how to travel?

Over the last seven months I've travelled and moved around more than at any other time in my life. It's been a tremendous experience, and I've amassed some amazing memories. But aside from actually doing the travelling, I've also had the chance to investigate and think a bit about what back-packer travelling is about and how best - for me anyway - to go about it.

As I see it there are three main ways I can spend my time as a back-packer: a) seeing and observing things, like natural wonders, man-made buildings, or people and towns; b) engaging in activities like canoeing, hiking, cooking, teaching, or shooting machine guns; and c) relaxing and resting. The first two bring the most rewards, and ultimately seeing the sights is - for me - the most important. It's astonishing to go and look at buildings like Angkor Wat, the Petronas Towers, and at natural wonders like Halong Bay and the Taal Volcano. They're brilliant to go and witness and marvel at. Activities can be great fun to engage with and provide a different kind of stimulus. They involve physical and mental work and bring the reward of achievement. Relaxing is also important, and we all need to rest. There's no point wearing yourself down to nothing on a trip, you'll end up not enjoying anything. What's needed, I think, is a blend of all three with greater emphasis on the first two.

Should I travel alone or with a friend? There are good reasons in favour of doing both. The most obvious advantage of travelling alone is that there is no compromise involved: you go where you want to when you want to, and you concentrate hard on the place you are visiting. You also tend to make more new friends when you're on your own. You do this because you have to. If you don't you really are alone. Completely alone. I've been more sociable by necessity over the past seven months than I've ever been - it's done me a lot of good - and I've met some terrific people as a result, both back-packers and locals. However, travelling with a friend also brings benefits. The most obvious being: you have someone to share experiences with, someone there when things go wrong, and also someone to dissect and unpack things with: 'earlier today, did you notice...' It seems to me that travelling with a friend will always be easier* and possibly more fun, but you will be much, much more challenged on your own. I'm proud I've made this trip by myself and would like to travel solo again (although perhaps not for so long), and I'd also like to make future trips with friends too.

How far should I go off the beaten track? I'll be honest: I've been off the beaten track a lot less than I imagined I would at the beginning of this trip; it's something that's not always easy to do. I'm talking about throwing the Lonely Planet in the bin, and heading out to areas unvisited by any tourists and trying to live like a local. In reality, off the beaten track, in my limited experience, can mean nobody being able to communicate with you meaningfully, and such areas are usually untravelled for a reason - there's not much there to see or do. I like the idea very much in principle but have found it hard to carry through most of the time, and whenever I've ended up somewhere remote I've found it a real struggle to talk with people, a bit isolating, and lacking in things for me to engage with, look at, or understand. Maybe I've missed out a bit and should have tried harder with this, but it just hasn't come naturally to me, and I suspect it won't in future either.

What sort of attitude should I have when I travel? Philosophical and calm seems best. Be prepared for things to go wrong, and when they do act Buddhist. I need to remember it will make an interesting memory once I've got through it, and that I might even learn something about how to cope better with setbacks and challenging situations. Looking back, my most interesting experience on the this trip was when I got stranded for over fifty hours (because of typhoon related landslides) on a bus at the Vietnam/Laos border. Everyone else on the bus was from Laos and only one person could speak English. At first I became stressed and weary (especially as my Vietnamese Visa had only hours before it expired), but slowly the situation turned into the most magical of experiences. Being stranded forced me to start getting to know the people on the bus, and by the end of the journey I felt like they were all family - even if half our communication was through single words and hand gestures. As we got to know each other they insisted on buying me meals from the roadside, introduced me to Beer Laos, sticky rice, and beef laab, and began teaching me to speak a few words in their language. Experiences like that can turn out to be pure gold if you keep your head.

How long should I spend visiting a country? I think a good month is needed to explore most countries, but after that I begin to feel saturated and struggle to take more in. Small places like Brunei and Singapore are obvious exceptions, because they are just too tiny to spend that much time wandering around.

How careful should I be? I wouldn't advocate taking a holiday in Iraq right now but also feel it's important not to be frightened off visiting places unduly. Risks should be assessed carefully but we lose out if we are too cautious. I'm in Thailand, as I write, which has recently been bombed and subject to a military coup, but I feel perfectly safe here. On balance, I've judged it safe enough to come back for my last few days and I've had no problems. It's also important to be willing and unafraid to meet and engage with new people whilst abroad I think. It's frighteningly easy not to, and many people go to new countries without ever really speaking to a local person. This reminds me of Danielle (one of the girls Raj and I went out with on New Years Eve). In Danielle's presence I exchanged some banter with a street seller who'd jokingly called me 'handsome.' She shocked me by saying after, 'I can't believe you actually talk to them,' as though Malaysian street hawkers were space aliens. 'I just keep my head down and keep going,' she said. I think she's missing out with that attitude. In regard to food and being careful: I've come to think that it's important to just try it and not worry about the consequences. If you're sick for a few days so be it.

How should I get around whilst abroad? By using as many and as varied modes of transport on the ground as possible. This is part of the fun. Riding on old local buses, tourist minibuses, motorbike and sidecars, tuk tuks, mopeds, bicycles, and trains is all part of the experience. I plan in future to continue my habit of not flying where practical because, aside from being murder on the environment, it's also a very sanitised and boring way to move around. You can't see anything except the flight cabin, and fly over (and miss) the country you're supposed to be visiting.

What type of accommodation should I stay in? I say keep it basic but not squalid. Basic for me means a clean room with a clean bed to sleep in and a reasonable lock on the door. That's it. Squalid means rats, cockroaches, plywood walls, and filth. My room is just a place to sleep or grab a quick rest in between looking around and finding out about the place I'm visiting, and as such I don't need or require much. I also think that expensive posh rooms can be a disadvantage: you end up spending too much time in them lying down or watching television, or in the hotel bar, and that's not why I'm abroad. There's a place for pampering and it's on a health farm in Hertfordshire.

What should I take on a trip? There's no doubt in my mind that as little as possible is best. It's hard work packing, unpacking, and carrying your back-pack, and the lighter it is the better. It is better to have less valuables to worry about, less clothes to get washed, and less weight on your back. My most valuable possessions on this trip have been my digital camera and a good pair of sandals.

What should I bring back? I think it's a bit pointless going overboard with souvenirs, especially on a long trip - you end up having to carry them around everywhere you go and worry about breaking them if they are delicate. My strategy has been to leave the tourist nik naks out and instead keep this blog diary, take a manageable amount of photographs, and I've also kept hold of a lot of my old ticket stubs (and such like) which I will put in an album when I get home. These are my souvenirs, and the advantage they have over a wooden Buddha statues is that they tell me where I've been and in many cases the date I went. They can bring back memories, so on further trips I will approach this the same way.

Finally, why should I bother to travel? For education more than anything: to learn new things and see as much as possible of amazing places and different ways of life (and compare them with my own). But also to challenge myself. Can I drink snakes blood? Can I sleep in a longhouse? Can I handle it if I see a scorpion in the jungle at Taman Negara? How far can I go from home? How long for? What can I cope with and what are my limits? I've hit several limits on this trip and have found it fascinating to learn more about what they are and in consequence more about myself. And, you know, a nice side effect of boundary testing is that it often gives you extra confidence. You can come out of it knowing: I can drink snakes blood, I can sleep in a longhouse, I can stand with a scorpion at my feet, I can fly six thousand miles from home, and stay for seven months and survive. It's at the very least interesting, and at the most very useful, to know.

The end. If you couldn't be bothered to read all this and just skipped straight down here remember at least this if you go away: get yourself a good pair of sandals and camera and try and behave yourself...you're a guest in their country.

* Assuming you don't end up getting on each other's nerves, which can be very easy if you're spending twenty four hours a day with someone.