6 months on: What we've noticed after backpacking Peru + Bolivia

6 months ago Neil and I went on the adventure of our lives!

We packed our things into the smallest rucksacks we could find and said goodbye to monotonous 9–5 routines to travel across Peru and Bolivia together.

South America was something else.

To most, the idea of a month-long break away is ages, to others, not long enough, but to us, banking all of our annual leave to do one long break was the biggest reset button we could have imagined.

Read all about the adventure itself, from us walking the long stretch to the sacred Machu Picchu to being in one of the remotest parts of the world, here.

6 months on, and it's interesting to reflect on life since that momentous trip. It's a bit of a cliche to say it, but we're firm believers that travelling really does broaden the mind.

We're completely head over heels with the intensity of experience that comes with backpacking and once you've had a little taste of it, it's like a bug that you can't shake.

Here are some of our learnings since returning from our travels, some good, some not so…

1. When you're travelling, you are the happiest, freest version of you

It’s so true. Think about it.

When you’re travelling with absolutely no cares in the world other than which market you’re going to explore next, or which bar you’re going to slide into for another drink, you forget about meaningless things like the pile of work you’ve got to get done before 5pm.

You don’t beat yourself up for missing the bus and arriving late because you’ve got no curfew.

You toss to the side any fears of what people think of you because you can wear, be, do whatever you want when you’re travelling.

You simply make way for contentment and curiosity.

When you travel, you abandon life’s little worries, like they never existed. Every day is an adventure, unknown, good and bad, and you’re here to make the most of it.

Looking back at our trip, and in fact all other trips we’ve done as a couple and independently, we feel like when we are travelling these are some of the few moments of our lives we feel like a true version of ourselves.

Cares and inhibitions aren’t a thing.

This realisation has made us want to travel more. But equally it’s got us questioning, what is it about travelling that makes us feel this way – can we introduce it every day?

We’re still trying to work out the answer to this one.

2. You make a whole load of promises to yourself when you travel… and then you land in London, and you just slip straight back into your routine

For me in particular, this eats me up inside. It happens almost every time I go on holiday or experience something inspirational like a retreat or an event that’s inspired me.

I make all these promises to myself when I’m in the moment – “When I get back home I’m going to eat healthier food”, “When I get back home I’m going to get back into drawing”, “When I get back home I’m going to go for more walks/runs/eat outside/see friends more” and then as soon as I land back in the UK and routine hits again, I forget all the promises I made to myself. They’re gone.

This was never more apparent than following our trip to South America.

Shortly before leaving for Peru, work was unbelievably stressful. I was coming home night after night in tears, feeling over stretched, unable to wind down and reaching for wine.

The minute I sat in the car to leave for Heathrow to catch our long haul flight, that all left me.

I threw myself into the whole trip, forgetting the challenges in my life and ultimately just being me. Free. With zero expectations of myself.

Fast forward 3 or so weeks later. I walk into work after the trip of a lifetime, where I was THE most chilled human being, vowing to myself to never allow work to take over my emotions like it did before the trip – “I can do this! Just care less” I said.

1 week later, I found myself back to square one. Tasks kept mounting up. Requests kept coming in. Suddenly, my life wasn’t so chilled as I promised myself it could be when I was in South America.

What is it that does this? Have you ever had the same?

3. Not before long, the wanderlust knocks again…

For both Neil and I, since experiencing such an eye-opening way of life by travelling for an extended trip, and loving life on the road together, we have realised our unquenchable desire to travel more.

You might think we want to try to replicate the trip we had, but it’s not that. Our deep desire is to fill our lives with more variety, learn about different people, cultures and ways of living, and ultimately experience what the world has to offer, on our terms, when we want – and even better if we can impart something or share something with people we meet along the way.

We couldn’t be gone any longer than a month or two at a time, though.

We met so many travellers who were on the move for up to a year (I would miss our home too much!) and didn’t envy them – it can certainly pose it’s downsides like loneliness and unsettledness at times.

But what we do know, and what our trip taught us, was that we need to take travelling and our desire for it more seriously.

We’ve started to have conversations around how we could gain more flexibility in our time and realistically brainstorm what life could be like if we did want to spend a few months of the year travelling elsewhere.

It’s been fun to dream and plan. We have no answers yet, but that’s OK. We have a shared goal and we believe that this path will unfold.

Conclusion

Sometimes it’s not the trip itself or the experience that has a profound effect on you, it’s the months succeeding it. The time you spend sitting and contemplating how good it was, what it all meant, why it had an effect on you, could be every bit as significant as the experience itself.

We’re not sure where our travels will take us next, or even whether we’ll be able to do an extended trip like this again given our current commitments, but one thing we know for sure is that travelling needs to be elevated to the top of our priority list.

We’re curious. Is there an experience that has had an amazing effect of your life? Do you travel? Have you got any plans soon? We’d love to hear.

Thank you for reading and we hope you enjoyed this post.

Fifi + Neil xoxo