Itās time to be honest: I think overseas travel is wasted on me.
We were driving down from Antibes to Genova today. It was a nice trip, complete with picturesque towns passing us by as we drove along the motorway. My friend was oohing and ahhing at each one: remaking about how nice it would be to see them, stay in them for a while. He was also remarking on what we would do when we arrived at our destination. There was just this air of enthusiasm about the whole thing.
I didnāt feel that enthausiasm. We heard some news that another friend of ours had their luggage stolen, and I just couldnāt stop thinking about it. I spent a fair bit of last night going through possible ways on how I could avoid it happening to me, and how I would handle it if it did, and just the whole hassle of dealing with that possibility.
This, mixed with the inevitable task of finding my barring in an unfamiliar place, stressing about how I would interact with the locals in their non-native language, the ongoing recovery from Covid-19, and a bit of home-sickness, and you can probably guess that Iām just not feeling the vibe of adventure at the moment.
And yeah, I might have done this to myself, particularly since I havenāt had much to do with this part of the trip.Happy to āgo with the flowā of what others are doing. And people might ask me āoh, wouldnāt it be good to see this?ā or āwouldnāt it be fun to experience that?ā Yeah, maybe? I might get some enjoyment out of it, but Iām not sure if itāll offset the stress I feel with the logistics of it all.
So thatās where I am at the moment. Itās got to the point where Iām contemplating coming home early. It would actually simplify my itinerary quite a bit, and I wonāt be leaving my friends in the lurch: it would be a portion of the trip where I would be travelling by myself. Even with a week less, thatās still about 4 weeks in total, which I think itās plenty, or at least plenty for me.
Update 30 June: Apart from taking a slightly earlier flight home, I ended up staying the the full 5 weeks. And in retrospect, I’m really glad I did. I figured that I would regret not visiting the places I’ve would’ve cut out if I were to go home early; and after visiting them, I know now that I would’ve missed out on some of the most memorable parts of the trip.
I think what sparked this post was a mixture of anxiety of travelling alone and little bit of home sickness. But nothing beats anxiety like working through the problem (if you can call travelling solo a “problem”). And as for home sickness: well, I’m not sure there’s much I can do about that apart from remembering that home will always be there.