How Travel Has Changed Us…

As well as making a decision to be more tolerant of people’s shortcomings; make an effort to understand other people’s history and to appreciate the simple things in life, there are several ways that our trip has changed us personally…

We get less stressed about the little things – when you’ve had to wait hours at a border crossing, sitting in traffic for 20 minutes really doesn’t seem that bad!

We now don’t spend AGES getting ready in the mornings – whilst we are slightly in danger of letting this one slip, we can still remember what it was like to get ready in 15 mins and rush off to catch a bus or train! I went without a hairdryer for nearly a year and I don’t think Rich used hair gel once whilst we were away. We are also proud to say that 6 months after returning home, we are still living out of our backpacks!

We have developed a love for history! Rich in particular has developed a real thirst for knowledge – he found history sooo boring before we went away but his enthusiasm has been sparked as he witnessed the impact of the British Empire across the world and delved into the history of Vietnam, World War II and countless civil wars that have shaped many of the countries we’ve visited.

We also love geology! Just like finding a renewed interest in history we both found ourselves fascinated by Geology. We now know how all of those amazing mountain ranges, cliffs, volcanoes and river valleys that we’ve encountered were formed and never get bored of learning about the goings on beneath the Earth!

We are more self confident – putting ourselves deliberately out of our comfort zones and forcing ourselves to do things that we have never done before has helped our confidence no end and we now find ourselves willing to give anything a go!

Overcoming our fears – Richard hates spiders so you can imagine how he felt about sleeping in the Australian Outback. He had always said that the poisonous animals Down Under were the one reason he would never want to live there, but even I was amazed at the way he coped with creepy crawlies! He has since developed a new understanding of the insect world and now doesn’t run off screaming when he sees a furry, eight-legged creature walking towards him!

A new appreciation for life – after everything we have seen and done, we get so frustrated when we see people back home wishing their lives away. Nobody appreciates how lucky they really are and it’s really annoying to see people being lazy, abusing their bodies with drugs and alcohol, scrounging benefits instead of trying to improve themselves and generally having such a disregard for life! We feel like giving them a big shake and forcing them to realise how lucky they actually are.

It’s hard to say whether we would still think this way if we had not been travelling – perhaps these thoughts and feelings and lessons learned would still have developed at some point in our lives, but personally, we feel that travelling is the key. One thing is for sure, there is no way that we will ever be satisfied with the norm anymore – it’s impossible to have been given a glimpse of the big wide world and all of its wonders and then go back to living life inside four walls. It is because of this that we will never stop travelling! We may have crossed three continents, 25 countries and numerous time zones in the space of 11 months, but this is still only half the world! There is much, much more for us to explore and we can’t wait to get out there and make some more amazing memories…!