I set off on my travels on the 4th December 2018. As someone who prefers cold weather over hot weather for a multitude of reasons, (Difficulty breathing, headaches, uncomfortable and excessive sweating, dehydration, increased hygiene maintenance) beginning my travelling journey in peak winter period was the perfect time for me. There were two other factors that made me want to start travelling in winter, namely lower prices all across the board, but mainly for accommodation, and lower number of tourists that would allow my travels to have an added feeling of authenticity. Over the coming six and a half months (I ended up spending less than I had planned, allowing me to stay out travelling for an extra couple of weeks), I visited 13 different countries. Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova and Ukraine.

Fast forward to the 20th June the following year, I was on a plane back to the UK, my travels came to and end. As I write this I am sitting in my childhood bedroom in my parents home which I grew up in for the first 18 years of my life. I have not lived with my parents for six years. I also sit here unemployed, spending a couple of hours here and there each day applying for jobs, anything I can get my hands on so that I can move out ASAP, re-claim a portion of my independence and start saving money all over again for my next big trip. I’ve gone from what I believe to be the absolute pinnacle of human individual freedom, travelling the world with absolutely no obligations whatsoever, not a single minute of work for over 6 months. Just complete, uninterrupted freedom, to back living with my parents, unemployed with my bank account dwindling down each passing day. So why am I not feeling sad that it is all over?

What I do know is that not once during my travels, not for one single minute, did I feel any hint of homesickness or wanting to return home, returning home was the last thing that I wanted. I’ll admit, the week before I was due to return home was like a nightmare filled with anxiety and depression at the mere thought of having to return home. It affected me so badly that for the entire week leading up to the 20th June I barely ate because the level of anxiety and sadness completely destroyed my sense of hunger or desire to eat. Even on the morning of my flight, I woke up feeling sick to my stomach with anxious thoughts at the prospect of having to move back in with my parents, a complete loss of independence, and no job to go back to. Then I got on the flight back home, and suddenly.. everything felt okay.

Despite the title of this blog post, I am not completely clueless as to why I did not feel sad. In fact I have a couple of reasons, which in conjunction with one another, I believe might have been enough to alleviate any negative emotions I otherwise might have felt.

1. I had “return home funds”

I have read A LOT of travel blogs from my research before I set out travelling and the one thing the majority have in common is that they consistently forget to tell people to save up enough so that you can come home with enough funds to sustain yourself for a couple of months (ideally up to 6 months) without a job (provided you need to look for a new job when you return),

When I returned home I was lucky enough to have about 3-4 months worth of savings to sustain myself while I am currently looking for a new job, maybe more depending on how much I can keep my daily expenditure down. (I was also lucky enough to return home to a letter telling me I was owed money due to overpaid tax when I was working). The week leading up to my return home I would constantly try to reassure myself over and over again that everything would be okay because I would not be in the immediate position of wondering how to afford to eat, how to afford to commute to potential job interviews, how to afford first months rent and deposit in the eventual scenario I did find a job so that I could move out again.

2. I stayed in the same place for almost 2 months before returning home

In the small city coastal port town of Saranda in Albania I stayed for just short of two months. Looking back, I started to feel like a local and settled down after about one month, and the novelty of everything being new and exciting started to taper off rapidly. I cannot say for certain, but I imagine it would have been a lot more difficult to return home had I been moving from one new place to the next only weeks or days before.

3. I had a plan to do it all over again when I returned home

As my impending date of return loomed ever closer, I began to conjure a rough plan in my head as to how I was going to do it all over again, but more importantly how long it was going to take me (hopefully). I estimated upwards of 6 months to find a new job upon my return (bearing in mind my longest job search has only been 2 weeks) and then calculated If I can find a good price for a place to rent, and save like I did last time, then I hoped to be back on the travelling road again within 3 years. And this time I plan on doing it for a whole year! I believe me knowing what I wanted to prioritise in my life, and what I needed to do to get there, put my mind at ease and gave me something to look forward to from day 1 back home.

Telling myself I had to work for two and a half years to save up enough to go travelling sounds hard to swallow at first, but when I thought to myself, working for 2.5 years in return for travelling around the world for 1 year is not a bad return at all, it made me feel better.