Is There An Age Limit For Travelling?

Some would say so

My friend and I sat around a table with a few girls we had met from our hostel.

Somehow the topic of age got brought up and one of the girls said:

“I’m happy to be travelling now that I’m in my early 20s but I wouldn’t want to still be travelling when I am 27, it’s just not the same as doing it when you’re 21. It just feels a bit sad.”

However, this girl was blissfully unaware that my friend who sat at the table with us was 27 and I know that this struck a nerve with her, though she didn’t say anything at the time.

I got offended for my friend, I mean I wasn’t as young as those girls but I was younger than my friend and I still felt like that was just a bit uncalled for and unfair.

This isn’t the first time I have heard this type of remark though.

Another friend and I were discussing one of our mutual friends who I’ll call “C” saying we admired how much C had travelled and all the amazing experiences he’d had.

But my friend added that as much as he admired C, he would never want to be in his position- in his 30s and still travelling.

A lot of people perceive older travellers in a negative light.

They are so quick to jump to the conclusion that there must be something wrong with a person wanting to travel after a certain age.

They either must be running away from something or have “peter pan syndrome” and never want to grow up. Or that their lives are empty and sad and they have no choice but to travel because they already feel lost.

It’s pretty unfair to say that everyone needs to denounce their desire to see the world after a certain age.

Back to the Fiji incident, my friend and I discussed that conversation afterwards and she said that she wasn’t so much offended by the comment, she just thought it was pretty sad that the girl would put an age limit on her freedom and ability to travel. The only person she was restricting was herself.

Late 20s and 30s are not old at all. Hell if you want to travel at 80 there is still nothing wrong with it.

There was a maintenance guy who worked in my apartment building and was in his 50s. He quit his job here very recently to travel the world with his wife and honestly that just sounds incredible.

Why shouldn’t it? Just because he has passed a certain age should it no longer be considered exciting? That is such a ridiculous way to not only view travel, but also life itself.

I never understood why people put these self-imposed shackles on themselves. That by a certain age you should have achieved certain milestones and shed certain pastimes.

Society created a criteria that, for the longest time was ingrained in our minds as being the “right” way of life.

Recently however, this mindset is slowly being dismantled. People are travelling are whatever age they please, and now there are so many options out there like remote working and being a digital nomad.

We still have a long way to go as a society and it is sad to see people who are so closed-minded, but I would much rather ignore the naysayers and do whatever I please than live by someone else’s rules.

There really are no rules really, you can do what you want at any age and that includes travel.

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