Hello homesickness and good bye again! Traveling alone is one of the most exciting things you can do. You make such amazing experiences and there's always something or someone new to discover. It can either be a new travel buddy, a friend, locals but mostly it's yourself who you discover from a new side each and everyday.
Something you're definitely going to discover is traveling's biggest enemy - homesickness. Thinking of how much better you would feel like being back home with your family and friends and feeling comfortable in your trustful home with all the familiar surroundings will just ruin your travel experiences. When you're homesick it feels like your discovering the world through a pair of glasses of negativity. Everyone and everything seems uninteresting and you're not feeling like you want to go out and discover the world. You will mostly like to crawl away into a hole just spending the whole day in bed reading a book or siting in the most western cafés which looks like at home to use their WiFi so you can connect to the digital world of back home and feel like you're there. Your diary entries start to sound pessimistic and your backpack starts to get more chaotic than in the beginning. Everyone in your dorm who tries to make friends with you is just bothering your privacy and you wish you would be in your own room back home instead of staying in a 6 to 12-bed dorm for months sharing a bathroom with several strangers. You start taking lesser pictures than in the beginning of your traveling and you spend more time sending long messages to people back home hoping to receive a long massage back. And you just feel like you're out of place and you're missing out all the great stuff happening back home while there's actually nothing exciting going on back home that you would miss out.
Don't let homesickness ruin your days while traveling because these days should be unforgettable and you know that one day you will return back home. Just remember that it was your own decision to travel alone so stop complaining and destroying your amazing experience. Treat yourself with a nice breakfast and start the day with wanderlust, motivation and positive energy. Look forward to all the amazing countries you're still going to visit, all the strange food you're going to taste and all the interesting people from all over the world you're going to meet. Traveling alone is like riding a roller coaster of emotions. You just have to deal with it.
Good ways of curing homesickness:
- write down your emotions in your travel journal
- write a blog post about homesickness (hahaha)
- look for a café or a restaurant where you get the same food as back home (it is expensive though but once in a while you should treat yourself)
- send pictures to friends and family so they can take part of your experience. This will let you feel less alone
- ask people in your hostel to join you having breakfast, lunch, dinner etc.
- talk to other travelers about your homesickness - everyone had, has or will have the same problem so don't think you're the only traveler who misses home
Always be curious!
Love,
- AJ -
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