After more than two months on the road, I am officially back in Changsha and staying put for awhile. When I left in December, I wasn’t sure how I would feel about such a long stint of traveling. Reading about others’ round-the-world trip plans was exciting, but I wasn’t sure it would suit me. Wouldn’t all the temples, museums and new variations of noodle soup start to blur together? Wouldn’t I get tired of schlepping my backpack all over the place — not to mention sick of packing and repacking it day after day?
Now that I’m back at home, I can say that I was pretty much correct. I don’t think I will be starting a “RTW trip” savings account any time soon. The two major sections of my trip — Southeast Asia and Japan — were wildly different from one another, so they didn’t exactly blur together. But I did notice that by the end, I was losing the ability to focus on some of what I was seeing. The day after we visited the Tokyo National Museum, I had to work to remember anything that we’d seen there. I found myself wanting to skip sites that seemed too similar. (Did we really need to visit another reconstructed Japanese castle?) While certain experiences will be unforgettable — visiting an onsen, watching fish be bought and sold at the Tsukiji Fish Market, visiting the Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima — my enthusiasm had dimmed a bit.
The best fish is displayed like a precious gem at the Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo.
However, I think some of this has more to do with the way I was traveling than simply the duration of the trip. This is (officially, at least) my last semester in China, and I wanted to cram a lot of stops into this, my final long vacation. This was especially taxing in Southeast Asia, where the transportation is slow and mostly uncomfortable. In an ideal world, I would have been able to spend a few more days in some places, and fit in a few more days chilling at the beach rather than looking at temples. On a real RTW trip, that slower pace would be possible. So the idea of long-term travel still has some appeal. The notion of spending six months in South America is still appealing, for instance — but I would want to spend it mostly in one place, studying Spanish.
As for writing that I’m “staying put for awhile,” I don’t really mean it. Plans are afoot to go away for a weekend later this month, and I’m already planning more trips within China for school breaks in April and May. Still, it’s nice to know that Monday through Thursday I’ll be sleeping in my own bed, able to cook if I want to and with no need to worry about where next to do laundry.
Unfortunately, my upcoming plans do not include the beach. Damn.
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