Backpacking Trip - Planning Your Next Adventure

"Life is either a daring adventure, or it is nothing." - Helen Keller

For a while now I've wanted to travel and see the world. I have to believe that life has to be more than about spending it slogging away 9-5 at a job so that you might be able to accumulate more stuff. Many people don't travel. Many simply can't, for whatever reason, but I didn't want that to be me. I don't want to be that person that wakes up after decades of sweat and toil only to discover that traveling is no longer an option.

For me the appeal of traveling is about learning and appreciating other cultures and countries. It's about sharing in the joys and wonder that traveling brings. It's about seeing the world in real life instead of through picture. It's about appreciating all that you have. The list can be endless.More...

As Mark Twain says "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."

It's all well and good to have an intention to travel, but all to often our thinking isn't conducive to making it a reality. We start to think about the if's and but's. We think about the negatives like not having enough money, the dangers of traveling or we start to take note of the negative feedback we get from those around us.

If you are still focused on making your next big travel adventure a reality then here are a few tips that have helped me.

1. Set a time line to make it happen.

If you just keep saying to yourself that you will travel one day then chances are it will never happen for you. Your procrastination starts to take hold over your life and before you know it your dream of a travel adventure is all but a distant memory in the past. Rather than leave your travel adventure to chance take control and set yourself a time line to make it happen. Set a date that you are comfortable with and make a commitment to yourself that you will stick to it. This then enables you to start thinking about the milestones that need to be achieved prior to that date by working backwards to the present.

2. Decide on your objectives for your trip.

The clearer you are about your trip objectives the greater your ability to stay motivated and focused. Travelling is such a personal endeavour. What one person calls travel might be total foreign to what someone else deems to be travelling. In many ways, there are as many ways to travel as there are people on the earth.

Once you know the destinations you will want to then develop a rough idea about what things you want to experience or see. For example, do you want to see tourist sites or go to more rural locations, do you want to travel in organised tours or be an independent traveler, are you going to settle in one sport for a period of time or are you going to be going from one place to another. This doesn't have to be set in stone and certainly doesn't need to be planned to the last detail but by knowing your objectives for the trip you will be better positioned to focus your research and planning.

3. Make your trip intentions public.

Now that you have yourself a time line and an idea about your trip objectives, what better way to make you accountable then to tell your close family and friends. This will bring a sense of reality to the whole idea and the people you tell may well be in a position to give you advice (welcomed or not). You will also more likely take your travel planning more seriously now that people close to you have a vested interest in seeing your dream come true.

4. Create a no fail environment for yourself.

You want to have as many things in your life positioned to make your travel adventure a success. Any aspiring traveler will tell you that saving up is the hardest step. To make saving for your travel easier you want to start to modify your lifestyle and environment that encourages you to save for your trip. At the end of the day your family and friends are in a prime position to support your change in lifestyle.

Instead of the regular night outs, dinners, drinks with friends you will probably better served saving that money for your more important goal. Think about what that night out would represent in your travel destination, what could you have experienced with that money. It's not about totally living a hermit life until your travel date, it's about adjusting your priority to a sensible medium that you are comfortable with.

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