The Dark Side of Traveling for a Living
The road less traveled can be full of road bumps. (Photo: Five Dollar Traveller)
Every long-term traveler has dreams of grandeur when he or she first starts out. After all, the possibilities are thrilling: You’re heading into the unknown. You’re about to discover new cultures, foods, friends, and places. You’ll be seeing the world from a different point of view for as long as the money holds out.
Well, we are Meg and Tom, the writers behind Five Dollar Traveller and the podcasters behind 5 Dollar Planet, and we had those initial dreams, too. And then we managed to do all those things, and they were great. But here’s the thing: What you may not expect to hear is that they were also very difficult. It’s hard to live outside your comfort zone for an extended period of time. And at times, we wanted to quit.
Our initial plan was simple: We wanted to save money fast, quit our jobs, travel around Asia for 18-plus months, and then keep going after that. But life caught up with us. While we definitely succeeded in the saving money and quitting our jobs plan, we got a bit tripped up in Asia.
Tom and I had been on the road already for 13 months straight. We’d planned to hit Nepal first, then cross into Tibet, China, Laos, and Vietnam. But two and a half months into India, we simply ran out of steam. We wanted out, and we wanted out fast. We were mentally, physically, and emotionally exhausted.
Related: 9 Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me Before I Went to India
How’d it happen, exactly? In India, we found ourselves becoming people we didn’t want to be. We started to be rude, jaded, and quick-tempered. And I started crying a lot. I usually have a teary breakdown at least once a month, when it’s that time of the month, but I started having one almost daily, over everyday things.
A few examples:
1. When we couldn’t fit on the train because it was so crammed.
Try getting a seat on this bus. (Photo: Five Dollar Traveller)
2. Because I didn’t want to eat deep-fried food for breakfast, and we couldn’t find anything else.
3. Because someone, once again, gave us directions that were entirely wrong.
4. Because our taxi driver swore at us when we didn’t accept the fare he offered. He just said, “F*ck you; you can pay.”
Related: An American Expat Shares Her Tales of Asian Life
But perhaps in a bigger sense, we simply hadn’t experienced peace and quiet in a long time. Asia has an air of excitement to it. And don’t get me wrong: Part of the reason I love Asia is that very hustle and bustle — the sights, the smells, the people whose experiences are so different from my own.
Mmmm. There’s nothing like Asian street food. (Photo: Five Dollar Traveller)
But that hustle-bustle can wear on your nerves, and it certainly wore on ours. The constant honking of horns, the barking street dogs, the roosters crowing, the daily fireworks… It all became too much. It was sensation overload.
Here we are on a crowded bus before our nerves got the best of us. (Photo: Five Dollar Traveller)
Related: What I Learned About Life and Love Driving the Roads of India
As you may guess, we didn’t continue on in Asia after India. We moved on to Europe instead. And quite frankly, it was lovely, exactly what my shot nerves needed. The streets were clean, the traffic made sense (well, mostly), and I enjoyed silence: true, uninterrupted silence. Most importantly, though, there was cheese. And wine. And baguettes. And they were all amazing.
Warm, doughy, fluffy, delicious baguette — i.e., happiness in a bag. (Photo: Five Dollar Traveller)
Looking back, India had some fantastic bits. Sometimes it’s easier to appreciate a place once you’ve left — and once you’ve stopped crying. Now the question remains: Was it India that broke us, or were we already broken by the time we arrived? This we will never know.
What we do know, though, is that travel is more difficult than it’s cracked up to be. Of course, there will always be those people who say, “Oh, poor babies. It’s so hard traveling the world instead of going to an office every day.” But the world is our office, and sometimes it’s an overwhelming one. And even though we love it all the same, it’s important to acknowledge the difficulty as well as the wonder.
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