THE MOODS OF THE GIRAFFE
There are many reasons why people embark on a round-the-world trip or an extended multi-country journey (not necessarily a literal round-the-world trip). Leaving the comfort of your daily life and putting everything on hold for 6 months, a year, or more requires motivation and confidence in your project.
Such a journey has a cost and can have consequences on our career or family choices. It means taking the risk of delaying entering the workforce or missing out on a promotion. It’s also taking the risk of not being there for a friend’s wedding or to support loved ones through personal challenges. It’s postponing other important projects like buying a house, having children, and so on. These are significant choices that need serious consideration.
All of this comes into play when considering a long-term trip. Isn’t it a terribly selfish project? And isn’t there also a real trend happening? With the abundance of blogs dedicated to round-the-world trips, testimonies on social media, or TV features, there’s this feeling of being somewhat out of touch if you haven’t done your world tour.
On social media, there’s this constant push to leave everything behind. Quit your stable job to try a new professional adventure. Pursue a new degree at 30, 40, or 50 years old. Leave big cities to settle in the countryside, far from the commuting chaos. Change your life and start all over again 10,000 kilometers away, in the tropics, or as a digital nomad.
It’s challenging to see clearly amidst media influences, social pressures, and personal or professional imperatives. Millions of questions rush through our minds…
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We asked ourselves these questions. At length. Did this project make sense? Or was it just a whim? Ultimately, did we have good reasons to embark on such an adventure?
Our project began to take shape just under two years before the departure date. We decided to go for eight months, with a particular focus on Asia. We weren’t particularly attached to the idea that this trip had to be a literal round-the-world journey. The important thing for us was to travel for an extended period and explore places that were radically different from one another. The decision to make a loop around the world came naturally: it was simpler, less expensive, and quicker to continue the global tour rather than turning back to our starting point.
Here are the 5 reasons that drove us to take the leap and embark on a round-the-world adventure:
1. Getting a grasp of the world’s complexity. We’ve traveled to several dozen countries, yet each journey only offers us a small glimpse into the world. When we spend two or three weeks in a country, we immerse ourselves in its culture, landscapes, and uniqueness. But at the end of the trip, there’s always a sense of frustration. The world is immense and incredibly diverse, and we’ve only seen a tiny part of it.
Moving from one country to another within the same journey, discovering Rajasthan after spending time in Dubai and before venturing into China and then Australia, is confronting deeply different worlds. It’s certainly a destabilizing experience that allows us to grasp the diversity of the world.
Bringing these discoveries closer together in time creates a different experience from all others, where cultural shocks succeed and reinforce each other. It also encourages us to make connections, to see differences and similarities between territories and cultures.
When we return from a trip, we tend to compare what we’ve just experienced with our home country or city. Returning from New York, French travelers find Paris quite calm, small, and provincial. By integrating multiple countries into a single trip, these comparisons accumulate in our minds and enrich our understanding of the diversity and complexity of the world.
It’s this snowball effect, this wealth of experiences that triggered our desire to undertake a long journey.
2. Simply seeing more. Beyond the quality of the experience, there’s also a matter of quantity. We want to see the entire world. Not that we aim to say we’ve been to every country in the world (what’s the point if we only spend two days in each place?…). But our curiosity and thirst for discovery make us want to see more and more.
There are so many places we wish to explore worldwide that we know one lifetime won’t be enough. Choices must be made, which is always difficult. Devoting six months or more to travel gives us the chance to discover much more. What we can see or do in six months or more would have taken years, or even a decade, if we traveled once a year. So, it’s a unique opportunity to further satisfy our wanderlust.
Moreover, a long-term journey is a full-time educational experience. When we travel, we always spend a lot of time researching the country we’re visiting. By heading to multiple destinations in one trip, we learn so much about the history, geography, cuisine, and culture of many places! It’s like an intensive course on the world around us.
3. Taking the time and escaping the pressures of travel. Many long-term travelers emphasize the possibility of traveling more slowly. We’re not particularly slow travelers. We enjoy lingering in places where we feel comfortable, but we also always want to explore more.
However, a long journey still allows for spending a few extra days in a city, not having to rush, not spending entire days recovering from jet lag. In short, a round-the-world trip offers the opportunity to approach travel as a slower, calmer, more serene experience.
Above all, knowing that we’ll see hundreds of incredible places, we also feel less pressure if something doesn’t go as planned. If it rains on the day we had planned a certain activity or if something unexpected occurs, then we’ll postpone it to the next day.
And if that’s not possible, so be it. The important thing is not ticking off boxes, seeing everything. What matters is understanding the world as it is, as it presents itself to us, and during a long journey, there are enough opportunities to experience incredible moments to accept missing some. When you’re gone for only a week, every day must count! But over several months, you can step back more and fully enjoy whatever happens.
4. Getting to know ourselves better and coming back changed. A journey around the world can be a response to a midlife crisis, the blues at 25, or entering the workforce. Of course, we want to discover the world, but we also know that we’ll never end another quest: discovering ourselves.
Taking a break in our lives to discover who we are as individuals, but also discovering who the other person is, when traveling as a couple or with children. A journey is always an opportunity to confront the unknown, destabilizing and unprecedented situations for oneself. And to see how one reacts. Sometimes, we surprise ourselves. Sometimes, we are surprised by the reaction of our loved ones.
The challenges and encounters along the way can help us not only to know ourselves better but also to change, perhaps transform ourselves. In six, twelve, or twenty months of travel, we’ll inevitably come out changed. Perhaps with reinforced self-confidence. Perhaps with new skills. Perhaps with new desires.
That’s also what appealed to us about the idea of a round-the-world trip: knowing that we’ll be changed upon our return, but not knowing in what way. Without knowing what our desires will be when we return. How it will affect our worldview and our future plans. A great opportunity to reassess our priorities and life goals. It’s quite exciting, isn’t it?
5. Embarking on something useless. In our daily routine, everything constantly urges us to seek productivity, to maximize the usefulness of our actions, to value every minute of our day. At work, we’re in pursuit of efficiency, at home, we meticulously plan our activities to make the most of every moment. Each moment is precious and must be used productively. It’s a feeling that can exhaust us, leaving us with little time to simply enjoy.
A round-the-world trip offers an escape from this obsession with productivity. It’s an adventure that doesn’t need justification. It’s not about climbing a mountain because it will improve our time management skills, or visiting a museum to accumulate professional knowledge. It’s an act of pure spontaneity, a quest for experience and exploration for the simple pleasure of doing it. Going on a journey for several months in a row is embracing the useless and freeing oneself from the constraints of routine.
Rediscovering the wonder of our childhood instead of constant efficiency-seeking. It’s a kind of quest for the useless that makes perfect sense.
Ultimately, taking a round-the-world trip is an extraordinary adventure that can be motivated by a unique combination of personal, emotional, or educational reasons. These are the top 5 reasons that pushed us to take the plunge, to undertake this project. A long journey is an exploration of the world, of ourselves, and the discovery of the diversity that makes our planet an incredibly rich and complex place.
All that’s left is to live each moment intensely during these few months: let’s go!
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