Travel Attitude
Travel philosophy
People you meet "off the beaten track" tend to be more genuine, as they haven't been hardened by years of loud tour groups and tough-bargaining backpackers.
Travel Attitude
When you change everything you eat, say, do, smell and hear at the same time, that's called Culture Shock. The effects can be different from person to person.
But expect more severe culture shock when you return home from a world tour, than while you are travelling. 'Home' may not have changed, but you will have, and your home will seem different to your changed self.
Why it comes in waves
Kalervo Oberg described the pattern in a talk to the Women's Club of Rio de Janeiro in 1954. First comes a honeymoon, when everything is new and exciting. Then a harder stretch when the novelty wears off and small things grate, before you adjust and finally feel at home.
Someone moving abroad goes through that once. On a round-the-world trip with a new country every week or two, it can start again at each border. That's one reason a long trip can wear you out even when nothing has gone wrong, and a good reason to put a few long stays in the middle of the route, where you can unpack, cook and learn the name of the person who sells you bread.
The rest is patience. Buses leave when they're full and timetables are more of a hope than a promise, as the page on time on the road explains. Travellers who expect that have a much better trip than the ones who fight it. A few words of the local language help more than you'd think: see Languages.
Coming home
It has a name, reverse culture shock or re-entry shock, and people often find it more surprising and harder to deal with than the shock of going. Friends want the five-minute version of your year. Your job, your street and your supermarket are exactly as you left them, and that is the strange part.
It helps to plan the return as carefully as the departure. Give yourself a week or two between landing and going back to work. Have something booked to look forward to. And talk to people who have done it: BootsnAll's RTW Traveler Profiles include 70 travellers interviewed after they got home, and its 49 on-the-road tips are distilled from years of feedback from long-term travellers.
One of the best ways to get off the beaten track is to stay with local people: see Hospitality Exchange and Homestay & Home Exchanges.
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