The More I Travel the More I Realize That “Freedom Through Travel” Is a Complete Illusion

If you think full-time travel equals ultimate freedom, listen up

It seems fitting that I’m writing this article on a bus between Split and Zagreb in Croatia because I can’t afford to fly from Split.

Flights from Zagreb to the UK? €20. Split? €350.

If I was mega-wealthy, perhaps the €700 for two people airfare wouldn’t bother me and I wouldn’t be schlepping up the freeway for the next 5 hours.

Perhaps if Brexit hadn’t happened I wouldn’t have to make this bus journey to leave the Schengen area and wouldn’t be listening to the Croatian man snoring next to me.

But I’m not wealthy. And Brexit did happen. Hence the bus.

The old-as-time stereotype is that travel equals freedom. Most of my friends and family assume the hardest part of my full-time-traveling life is choosing which beach I’m going to next.

Hell, I hoped that was going to be my only issue.

I hate to break the illusion, but unless you’re part of the mega-wealthy, have a magical passport that allows you to freely travel all countries for as long as you want and there are no more world-shuttering pandemics, most of travel is about as far removed from freedom as you can imagine.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it if the road calls to you. Just don’t go in eyes-wide-shut.

The world is only well-connected if you aren’t cost-conscious

I think there’s an assumption amongst non-travelers that we pack a bag, head to the airport and go wherever we fancy.

But there are very real, very practical issues with travel, not least the cost of the most convenient routes.

Sure there might be a direct flight between two countries, but it could cost €500/€1000/€2000. To do it cheaper, you might have to make a connection for a couple of days. There might be a festival or a convention on at that connection which means accommodation prices double whilst you’re there.

You may start to make increasingly unhinged suggestions to your partner to keep down costs.

The bus won’t pass through the border but it will drop us off an hour away at 11 pm. We could just walk through the night!

The reality is that travel has become obscenely expensive in the last year. If you’re on any sort of budget (and most full-time travelers are), you probably can’t afford to do exactly what you want to do.

It’s not just the travel itself, it’s the accommodation too. Which segues nicely into my next point…

Never count the hours it will take you to find the good but cheap accommodation

I have a friend who can lay her head anywhere and call it home. Alas, I am not that person.

I’m not fancy but I do ask for a few basic comforts. But sometimes even the basics are hard to come by in short-term accommodation and unlike when I traveled at 23 years old, I no longer see sleeping on the beach as a viable option.

Thus I spend a LOT of time on accommodation websites and forums scouring for the best value accommodation my meager budget can afford. Usually, I’ll have three or four airline websites up at the same time to see if it’s even possible to reach the destination in time to take that great-looking apartment.

I get sucked so far down the travel planning rabbit hole I will only allow myself to open Skyscanner or Booking.com once I’ve done all my work for the day. Otherwise, before I know it, I’m five hours into an apartment-flight-bus-rail searching marathon.

The days of turning up to a town and getting a good deal on a last-minute apartment have gone. Hell, they were barely there when I island-hopped Greece back in 2008 when that was the only way to find a bed for the night.

Nowadays, it’s hours and hours scouring the internet for good deals which are becoming increasingly hard to come by as the world opens up post-pandemic.

Most of us don’t have cash to hire someone to do this donkey work — or to simply rent whatever looks good, whatever the cost. Hours of your life will be lost to Airbnb, Booking.com, and the like.

Take it from me, there’s nothing freeing about that.

How does your passport stack up?

When it comes to access to travel, the UAE and Luxembourg top the list for the best passports in the world.

My British one? That’s 30th (thanks, Brexit). American? You’re languishing at 43rd place I’m afraid, mate.

But even the best passport in the world isn’t magic. We still live in a border-filled world where visas and travel restrictions abound whoever you are, whatever crest is on your passport.

Which means full-time travel can get…tricky.

Want to spend a month in different Western European countries for a year on a US passport? No chance.

Want to visit Australia for longer than 3 months on a British passport? Hard no.

Want to volunteer for a French winery during harvest? Sorry, not unless you have the right to be employed in France.

Digital nomad visas are not much use for many long-term travelers either, thanks to their archaic notions of travel, high barriers to entry, and the bloated bureaucracy of issuing countries.

We’re all bound by our citizenship. The idea of spending a year on a beach in Thailand may sound wonderful but it might not be possible for you. Which means the travel life you envisage might be out of your reach.

And there ain’t much freedom in that.

And now for the good bit

I feel like a bit like a miserable Max today which I hate, so I’ll turn it around here.

No, travel does not come with the complete and utter freedom we’ve been led to believe it should.

But that doesn’t mean it’s not freeing in its own way.

You might find yourself having to hop borders when your time runs out in one country and thus discovering your new favorite place.

You might make friends on that long-ass bus ride. You might experience more or see more of a country via train. You might enjoy the slowness of it all.

You might come to appreciate the cheaper out-of-town apartment you rented because it turns out it’s a freaking great place to stay with a great local vibe you’d never have found in the center of town.

No, travel is not the ultimate freedom. But if you’re open to it, the restrictions you will inevitably face can become opportunities in their own right.

To travel well means being open to change. It means being flexible. It means not always getting your own way. That’s the nature of the beast.

And traveling this way can be incredibly rewarding. You might not always get exactly what you want, but you always get an adventure.

Which is exactly why many of us travel in the first place.

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