Time Away: How long should I travel?

All of the information I've read has been extremely helpful and motivational. I love to travel, and I want to really travel more before I get older, married, children.... I was hoping to travel around for at least a year. Quit my job. Use money saved. Work as I go and as I need money, and travel everywhere that I want to go.

The stories, tips, suggestions provided within the website, how long have you/women traveled at a time? Is it ongoing, hopping country to country and city to city for months/years?

If I do this, I want to go all out. No looking back. I dont want to plan a week away for vacation. This is going to become a new lifestyle.

Answer:

Every woman has her own story and travel style. I took off for six months - that was the plan - and I ended up traveling for a full three years. On the road, I met people who had traveled longer.

I had a specific travel approach: I would spend a month in each country. Not enough to really get to know it, but enough to get a sense of its people and culture. So for about 18 months, I crossed Africa and Asia, spending four weeks traveling around a country and getting to know it. The last part of my trip was a bit different: I settled in Bangkok and used it as a base for getting to know Southeast Asia.

I went home once during that time, because I missed my family, so I traveled back for a few weeks, soaked in my family's love, and left again (difficult for all of us). I did get my mother to come and spend a few weeks with me in Asia.

Everyone travels differently. I conducted a number of travel interviews with wandering women and found as many styles as there were women, and as many reasons to travel.

Some women travel for work, like Helen Tirebuck, who clears landmines for a living, or Kim Wildman the travel writer. Others volunteer, like Kirsty the Nerdy Nomad. And still others just want to see the world, like my friend Lisa Lubin, an Emmy-award winning television producer who left her job for nearly three years on the road.

All these women had at least one thing in common: travel opened their worlds and for some has become a lifestyle, not an adventure.

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Time Away: How long should I travel?

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Culture Shock When You Return Home
by: Anonymous

Just an aside to the "How long ..." question.

When I returned to the USA in 2000 after five years out of the country aboard my sailboat, mostly in third world or emerging countries if not just at sea, I found that I would be forever out of touch with common knowledge events of that period. Granted I had little access to TV or internet (still primitive by today's communication standards) but the actual attitude and pace of my former society had also changed. It seemed that I had returned to a much more depersonalized, America.

Those were the Clinton years of blossoming dot coms and bull markets and credit score systems - while I was cautiously steering my way around mud flats up the Amazon. Friends and family told me about their soccer games but never mentoned much about current events. I had to keep asking 'What about Jon Benet?'

No regrets for my adventurous travels of course but a gentle warning that the price may include a permanent information gap.
It's what I call Reverse Culture Shock
by: Leyla

I can absolutely sympathize!

After a year in rural Africa, I went to Rome for a 'break' and remember standing frozen at a red light not quite knowing what to do - so much traffic, so many people, so much noise. I eventually snuck into a group of people and crossed with them, but that sense of bewilderment has stayed with me.

The same thing happened with information. It took me three weeks to find out Princess Diana had died... I too missed the fevered dotcom and web growth. I did take a laptop with me on my travels and there was rudimentary email in those days - remember Compuserve? But very little web, so no news delivered to my Inbox or RSS feed, and certainly no way to do research or find out more about things.

In a sense, though, I was a blessing. For three years my only concern beyond my own travels were the well-being of friends and family back home. The rest of the world sort of faded away into gentle oblivion. I don't know if I could cope with that again today but it certainly felt serene way back then.

That said, there are things you can do to prepare for reverse culture shock...

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