The Messy, Beautiful Chaos of Traveling (And Why You Need to Dive In)

Well, travelling is not that good most of the time. Instagram turns reality into an illusion of sunshine, cocktails, and perfect beaches. In reality? You will miss a bus, your suitcase will fall out of its zipper at the most inappropriate moment, and, yes, you might eat the stuff that is not easily settled in your stomach.

The trick here, though, is that it is these little things that cause hiccups, that cause havoc, that provide the pathways where they should not be located, which is what makes the business of travelling so addictive, and even begin to think of putting a bag on, I am as good as Poppy to say: do you. The world is not patient.

When the Wrong Turn Becomes the Best Part

Several summers ago, I was walking in a small Italian town. I was to seek out a cathedral, but again my sense of direction failed me ( Yellow Jacket ). I instead fell into this little bakery owned by a couple considered old. They did not speak English, and I did not speak Italian, yet we laughed, pointed at cakes, and they gave me a piece of bread just out of the oven on the house.

That day, I never came to the cathedral. But honestly? That bakery was a better moment. And this is the thing, when you travel, you never need to check the boxes, it is about the magic that has failed to crop in.

Traveling Cheap Doesn’t Mean Missing Out

People always perceive travel to be costly. But spilt some tea, you see that you can go on a shoestring, and experience the time of your life.

• Members stay at hostels, not at hotels. They are perilous, I tell you, they are none other than full to the brim with whacky-sounding people, and half the sport lies in shared outings on draughts abreoum carrassum.
  
  
• Flights? Play around with dates. Mid-week is your best friend. Applications such as Skyscanner or Hopper saved me hundreds of dollars literally.
  
  
• And food... do not waste your money in all the fancy, decorous restaurants of the resorts. The heart of a city is street food. My most unforgettable meal? A bowl of noodles in Bangkok is a one-dollar cart stall preparation. Zero regrets.

See? Cheap doesn’t mean boring. It, in fact, compels you to become more authentic to a place.

The Weird Freedom of Being Alone

Alright, allow me to be honest, traveling with friends is no big deal, but solo traveling is completely different. At first, it feels weird. You are dining alone, walking in markets without someone to talk to, and wondering metro routes without the locals glaring. But then… something shifts.

You realize you can handle it. You learn to trust yourself. That Walden pond stuck-out table, in that cafe where you supposed you would languish alone? You meet someone on the trip who becomes your lifelong friend. That bus you almost missed? Later, hopefully, you will tell someone you meet in your hostel about it.

It’s messy, but it’s freeing. Travelling alone is a course in confidence crash.

Things Nobody Tells You (But I Will)

The best pieces of advice most travel blogs will offer you are such general tips as, pack light, or carry duplicates of your passport. Well, they are useful but mean more:

• Your phone will betray you. Sooner or later, without warning, the battery will run out at the time you need Google Maps the most. Been a power bank, the be like you live by it (though it might be).
  
  
• In more places, it is said, cash is king. Don’t think that the cards will be accepted everywhere. What food is popular in Morocco? Cash only.
  
  
• Pictures are wonderful, yet they get no more than that. Shoot and then see the sunset with your very own eyes. You’ll remember it better.
  
  
• People are not as brutal as you think them to be. Of course, be nice, though, stop thinking no one is out to swindle you. There are more excellent people in the world than one thinks.

Here’s the thing: traveling will test you. You’ll miss flights, sweat through your clothes and they are not some of the travel tricks. They are the little facts that, when you are out in the real world, bump into you.

Why It’s Always Worth the Hassle

The thing is that in such a way, traveling will challenge you. You will miss flights, you will sweat in your clothes carrying a suitcase up the cobblestone streets, and you can even cry in an airport toilet (I've been there).

However, when you make the same stop, you will notice a sunrise that will erase all the bad days that you had in your life. You won’t understand a word of the music and will somehow feel a part of it. You will consume food that makes it a new definition of good.

That is why the bother is a deserved one. The riot, the trouble, the now and then catastrophe, they are all part of the tale you will spend your life telling.

Stop Waiting for the “Perfect Time”

Waiting to get enough money, or enough free time, or the right plan, spoil yourself: it is not there. Reasons why you should not travel will always come your way in life. But guess what? The world doesn’t wait.

Book the cheap ticket. Take the weekend trip. Go out somewhere, even as far as the neighboring city. In this life, you know one day you will go back, and you are going to regret the fact that you never took any trip, you see.

Travel is not a refined Instagram feed. It is cluttered, clumsy, and a little tiring, just because it is beautiful. It rattles your eye open, makes you remember that the world isn’t as small as you are used to, its stories in your head for the next 40 years.

So go. Get lost. Eat the weird food. Say yes more than you say no. And best of all, fall in the fray, and the darnedest things are there.