Traveling has its darker moments too

Back when I was an aspiring musician I hated it when friends in bands would talk about how much touring sucked. All I wanted to do was tour, live on the road, play shows every night and generally live the good life.

I never did go on tour with a band, but I went on tour alone and now I can understand why my friends thought touring sucked. Even without loading and unloading really heavy musical equipment, traveling is not all sunsets and epiphanies.

In fact, I had plenty of moments where I was miserable and forced to admit that, at least at that moment, traveling sucked — from sickness to delayed transportation and worse, every traveler has to “suffer” through some not-so-great times.

Nomadic Matt recently posted his top five things that suck about traveling over at travelblogs.com. Matt’s list includes boredom, actual traveling, sickness, fly-by-night friends and the need to be on your guard.

I agree with sickness and what Matt calls “quickie friends,” alluding to the difficulties of long-term friendships with the people you meet traveling. The rest, for me anyway, have never really cropped up.

Boredom especially, is something I think, without meaning to pick of Matt, is purely a self-induced problem. I can honestly say that I’ve never been bored traveling. Even waiting extra days for delayed ferries or hanging around train stations a full 24 hours has proved entertaining. If you’re truly bored, do what I do, catch up on sleep.

Sickness is the real travel-high killer on most people’s lists. Having had food poisoning three times, various forms of the flu and colds, and one serious bout of dysentery, I can attest to the sheer misery of being bed-ridden in a strange place.

But even those moments have their share of good memories — I was so enthralled/appalled by the bizarreness of Asia soap operas that I didn’t do anything about the dysentery for almost a week, which is some sort of perverse testimony to the entertaining power of foreign television.

In the end I don’t think anyone who’s traveled much would ever say that bad times outnumbered the good, but of course that doesn’t mean all the times were good either. Still, a few days in bed isn’t such a high price to pay for an unforgettable journey.

What are your least favorite things about traveling and how do you cope with them? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

[Photo by Darkpatator, Flickr]