Always on the go

18th April 2011

Before we set out on our travels, I always had an urge (usually stifled) to correct people who called our year away a holiday. We’re not tourists, we’re travellers. It’s not a holiday, it’s a year of travel. But do you know what? This is effectively a year-long holiday.

There’s two ways of travelling, I feel; either in depth or in breadth. By which I mean you can either spend a good long time in one place, getting to know the area and the people properly, or you can try to see a lot of different places, so you can compare and contrast your impressions. Ironically those who describe themselves as “travellers” tend to promote stopping for a while in one place to really understand the culture as being “proper travelling”.

Over the course of one year we’ll have probably done a lot more travelling than the typical “traveller”. There isn’t a single place where we’ve stayed for a whole week, and probably only a half-dozen accommodations we’ve stayed in for more than three nights. Oops, I’m lying – we stayed with Maureen’s grandma for two weeks with only a three-day trip in the middle.

Everything we read beforehand suggested that you’d need to slow down and take a break now and again, or all the travelling would burn you out. Are we supremely tough? Regrettably, I suspect not. I think it’s immensely helpful travelling as a couple for one thing. And I think that travelling with a decent daily allowance removes a lot of potential stress as well.

So we’re always on the go. Sometimes it’s actually hard keeping up with the blog. Not that we party every evening, but if the day involved a long drive or if we were up at the crack of dawn looking for wildlife then it’s not long after dinner that I’m wanting bed.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, April 21st, 2011 at 4:14 am and is filed under Australia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.