Before we left, one of the biggest questions on our minds was what the day to day of travelling would actually look like. It can’t all be beaches and mountains, what will we do when we don’t have housework? This has also been one of the most common questions we’ve been asked since leaving, so here’s an answer.

Life on the Road

Travelling is an amazing experience, and we are incredibly privileged to be able to do it, something only a small portion of people around the world are able to do, and we are very thankful. But it isn’t a holiday. On a holiday, you generally have some sort of itinerary, maybe have booked some flights and accommodation in advance, and after a few weeks you go back home. A holiday is hopefully a very relaxing experience.

We’ve seen that while travelling has some incredibly relaxing moments, and the lifestyle is far more chilled then working a job with a routine, we still have chores. We may not have housework and a job, but the process of experiencing the world becomes a purpose which require the same sort of attention as a job, except that we are doing it for ourselves.

Travelling on a budget means buses and the occasional super-economy flight, not generally quick and easy ways to travel, so getting between destinations means a whole day of travelling. It also means a lot of time researching so you can get a good price but avoid nightmares. Take this example of a review for a bus we were going to take, it’s one of my favourites. I still wanted to use this bus, but Ness vetoed!

I could start by telling you what a disaster this trip was but it wouldn’t reflect the exact reality : we were supposed to have a 12h ride and arrive around 7am (I had a cruise booked at 9h45). At the beginning all was fine, but as we hopped on to choose our seats, a staff member came very aggressively to us shouting that we were not allowed to take the seats we wanted but that we should take those he designated. We finally obeyed but changed a few minutes after since my bf didn’t have space for his legs (the designated seats wouldn’t lower). When the staff member realized that we had not obeyed him, he started shouting, pointing fingers, pulling our blankets from us to force us to go back to our initial seats. After a few minutes, he finally gave up and left angrily. That was only the beginning. The bus left and drove but kept turning around, letting people come on and off the bus. 2h30 later, we were back to the pick up place. They stopped several times to pick up people from the side of the road (at least 10 people ended up sitting or laying in the bus’ corridor…) but they also were picking up goods. By goods, I mean boxes, but also a goat and a pig… we arrived with with 2h30 of delay, no explanation, no apologies, and I’d slept next to a pig. It was the worst transport experience ever. One advice : if you see [bus name] RUN !
[Edited for brevity]

They included a photo which showed that the pig was either dead or in a very bad way. The goat seemed fine.

Goat buses aside, escaping home occupancy doesn’t mean escaping all housework. With only 2 sets of clothes we have to do a hand wash pretty much every day, and given that I’m the sweatiest person alive I shower at least 3 times a day. If we stay somewhere for a couple of days then it doesn’t get too dirty, but when we stay a couple of weeks then we have to keep it clean. Some places we stay offer housekeeping (but given that they all forbid doing your own laundry, we therefore have to hide our washing), but in budget hotels we do it ourselves.

Things which in ‘normal life’ are easy become more time consuming. Having a quick cuppa before bed generally involves finding a cafe, which is a pain if you’re on the 5th floor; and breakfast in bed isn’t really a thing. We do try to find places which have a kettle and fridge in the room for drinks and cereal, but having a fridge is different to having a fridge that works, especially if the power turns off when you leave the room. Getting around towns and islands is easy in some places, harder in others, going out to get breakfast can involve a long walk.

We also have to make a concerted effort to avoid falling foul of obscure rules or sneaky service providers, but I’m saving that for another post.

All in all, it’s far easier than having to do real life stuff, but not quite as easy as we might have thought.

A ‘Normal’ Day

About half the time, we sleep until we want (generally about 8am local time) then get up casually. The other half we have something planned which we have to get up for. We might go for a run before we find breakfast in the hotel or nearby, and most importantly we find coffee!

If we are doing a planned activity then we head off for that, it might be self organised in which case we find our bus or take a long walk somewhere, or we might go to a rendezvous with a company. If we don’t have a planned activity then we go for a wander. Simply wandering around a town, chatting to people and finding a nice place to sit is a big part of the experience for us, taking it all in.

When we’ve found somewhere to sit (normally with a coffee, of course), we catch up on admin. That might be planning our next destination, leaving reviews for our last one, sketching out parts of the next big phase (at the moment, in SE Asia, we are planning for the next stop as well as the essentials for Nepal in November), or working out what little activity we want to do the next day. It might also be keeping touch with life back home, whether by talking to friends and family or trying to remember the financial commitments we still have. As I write this, Ness is doing her accounts for the last year of work, and I am trying to get quotes arranged for a tree surgeon as the tree in our garden back home is dropping large branches on our neighbour’s heads.

In the afternoon or evening we might try to do some more exercise, find some dinner, and relax somewhere nice. Not dissimilar to an evening at home, except that dinner is in a restaurant or at a street food stall.

Some days are great, some are pretty drab, it is no different to being back at home except that the drab days don’t involve having to get up and go to work! We’ve just finished a 3 day scuba diving course which we’ll look back on with a lot of fondness (though at the time sea-sickness made it less fun), and today we are just chilling, not really sure what to do with ourselves but with no pressure to do anything in particular.

‘Chilling’ isn’t something that comes naturally to me, our home lifestyle doesn’t give us huge amounts of time to enjoy the smaller things, so we have been on a steep learning curve. Opening books we got half way through and stopped 2 years ago, we’ve jumped onto the Netflix bandwagon having not had any form of TV for 4 years, and we spend a lot of time just watching what is around us.

Life travelling is very different to a holiday, it isn’t a relaxing, joyous experience in the same way as a holiday, it isn’t so novel and it isn’t luxurious. But it is pretty awesome. Studies have shown that people generally have a base level of happiness, that events and circumstances can temporarily make you more or less happy, but we generally return to that base level. On holiday you can spend a few weeks flying high above your base, but for a year you come back to your normal level. For us that’s pretty good, as we are fortunately happy people, but it took a while to get over the idea that we ought to be ecstatic the whole time…we felt pressure from ourselves and elsewhere to have a puppyish excitement the whole time, until we realised that it just isn’t how emotions work.

The Perks

Regardless of anything else though, it is an amazing experience to have. For me, these are the main reasons why it’s so great.

1 – First and foremost, I get to be with Ness all day every day. Most people’s next comment is ‘not bored of each other yet?’, and my immediate reaction is easily and immediately ‘no’. I’ll answer again in 9 months, I hope and believe that my answer will be the same. Any shift worker knows that time with your partner becomes really precious, rare evenings or weekends together are special occasions, especially as we volunteer in our free time. We are working hard to remember that this time is still so special, and in 9 months I go back to shift work, we go back to not sharing a bed every night. Being beside my best friend the whole time is awesome!

2 – Life is still life wherever you are, there is no magic paradise where everything is perfect, but we get the luxury of doing life in vastly different places. One week we are on a tropical island (sand gets everywhere!!), the next in a mountain village, then in a bustling city. That adds so much interest and is a big part of why we travel.

3 – Except on travel days, we set the pace. Feeling lazy, we’ll be lazy. Feeling adventurous, let’s go on an adventure. Like it here, we stay, maybe not…we’ll go somewhere else. In one dimension we have a lot of control and freedom (in others we don’t, a story for another post).

4 – Smiles. Brief moments with people around the world, just a smile exchanged with someone who doesn’t speak your language. There’s something really special about that.

5 – As a guess, at least every other day we do something that we’ll still remember in 10 years time. There are probably few times in life when I feel I’m making so many memories which will stand out for so long. Whether happy or silly, fun or tough, there are so many remarkable little moments.

The day-to-day isn’t as far different from our home life as we might have thought, but it is a wonderful experience which we’re still learning how to really make the most of.