Some Trips Need a Backpack. Others Need Room Service.

I stopped explaining my travel choices and started letting my mood decide between traveling cheap and traveling soft.

Rawan. Vlora, Albania

I was booking my Azerbaijan trip yesterday when I started thinking about the many different ways I travel, depending on my mood, depending on my budget, depending on what I need that month. Every year, it seems, I find a new way of looking at it.

There’s a version of me that once spent fourteen hours in an airport because the connecting flight was fifty dollars cheaper if I left at six in the morning instead of nine the night before. I slept on my backpack. I ate snacks I can’t even remember the type of anymore, something I’d thrown together three countries ago from whatever ingredients I had on hand. I had saved fifty dollars so I could now spend on a hostel bed and a plate of street food in the next city.

And then there’s the version of me who paid for a resort with a bathtub overlooking the sea, ordered room service, and I didn’t leave the resort for an entire day except to walk barefoot to the pool, making polite small talk with other guests in their nice cover-ups. I felt, also honestly, exactly the same kind of triumphant. Just a different flavor of it.

The cheap years

I started traveling solo on a budget at the age of 22 that was the only way I could travel. I was young. I had time but not money, but the desire to see the world was through the roof. So I learned the things you learn. The night bus is half the price of the day train, and you save a hostel night, so really it’s free. The best meal in any city is the one the taxi drivers eat. You can wear the same two t-shirts for three weeks if you wash one in the sink every other night.

What nobody told me, and what I think is the actual gift of that kind of travel, is that you become very, very good at being uncomfortable. Not in a martyr way. In a useful way. You stop being scared of small things. The bus is six hours late? Fine. The hostel has no hot water? Fine. The map app died and you’re lost in a city where you don’t speak the language? You’ll figure it out. You always have.

There's a great piece on The Broke Backpacker, a man reflecting on twelve years of budget travel, and one idea he mentioned, that the road eventually teaches you:

“Everything I have built and the person I’ve become has all been built on the foundation of embracing discomfort. To continue to expand your skill set and to evolve into a more capable, more confident human being you need to frequently get uncomfortable.”

What really matters to me is the people I met, the ones I would, I would never have met in a nicer hotel, strangers on long bus rides, the small accidental encounters that only happen when you’re tired and unguarded and there is no concierge standing between you and the world.

we travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves.

Those years I lived in cheap travels were the years I found myself. They gave me a personality I didn’t know I had: resilient, a fighter, quick to find joy, accepting of everyone, looking at situations from multiple angles before judging, searching for the reasons behind whatever situations I encounter—more patient—not extremely patient—but definitely more patient than before. I think a large part of my self-confidence as an adult stems from that girl who used to sleep on the airport floor.

Rawan. San Juan, Puerto Rico

The pampered years

At some point, as you get older and land a job, you start having more money than time. You start arriving at your destination already exhausted from the life you’ve escaped. So instead of the 4 a.m. flight on the first day of your trip costing you the entire day, this time you spend it sleeping comfortably on the plane with the shades drawn, arriving at your new destination on time and feeling relaxed.

Then, I’d have those times where a flight at a normal hour. The resort with the bathtub. The dinner that cost what a whole day of street food used to cost. It feels like you’re getting soft, and I love it.

Rawan. Houston, Texas

The way I see it, this is a different kind of attention. A blogger I love, writing on Bemused Backpacker about how travel styles change with age has this good quote:

I wanted time to myself as well as time in crowded hostels. I had more money and wanted a bit more comfort from time to time. I wanted more time in one place instead of endlessly rushing through as many destinations as I could.

When I travel like this now, I notice different things. from the smallest things, let’s say the light moves through the room in the afternoon in a room just by myself. I notice the texture of the bread at breakfast compared to the street food. I notice that, I’m just actually here. What the pampered years taught me, is this: rest is not a prize you earn after a trip. It can be the trip.

Everything has its season

كل شي له وقته. Everything has its season.

I’ve turned this phrase over and over in my head when I think about travel. I used to believe you had to pick. You were either the backpacker or the bougie traveler. I don’t believe that anymore. The best travelers I know who are the ones I learn the most from, who slide between the two depending on what season of life they’re in, and what the trip is for. Solo Traveler World put it well in a piece on travel budgets:

there’s no single right way to travel solo, only the way that fits the version of you who’s going.

Sometimes I need to feel uncomfortable. I need to remind myself that I’m capable, that I can overcome difficulties, and that the adventurous Rawan who loved to throw on a backpack and explore new cities—the one I first discovered and fell in love with when I was 10—is still somewhere inside me. So I’ll book a cheap flight, a sketchy hostel, and a multi-day road trip through a place I’ve never been before. Not because I have to. But because I want to reclaim that version of myself for a moment.

And sometimes, with the pressures of life, work, and life’s difficulties in general, I find myself needing a bath. I need to be reminded that I deserve to be cared for, that I don’t have to earn my rest, and that relaxing in a beautiful room isn’t a betrayal of myself—on the contrary, it’s a form of travel. So I’ll book a luxury hotel, enjoy a quiet morning, wear something new every day, and explore the city. Not because I’m trying to pretend to live a certain lifestyle, but because I want that version of myself, too.

Rawan, Kindle, and a latte. Berlin, Germany

I think the mistake lies in believing that only one of them is “real” and the “true” way to travel, while the other isn’t. I’ve experienced both versions of travel, whether backpacking or staying at resorts. Both are me. Both have taught me things. Both, in their own way, have taught me how to travel—which, the longer I do it, I realize is just another word for how I live.

Whenever I debated with someone who favored one of the two approaches, I always tried to justify my reasons to them and explain my perspective, but after that, I stopped apologizing for either one. I don’t apologize for the trip where I spent fourteen dollars a day, nor do I apologize for the trip where I spent that amount on a single cup of coffee with a breathtaking view. Both are mine. I’ve earned them both—I’ve experienced them all. Each has its own sweet taste and feeling; it doesn’t mean one is better than the other.

My next trip is Azerbaijan, backpack, hostels, the whole thing. The one after is Copenhagen with friends, a comfortable Airbnb, slow mornings, soft beds. Two trips, back to back, two completely different versions of me. And I’m not picking one. It’s my trip and it’s my season.

References:

• Pico Iyer, “Why We Travel” (Salon, 2000)

• Bemused Backpacker, “How Travel Styles Can Change. And How That Is Okay.”

• The Broke Backpacker, “12 Lessons from 12 Years as The Broke Backpacker”

• She Goes With Purpose, “Why Self-Care Is Important for Solo Travelers”