much trouble to get out.

Watch TV

As a traveller you don’t often spend your evenings or days watching TV, or at least you really shouldn’t be. So when you finally do let yourself go and watch TV for a little bit it can turn into a rare treat. As in something that’s nice to do while it’s there, but not something you should do everyday.

If you are at home and you don’t watch TV regularly this can work, if it’s something that you usually do then feel free to ignore this.

Don’t think for awhile

When you are tired of travel whether you realise it or not the more you think about how tired you are, the more your brain tries to work against you. When you are saying you are tired of travel your brain then tries not to make a liar out of itself and then produces all the different reasons you are tired of travel into your mind. Which basically boils down to means that if you think you are tired of travel, you are.

The fastest way to get out of that sometimes disabling downward spiral is to stop thinking at all. Granted sometimes a lot easier said than done, but if you manage to completely surround yourself in only what is happening right now and so blocking out those spiral thoughts you can then stop feeling so down, and soon start travelling again.

This is much the same at home, but at home it can be much worse because you haven’t even left yet and don’t even have the single comforting thought that even though you are a little tired of travel at least you are out there. But again much like when you finally get out there, just stop thinking about it entirely and find something else to focus your attention on.

Catch up with friends

If travelling, either catch up with your bestest buddy as of five minutes ago down at the pub, or head down to the local internet cafe and see how your other real job buddies are going at home. It may seem cruel but usually seeing them still stuck in their real jobs while you are out in the world will make yourself feel better. Though this is a bit of a double edged sword as this may make you feel worse if your parents lay on the guilt trip when you get in contact with them. So use with caution.

This method of course works at home as well because well you could really not like your friends and getting away from them might be a key aspect of why you are trying to get away, so go nuts.

Do something you enjoy

You should be enjoying every moment of your travel but sometimes that can be a little hard to sustain especially when you have spent the last couple of days in a bus with more chickens than people.

So find something in wherever it you have found yourself in do something you really want to do and ignore the cost. It may be expensive but at the end of the day you would have done something you really wanted to do and the magical haze over travel will settle in again.

So by now you should be pumping and ready to go travelling again, so stop reading, get out of the Internet cafe and enjoy yourself.

If I have forgotten any major points you do to make yourself feel better when you have become a little tired of travel please comment below.