There is a time in long term travelling when the exceptional becomes the ordinary. The majority of people will never have the chance to experience this reality, so it can be considered as entering the category of "social phenomenons affecting the spoilt only".Â
I apologise in advance to my relatives who are reading this on their lunch break in a grey Parisian building, but you don't have a monopoly on misery! You can have the blues in the tropics, and get depressed while drinking coconut water... After 8 or 9 months on the road, even the most seasoned traveller has to learn to deal with periods when the energy he thought was inexhaustible runs out. This is the bagpacker's cape, the dreaded passage where novelty becomes routine. If the body rests in a few days of inactivity, the mind needs a very special fuel... For a meaningful journey, the vital impetus comes from curiosity and open-mindedness. It is not generally accepted that these two qualities can be overcome, and yet... If they are based on characteristics that are more or less developed in individuals, it is now clear to me that these forces fall into the category of energies, which are burned, accumulated and saved in order to find a new impulse. It is an illusion to believe that humans can be permanently open to new things, the sad reality is that they are unstable creatures in their desires and emotions.Â
There are days when the hardcore adventurer would like to lock himself in a bubble, and ignore the difference he has come to seek. There are moments when the most patient traveller will hate the hassles, the locals, and even the culture of the country that pushes him to the limit. There are moments when he comes to ask himself what he is doing here.Â
Then everything comes back to him: the grey and the cold, the days without smiles, the feeling of missing out on his existence and the importance of making something extraordinary out of his life. So he takes a deep breath of those exotic smells, exhales his doubts and homesickness, then picks up his backpack. He rubs his eyes to regain the wonder that inhabits them every day, puts his hand in his visor to choose a distant goal...Â