travel Archives

Travel with a Purpose: Finding your “why”

8 April, 2016 By Anna S E Lundberg 3 Comments

I’ve written before about the different reasons why people travel, provoked by a friend who claimed that “of course everyone likes to travel as it’s just going on holiday”.

Langkawi, Malaysia — Nothing wrong with a holiday!

Travel can of course be “just” a holiday, or perhaps an escape from something back home. It can also provide some much-needed time and space to process things that are happening and to gain a new perspective on a problem or a situation. It can be a way of getting out of your comfort zone, putting yourself in unfamiliar situations so that you continue to learn and to grow. It can be a way to meet interesting people that you’d never come across back home; and it can be many other things too.

Do you know why you travel?

It’s impossible not to notice all the messages we see these days about quitting your job and becoming a digital nomad, working from the beach on your laptop, travelling long term without a care in the world – but this isn’t for everyone. Likewise I’ve come across all sorts of sporty types and professional adventurers who do things like cycling backwards through the Amazon – and this definitely isn’t for everyone either! When you haven’t defined your own reasons for travelling, your own purpose, I find it’s easy to get caught up in other people’s plans and approaches to life.

I wonder if we might not also get lost in meaningless activities or distracted by things that aren’t really that important. There can be a manic urge to tick the boxes, to “see everything”, to make the most of our time while we’re in a particular city or country. We may rush around or flock to the popular sights and miss out on richer, more subtle experiences.

On my current trip to Japan, I’ve been struck by the absurdity of TripAdvisor and other similar reviews of sightseeing destinations.

Inari Shrine — Fushimi Inari-taisha Shrine in Kyoto. Getting there early, we were able to experience the shrines before the hordes descended…

Who is really to say that Fushimi Inari-taisha Shrine (sitting at the base of a mountain, it encompasses a long corridor of distinctive red shrines, which were soon infiltrated by hordes of tourists from all over the world) is #1 of 847 things to do in Kyoto, while Sanjusangendo Hall (a Buddhist temple that includes a long wooden building containing an awe-inspiring one thousand life-sized statues) is #4?

Or that Rokuon-ji Temple (a beautiful Golden Pavilion where we were herded along the path in a Disneyland-type queue system) is #2 and the Gion neighbourhood (a historical geisha district that is lit up beautifully with lanterns at night) is #14?

I never set myself a clear purpose for this trip, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t “see the top 10 ‘things to do’ on TripAdvisor for every city I visit”.

I’ve also been swept up in what I can only define as online hype and PR gimmicks. These make us go out of our way for experiences that can simply never be as epic as it is claimed, whether on TripAdvisor or in travel magazines, or on one of the many blogs from intrepid explorers around the world.

In Kurashiki, I queued for over an hour for a “happy pudding”. This small vanilla dessert was very nice and, sure, the smiley face on top was a cute touch – but was it that much better than the smile-less pudding from across the street? A friend of mine here in Japan topped this with her own story of waiting for three hours for shave ice at some presumably celebrated café. And I have since exceeded that again by staying up all night to be one of the lucky 120 people who got to visit the early-morning tuna auction at the Tsukiji fish market.

We often chase these unique, “once-in-a-lifetime” experiences, ticking things off our bucket list, looking for things to do that will give us stories to tell.

As Richard says in The Beach (a film that was made 16 years ago, when the whole backpacking scene in Asia in particular was really thriving):

“Trust me, it’s paradise. This is where the hungry come to feed. For mine is a generation that circles the globe and searches for something we haven’t tried before. So never refuse an invitation, never resist the unfamiliar, never fail to be polite and never outstay the welcome. Just keep your mind open and suck in the experience. And if it hurts, you know what? It’s probably worth it.”

It definitely hurt lying on that cold floor for three hours on Wednesday night as I waited for the tuna auction to begin… but was it worth it?!

Of course you could say that it’s through accepting all these invitations, trying new things, that we get to have the very experiences that we’re actually craving – even if they’re not what we were expecting.

The happy pudding may have been over-hyped, but it still makes me smile when I think about it – and the hour we waited was spent outside in the sunshine, watching people go by and chatting to others who were similarly lured by the pudding. The tuna auction was not the captivating experience that had been promised, but the hours that led up to it in the company of a new group of friends (involving chocolate bread and an impromptu karaoke session up on a bridge in goodness-knows-where) were all the more unforgettable. And, of course, I now have a ridiculous story to tell people about the time I stayed up all night to walk around a wet and cold fish market at five in the morning…

Having a purpose can help to remind you why you travel, when you find reasons to start to question yourself – and help you to decide when it’s time to stop.

open road — On the road again – but where are you going?

You may be missing important milestones back home, away from your family and friends; you may have to say no to job opportunities that require you to be in a particular place at a particular time; and although I think you increase your chances of meeting your soul mate when you travel, it can be hard when you have to say goodbye before you’ve worked out if it could be him.

All this being said, maybe it works in the other direction as well: maybe you can actually find your purpose by travelling.

Maybe you fall in love with a country and decide to move there more permanently. Maybe you fall in love with a person and decide to move to be closer to each other. Maybe your discovery has nothing to do with the act of travel itself but it’s simply a realisation that manifests itself during your travels.

Maybe the point is this: although travel on the surface looks like it’s about the packing of your suitcase, the flight to the other side of the world, the names of the cities and the sights that you’ll see… it’s not about that at all.

Like all of life, it’s about those moments: the laughter and the intimate conversations you share with fellow travellers whom you may never see again; the delicious meal at the little restaurant that someone takes you to and that you never would have found by yourself; the stranger on the street who gives you his umbrella and then continues on in the rain; the new ideas and insights that come to you that will change the way you look at things when you get back home.

These moments may be harder to pin down than the top 10 sights on TripAdvisor – but I think that’s why they’re worth treasuring; and, in the end, I think that’s why I travel.

Home, adventure, and something in between…

21 August, 2015 By Anna S E Lundberg Leave a Comment

High on the “adventure” axis: experiencing extreme heat and out-of-this-world landscapes in Death Valley, California.

Someone I met on a recent adventure told me that we have two desires: home and adventure.

When I first heard this, I thought it was a great insight and immediately interpreted the two as being contradictory: adventure is having no ties and travelling the world alone while home is settling down, buying a house, and starting a family. This puts me far down the end of the adventure spectrum at the moment, while some of my friends are at the other end, focusing on the home side of things.

But I don’t think they’re contradictory at all.

Home, now that I think about it, is about creating a family with people you love, having somewhere you belong and feel safe, experiencing an element of stability and balance. Adventure, on the other hand, is about taking risks, challenging yourself, being free to explore the world. And I think you can have the two together.

Home is where the heart is, bla bla bla – but it’s true, isn’t it? You can feel lonely and unhappy in a big house full of stuff just as you can feel at home living out of a suitcase. A family can be a partner and five children or a partner and a dog; it can be your dad and your brother or a group of your best friends. In the same way, you can have an adventure by grabbing a backpack and heading out into the world by yourself or you can have it with a group of strangers on a hilltop an hour from London; you can have it with your partner and you can have it with your children.

We have a tendency to see things in black and white: having a steady income in a full-time job or being poor as an entrepreneur, feeling tied down or remaining independent, creating a home or having an adventure. This kind of thinking makes every decision seem incredibly important as you decide where to live, how to work, who to spend your time with. Seeing different shades of grey (no not 50 thank you – well, that’s an adventure too I suppose), or a happy mishmash of different things, makes it all more relaxed, more of an experiment as you step by step create the balance you want in your life. It’s an individual choice, as ever, and only you can decide how much of each ingredient you want in your particular mixture.

So, yes, at the moment I’m having a whole lot of “adventure” and, yes, I feel like I want a bit more “home” going forward – but it’s not yet clear what shape that home will take, or what adventures I’ll continue to have while I’m creating this home. And I’m not going to get it right tomorrow: I’ll try a little more of this, a little less of that, and I’ll probably keep trying as long as I live. There are those who’ll give up their home to become professional adventurers, and others who’ll focus all their attention on building a home for their loved ones; but as far as I’m concerned, I’m completely confident that I can have the two together.

Adventure is Out There: Into the Arctic Wilderness

10 July, 2015 By Anna S E Lundberg 4 Comments

I finally got around to writing up my experience of travelling into the Arctic Circle back in March; and what an experience it was…

It was the stillness that took me most by surprise. The only sounds were the panting of the dogs and the pitter-patter of their paws on the ground, the crunch of the snow against the runners of the sled. A blanket of granulated sugar lay around us, broken up here and there by the evergreen trees. Branches bent over our path under the weight of the snow, creating a portal through which we entered another world; then the landscape would open up and we would be crossing a vast frozen lake. When we arrived at camp, the wilderness cabin where we would be staying for two nights, I was stunned to find out that we’d been going for more than three hours.

We had flown into Kiruna, Sweden’s northernmost town, earlier that afternoon. After a hot lunch and a quick briefing, we were kitted out in our Arctic gear and given a little scrap of paper with the names of our dogs. I was given Miki and the oldest and loveliest of the dogs Tofa in the front, and in the back I had Toby and Balto; before I knew it I was standing on my individual sled with four impatient huskies pulling eagerly at the reins. I lifted my foot off the brake… and we were off! Now, I’m really not a dog person, and I must admit that this was the part of the trip that I had thought the least about (except to imagine sitting down in something more like Santa’s sleigh) – but after this first afternoon of sledding through the frozen landscape of Narnia, I mean Kiruna, I would have happily ended the trip there with no regrets.

Husky — The dogs were beautiful and tame on the one hand but their howling when they were hungry or when they wanted to get going made them seem much closer to their wolf cousins on the other.

That night, we fed the huskies and then ourselves, rewarding ourselves further with some relaxation in the sauna hut. We alternated the roasting inside with sprints out into the snow to cool down, hesitant at first but getting more and more daring with each go, eventually frolicking freely in the snow before heading in to get warmed up. When we were once again fully dressed, we headed back out into the snow for what we had all been secretly hoping for: a chance to see the northern lights. There are trips that focus only on this, chasing the aurora borealis with experts who will all but guarantee a sighting; for us, though, this would be a bonus, on top of an adventure that had already more than delivered.

Northern Lights — It’s impossible to capture the majesty of this phenomenon but a photo gives you a little taster of what we witnessed that night.

The night was clear, the stars much brighter than what we are used to back home with all the industrial light pollution that comes with living in the city. Someone spotted a hint of something at the horizon. A cloud? It’s nothing. Then… maybe it’s something? A swirl of light getting slowly brighter, a hint of green, reaching up into the sky. Suddenly: yes! Not a cloud after all. We’re actually seeing them, a whirl of light dancing across the sky, vibrant and alive. Science may explain it all with particles and cosmic rays and solar flares but whatever the cause it is in awe-inspiring sight, a magical moment in the depths of the Arctic wilderness. A short flight and yet a long, long way away from home…

cross-country skiing — The skis were old school military skis, a couple of pieces of wood basically with some straps. How are you supposed to ski on these long thin slippery things?!

On the second day, the dogs got a break as we went for a cross-country ski. Now I may be Nordic but I do not have a whole lot of experience of Nordic skiing, having only been once, many years ago. Things were made more difficult by the fact that the snow kept freezing on the underside of my skis, providing some welcome traction on the uphill bits but being less helpful when I was trying to actually ski on the downhill stretches. Once I had managed to knock all that ice off with some very aggressive kicking and stomping, it was smooth sailing. Well, not quite… After we’d finally made it to the top of a big hill it turned out that downhill was even trickier. We fell like dominos, laughing with increasing hysteria as we went. How are you supposed to ski on these long thin slippery things?! By the end of the day, some of us having also chosen to do the longer route, we were losing control of our poor fatigued limbs, and having run out of water early on we were eagerly munching on snow just like the huskies. On finally arriving back at the cabin we had a much-deserved sauna and some more arctic rolls; after an also-much-deserved shot of vodka to revive the spirits!

The next morning, we had our second and last day of dog sledding. This time, we were responsible for gathering and harnessing our own dogs, and I think we were all feeling a whole lot more comfortable knowing more what to expect. In fact, when we were nearing the end and travelling through a narrow and windy bit that had thrown a lot of people off their sledges on that first day, this time we glided through like pros. I love how a group of amateurs can get to a sufficient level of skill to enjoy something as random as dog sledding within just a couple of days, or even hours, of picking up those reins.

Cocktails at sunset [Photo credit: Gaynor Whiting]

We finished our weekend with a trip to the Ice Hotel, a complex that is re-designed and re-constructed every year after the “snice” (what an awesome word! It’s a mixture of snow and ice) thaws and melts in summer. We didn’t spend the night in the -6 degree rooms but we did manage a few cocktails from the Ice Bar; a month later, we were drinking from the same glasses in the Ice Bar in London (ice from the Torne River is shipped from Sweden to London for this purpose) where we had an Arctic reunion. It wasn’t quite the same – but the cocktails were still tasty! And, of course, that’s the other thing about any adventure like this: the people you meet are inevitably kindred spirits.

The wilderness weekend was organised by Madoc of Secret Adventures. If you’re tempted, and how could you not be, there will be a new Arctic adventure 21st-24th January 2016. This one is in the middle of winter and likely to give you a more authentic Arctic experience than our blue-skies-and-warm-sun experience in March! You’ll fly to Kiruna via Stockholm with either Norwegian Airlines or SAS and the rest is all organised by Madoc and the team.

So you like to travel?

1 May, 2015 By Anna S E Lundberg 1 Comment

When asked to list our interests – whether at the bottom of a CV or in a dating profile – we might mention reading, going for walks, playing a sport… and most of us will probably add, “I like to travel.” But what exactly does that mean? In the last few years I’ve come across countless bloggers who live for travel, solo travellers or couples who build their whole lives around moving from place to place, celebrating the joys of the nomadic life and pumping out articles about how you, too, can afford to live this kind of rootless existence. Now I’m no travel blogger, but travel has been a conspicuous part of the experiences that I’ve been sharing on this blog, and whenever I have time off between projects my natural impulse is to book a trip…

So why is that we travel? What is it about travelling that we find so appealing? If we dig a little deeper, we’ll probably find that there are all sorts of underlying forces creating that urge to pack our suitcase and head out of the door…

Travel as a holiday

In its most common, and simple, form, travel is something you do when you have time off work. You might go to your house in the south of France, lie on a beach in Barbados, or visit your family who live abroad. You may even choose to go to the same place each year, so you know exactly what you’re getting and you can focus on relaxing and enjoying yourself. This is time with your loved ones, time away from the office… a holiday, basically. A holiday is a wonderful thing and brings lots of benefits; but if “I like to travel” means “I like a holiday” then, yes, duh, we all do darling.

Travel as an escape

Taking the idea of a holiday or a break from work to the extreme gives you travel as an escape from the drudgery of your everyday life. Every week from Monday morning you’re counting down the days until the weekend, and all year long you’re counting down the weeks until your next holiday. If that’s you, then as the saying goes you need to find a life that you don’t want to escape from! A few days or weeks of holiday a year can never make up for the rest of the year that you live in soul-destroying wretchedness in a job you hate or in a relationship that makes you miserable. Enjoy your time away, by all means – just make sure you hand in that resignation letter or dump your cheating boyfriend when you get back.

Travel as a ‘tick the box’

Ah that most terrible of all sins, to travel simply to say that you’ve been there. These are the Americans who “do Europe” in a fortnight, tourists who barely leave the airport or the hotel, who want to see the Mona Lisa – tick! – and be done with it. They’ll do a bus tour so as to cover as much as they can in a day, they’ll see the main sights, they’ll take lots of photos. It’s crossing off destinations for the sake of it, without any attempt at getting to know the real heart of a place. These tourists – ouch, what an insult! – leave with a few selfies and souvenirs… oh and plenty of bragging rights, supported by all the photos filling up our Facebook newsfeeds. But, then, part of the joy of having an experience is being able to share it with your friends, isn’t it!?

“Too often travel, instead of broadening the mind, merely lengthens the conversation.”
– Elizabeth Drew

Travel as a cultural experience

There are also the more highbrow among the travellers, those who enjoy discovering different cultures, going to museums, learning languages. These are the travel snobs, the ones who would never dream of lying on a beach all day, feeling virtuous as they get up early to go to that great little exhibition. Cultural experiences, though, are much broader than that and it’s impossible not to live a richer life as a result of being exposed to different ways of living and seeing how small you are in the grand scheme of things.

“Travel broadens our perspectives. Suddenly, the palette with which we paint the story of our lives has more colours.”
– Rick Steves

Travel as an exploration of the unknown

Travel can also be an adventure. It’s arriving in places you know little about, being open to whatever experience comes long, getting to know the locals you happen to meet. True adventurers – travellers, not tourists – don’t like to plan and tend to be looking for a more authentic experience, meaning staying with the locals, going to bars and restaurants away from the main touristy areas, spending more time there to really get to know a place. Another type of travel snob, looking down on those of us foolish enough to visit the standard tourist attractions, the restaurant rip-offs, paying full price at the market…

“Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.”
– Dalai Lama

Travel for travel’s sake

And, finally, why not travel simply for travel’s sake? The idea of Wanderlust has become prevalent in the English language, along with another loanword from German, Fernweh – literally , ‘far-sicknesss’, as opposed to Heimweh or homesickness – and a great one from my own language, resfeber, which is Swedish for ‘travel fever’. The internet is full of travel bloggers who have packed up their bags and spend all year, every year, moving around from place to place with no permanent home.

“Not all those who wander are lost.”
– J. R. R. Tolkien

Personally, I think I travel for a mixture of all these reasons: for a break from sitting at a desk all day, for quality time with friends and family, to have new experiences and meet new people and, yes, to tick off amazing ‘bucket list’ sights like witnessing the Northern Lights (last month) and seeing the Grand Canyon (next month!). The world is vast and beautiful and I want to see as much as I can in the time that I’ve been given.

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
– Mark Twain

So what type of traveller are you? Let me know in the comments below!

How to Keep Your Gadgets Safe while on the Road: Travel insurance for the digital nomad

24 February, 2015 By Anna S E Lundberg Leave a Comment

When I went off on my first backpacking trip to Asia during my gap year after school … *ahem* 14 years ago … I barely had a phone that worked abroad. I would use it to send some text messages now and then but other than that we would have go to an internet café to send emails and read our Lonely Planet or travel brochures to get information about the availability of hotels, bus timetables, and how to get to various tourist sights. I had a compact camera… and that was it.

Now look at me: do do do do do, Inspector Gadget! My packing list for the digital nomad is long and full of expensive items, notably my Macbook Air, my iPhone, and my D-SLR. And almost everywhere you go, travellers are following suit: they’re using iPads to take pictures of Machu Picchu, holding out their selfie stick over the Iguazú Falls. We’re so addicted that we can’t live without these gadgets even on a holiday that’s supposed to be taking us away from it all; but that doesn’t mean we’re not worried about losing them, or, worse, having them stolen from us. So how can you keep your gadgets safe while on the road?

Preventing theft in the first place is your priority, of course. Padlocks on your hostel locker are crucial if you’re backpacking, and potentially also on the backpack or suitcase itself. Lock things up in the safe if there is one. Make copies of your important documents like your passport and put them in a different place to the original. And stay aware at all times, especially at night and in remote – or super-crowded – areas. Make sure you also read up online about recent scams in the area you’re visiting; if I had been aware of the ploy of putting leaflets down on your table and then sweeping up your phone (or whatever else was on there) with the rest, maybe I would have been more vigilant and acted faster when this happened to me in Mendoza, Argentina.

Travel Insurance

Most travel bloggers will recommend World Nomads. But currently they don’t offer multi-trip insurance, only single trip, and this becomes very expensive very quickly when you’re travelling to a lot of different countries. So, if you want annual coverage for all your different travel plans, you’ll need to look elsewhere.

The year before, I had bought the Deluxe Annual Multi-Trip insurance from Preferential travel insurance, a company that operates in partnership with British Airways. This gave me worldwide coverage at £99 for the year, not bad. The maximum duration of an individual trip, however, was 31 days; and my first trip of the year was 32! Unfortunately I hadn’t thought about that when I booked the flights…

I finally settled on the Virgin Annual Gold cover. At £83.51, this gave me worldwide coverage (it’s a little cheaper if you exclude US, the Caribbean and Canada) with the additional options of ‘baggage and money’ and ‘winter sports’. The winter sports coverage was for my skiing holiday, but it turns out that it also covers self-drive of my dog sledge for my trip to the Arctic Circle next month (otherwise it would cost an additional £27 with JS Insurance, for example). The Gold cover also means that I can be away for as long as 90 days on a single trip (on the cheaper Silver plan it’s still 45 days).

Gadget Insurance

Now I couldn’t find any travel insurance policy that covers single items that are more than a few hundred pounds (e.g. there’s a £300 limit on my Virgin Gold policy), so it’s pretty useless when it comes to your iPhone, your laptop, your flashy camera… For this, you may want to consider specific gadget insurance.

Having researched the options, I decided on Protectyourbubble.com. (If you travel with a lot of photographic equipment then Photoguard might also be an option.) This is quite expensive, especially when you add up the individual monthly cost for lots of different gadgets, but it was the best I could find and I got as far as the final step of entering my details before discovering that it only covered items bought in the UK… Unfortunately, my Macbook Air was bought in Sweden (so that I could get it with the Swedish keyboard). Then I tried an offer that came with my Amex – but they are apparently still in the Dark Ages as the sign-up process of receiving the application in the post and then submitting it and waiting for the final confirmation would have taken six weeks. Not very helpful since I was doing all this just a fortnight before heading off to New Zealand…

I was finally able to confirm with my house insurance that these items were all covered while travelling, whether on the train to work in London or on a bus in Malaysia. Hurrah! No extra cost for travelling. The one ‘watch-out’ here is that if you have to make a claim on lost gadgets while travelling, this may affect your overall insurance. And, of course, if you’re a true digital nomad you may not actually have a house, let alone house insurance…

Backing Things Up

Of course, losing your gadgets is not just a question of money, it’s also about the data you have on there – the photos on your camera, your contacts and notes on your phone, EVERYTHING on your computer. Be sure to back everything up before you leave (I use Apple Time Machine) and bring USB sticks or an external hard drive to copy documents and photos while on the road.

Finally, there’s the question of the integrity of your data and the possibility of identity theft or access to important information. With Mac Yosemite now you can activate FileVault to encrypt your hard drive so that it’s much harder to hack into; on your iPhone, make sure that you have a pass code and touch ID, as well as activating Find your phone so that you can locate, and ideally shut down, your phone once it’s in someone else’s hands.

So with all that, I now have peace of mind when travelling, knowing that my gadgets – we’re living in a material world, after all – are covered. Of course, if you really can’t live with the thought of losing something, whether for practical or sentimental reasons, the answer is simple: don’t bring it!

Did I miss anything? Do you have questions? Tips on additional protection or insurance providers? Get in touch via the comments section below!