Left London in 2002 for India. Came home from Kuala Lumpur in 2014 with one 4 year old daughter. I can tell you I never felt so petrified. Money looked wierd. The cars on the road had completely changed. The amount of people had increased. Friends had long moved on. I couldn’t relate to family and I really didn’t feel I fitted in. All I remember doing is sitting in the park where I grew up trying to contemplate and make sense of it all. The peaks of the Himalayas, the heat of Cambodia, fishing in Australia, years in Korea, years in Thailand and many, many other places. Back at home for months I was still thinking in a foreign language and translated that back into English. It was acute reverse culture shock. That’s what 12 year holiday can do to a man. I’ve been home now for 6 years. I still struggle today. It’s a large part of your life.

Spot on Matt. As I write this I am in the middle of my yearly month and a half long vacation and the thought of going back home is hitting hard.

The need to travel is in my veins. I love seeing new people. Trying new foods. Exploring new places. I am currently in Ibiza Spain after a week in Italy/Positano and I am having a wonderful time.

Keep blogging and traveling! Money comes back; time doesn’t.

I’m about to return home from over 6 months of travelling. Prior to this I had never been abroad before.
The only thing I predict will keep me going is my plan to do it all over again, except this time I plan on saving enough money to travel for one year. Before I started travelling I wasn’t looking forward to anything, I was just going to work, coming home, spending a couple of hours doing not much and repeating. As soon as I said to myself I’m going to save to go travel, working became more tolerable as I was working for a purpose when before I had no purpose at all, I was just working to live.

So when it came towards the end of the trip, I was so worried about going back to the same mundane routine and worse of all going back to those depressed feelings again. I knew that the only way to deal with this was to make sure that I had a plan in place to not go back THERE.

I realised the only way to deal with post-travel blues was to go home with my travel mindset still intact. Going home doesn’t have to be the end of the world, even though it felt like it at the time. Why can’t home (despite, never fully feeling like ‘home’ again) be exciting and fulfilling? Why can’t you do the same things as you did on the road? I made a list of the things I enjoy doing – not just while travelling but all of the time. Meeting new people, spending time by the sea, yoga, learning how to cook… And I made sure that I incorporated these things into my home life. I also knew that I didn’t want to go back to my old career so I made a list of the types of work that I could see myself doing and started researching. I made sure that I had interviews lined up for when I returned so I could get back into the swing of things as quickly as possible. You might be someone who needs to take chill time before getting back to it but I like to keep my mind busy so I knew this was the right thing for me.

Also, before I travelled I was so afraid of doing anything alone and would sometimes miss out on opportunities because I didn’t have someone to go with. Why then, when travelling, did I LOVE to do things alone? It usually always ended up with making a new friend. I made sure to keep this mindset by taking myself out to dinner, for coffee, to ANYTHING I fancied and I didn’t blink an eye about being alone.

Basically, keep exploring and make sure to never forget what you learnt while on the road. What everyone fears is going back to old habits but you don’t have to go back to them if you don’t allow yourself to.

I don’t know if you will see my reply, but I just got back from a vacation to GA for 10 days, live in a colder climate too and totally understand how you feel. I’m seriously looking at moving South. We don’t get as much snow as you, but I can totally relate! Take care. I say move to FL if that will make you happy. Life is short!