What Do I Do When I Can’t Travel?

Today, New Year’s Eve, the end of 2020. A year we will never forget, even though I think for a lot of us, we will wish we could forget or we will wish it never happened. A year when so many of our freedoms got taken away, a year when restrictions got in the way of our love for travel, a year when our passions couldn’t be celebrated the way we wanted them to be. But let’s not dwell on this, because a new year is to come. And I have a question from one of our listeners, from Ana in Canada, asking what do I do when I can’t travel?

And I think a great question for the end of the year, because like pretty much all of you out there, I’ve found this a really frustrating year because I can’t travel as much as I wanted to. I haven’t been able to travel as freely. I’m used to doing so much in a single year and now I have spent so much of the year in one place, mostly traveling the world with you on these daily episodes. So what do I do when I can’t travel? I’ve found the best thing I can do is to travel as locally as I can. So I’ve really loved the opportunity to find out more about the places that are really close to me.

And I mean, the places that are really close to me physically. So in the past, I would just be travelling from place to place to place, checking out something new — and often I didn’t have my eyes open to what was available on my own doorstep. Even this has been hard, with the restrictions, because so many independent businesses have had to close, so many shops have been closed due to the restrictions. There is not the same level of life on the streets. I mean, it’s bizarre going out and experiencing these ghost cities, these ghost towns with nobody around.

An eerie feeling. I don’t know if it’s a feeling from the past or a feeling from the future. Perhaps my most eerie feeling of the year was travelling through Paris airport in March at the start of the pandemic, just when all the countries — or not all the countries, almost all the countries — imposed lockdowns and incoming and outbound restrictions. I was on a repatriation flight, connecting in Paris and to be in such an enormous airport, Charles De Gaulle, and there to be nobody around — maybe 20 people — this great open space, this space that usually gives us such possibility, such freedom, such hope, this place that we go to when we are celebrating our passions to travel and there was nobody there.

Wherever We Are, There Is Something Unique

That was so eerie and sad. But again, let’s not dwell on that. I don’t want to dwell on that for the end of the year, because you know, there is the opportunity to think differently when we can’t travel far. Because there is always, wherever we are, something unique, something different, something we can connect with in the place we call home. When I can’t travel, I do my best to travel by walking slower, by going on a different street, by taking a different route around the place where I live.

And it’s maybe not as exotic as going to some of the places I hoped to go to this year, but at least it gives me some connection. And I know this year has been hard because for many of us, we haven’t even been able to do that. Certainly not all the time. We’ve been restricted in our movements. So, all we can hope for at the end of the year is to hope for a better year next year, with reduced restrictions, with an opening and a freedom, with an opportunity to get travel back, not just travel restart, but travel different, travelling the way we want to travel. Travel on the trip we really want to do.

Do those things we really want to do. Take those things off the bucketlist. Find a connection to who we are, in a new time. So that’s what I hope for next year. Thank you for the question, Ana, I’m actually still struggling with what I do when I can’t travel. Travel is my hobby, my passion. I haven’t taken up other hobbies. I’ve learned — started learning — better Spanish, but I haven’t picked up — I haven’t done some of those things, haven’t been as active as other people have been. All I’ve done is tried to get out absolutely as much as I can and tried to continue as much as I can going around, checking out new things.