Is Travel Worth the Trouble?

It’s been said that we travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape us. As I faced my most recent travel trials, I had pause to reflect on this and wonder if it was true.

I enjoy my life at home. Fortunately, I have no reason to want to escape it. I’m retired; I live by the sea; my friends and family are nice; the climate is good and there’s little danger. But I’m often tempted by images of other beautiful landscapes and stories of different cultures and find myself hurtling towards another trip, just to experience more.

When we’re travelling, we’re learning, we’re adjusting, we’re seeing, hearing, smelling, and feeling new things. That’s where the statement proves true. Life is bigger. And even when there’s challenges, as often there are, it’s worth it.

On my way to Croatia from Sydney, I hadn’t even left Australia before I faced my first one. A one hour stop in Perth grew into twenty-one hours due to a mechanical problem. Six hours waiting in Perth airport turned into a scramble at 10.45pm for one of the few taxis around, an online search for a hotel (thank technology for smart phones and Booking.com), a late night dinner order, a one hour phone call to Webjet to change my connecting flight Rome to Dubrovnik (I can’t praise Webjet more highly for sorting this out for me), an email to my travel agent to cancel my first day’s arrangements and another hotel booking for my midnight arrival in Rome. By Sydney’s clock, it was 2am by the time I was able to rest. I had achieved what I needed to, despite not normally functioning well at night, despite being afraid of failing somehow, despite not having anyone to share the stress with. I went to bed feeling it was all par for the course and proud of myself for managing. When my fellow travellers and I congregated at the gate for the flight the next day, we felt friendly and exchanged stories about the night, the connections, the reasons for our trips. We were unified and while waiting for our luggage in the almost deserted Rome airport, we helped one another activate our eSims and gathered in a group to make our way to the not-so-easy-to-find airport hotel. There was a feeling of camaraderie which somewhat compensated for the vexation. As a solo traveller I find myself magnetised to smiling middle-agers (usually women) when I need support. A one-minute connection often resolves a problem or boosts my resilience.

The next day, on hearing that an airport ground-staff strike in Rome (that followed the nationwide train strike) would mean my luggage might not get loaded, I stuffed essentials and two days’ worth of clothes into my carry-on daypack and headed back to the terminal. The check-in guy was reassuring – Don’t worry about it, he said in his thick Italian accent. So I chose not to. I had done everything I could to prepare for the worst and still felt optimistic about the best. When my luggage appeared on the Dubrovnik airport carousel, I was elated and excited again about my holiday. I had notched up my resilience level and learned I could cope. I was in a new land, and it was worth it. As I stepped into the sparkling Adriatic Sea and swam as the sun went down, I counted my blessings and acknowledged that life was indeed, not escaping me.

Next post, I’ll share my trip to Croatia and Slovenia, recommend some fabulous fun Must Do adventures and share my take on joining a small group hiking tour. It wasn’t all easy, but it was all worth it.