worst travel experience essay

My Top 9 WORST Travel Experiences

Do you ever read about my travel experiences and think, “Blimey, his trips are so smooth and straightforward. How does he do it?”

Let me tell you something: All my trips are FAR from perfect!

In all of my personal blog posts documenting my experiences abroad, I try to be honest and write about the shitty stuff that happens as well as the awesome. This is because I want you to understand the reality of traveling from my perspective as a 30-something-year-old deaf guy. It helps to tell my story and makes it unique.

And most importantly, I want you to avoid making the same mistakes that I did, to ensure you make the BEST of your travels.

Planning your trip? Use my favorite resources!

And despite all my bad experiences (including some near-death ones), I wouldn’t change ANYTHING . The good always outweighs the bad, and I have 9+ years worth of the most amazing memories I could ever wish for!

In this post, I have compiled a selection, in no particular order, of some of the worst travel experiences I have ever experienced so far, in just six years of traveling.

Disclaimer: This post in no way criticizes the places these incidents happened. Some of these incidents are common – for example, the bag theft in Vietnam – incidents like these occur all over the world, including in London and New York City. Falling ill in India was my own mistake and could happen in any developing country. And that mosquito bite? I was simply unlucky.

Covering all the bad things that happened to me while traveling over the past decade.

#1. Missing my Flight Home

In 2014 after a visit to Schweinfurt in Germany, I was at Nuremberg Airport, awaiting my flight back home to Birmingham early one morning. However, I was sitting in a cafe and completely lost track of the time.

So by the time I got to the gate, it was too late – everyone had already boarded the plane and to my despair, I watched from the gate as the door closed shut on the plane, which meant nobody else could board the plane.

At least I took the opportunity to spend a day in the quaint city of Nuremberg. And since this incident, I started making use of Special Assistance for most of my future trips.

I wrote this useful guide on tips and advice for deaf and disabled people thinking about traveling abroad.

#2. Missing my Connecting Flight to India, Twice! (and Lost my Baggage)

I missed another flight in December 2014 when I traveled to India with a stopover at Istanbul Airport. But incredibly, not only did I miss my second leg flight, I was rebooked with a new flight departing 24 hours later only to MISS THAT FLIGHT too!

*Hear me out: unlike my previous missed flight, this one was of no fault of my own.*

So, as predicted, my second flight took off from Istanbul as soon as I landed there, and so I was issued a new ticket. But the next flight wasn’t due until 24 hours later, so they booked me into a hotel for the night. The only problem is, the hotel was quite some distance away, in the city center, so I had to obtain a visa to leave the airport, to get to this hotel.

The following day, the airport bus arrived at my hotel late, and worse still – the traffic was absolutely dreadful. It was total gridlock on the roads, and by the time I arrived at the airport, my flight was about to take off!

I had to explain this ridiculous situation to the staff once again, and nobody could believe what just happened.

So, once again , they issued me with ANOTHER new flight ticket, for a flight taking off – yep, you guessed it – 24 hours later. And so they put me in ANOTHER hotel for the night. BUT, this time, they made sure I was in a hotel right within the airport. So there was no way I was going to miss my flight for the third time.

When I finally made it to India – my luggage didn’t appear on the carousel. I spent ages waiting at the luggage area while everyone else collected their bags and there was nothing left on the belt, so I had to report to the staff that I’d lost my luggage.

It turns out, my luggage arrived a day earlier than I did. I had to identify my bags in the enormous lost property room, and you can imagine I was relieved when I was finally reunited with my stuff!

#3. Scooter Crash in Goa

We were riding about an hour north to Anjuna beach, and were slowing down towards one of the crowded roundabouts on the route.

As soon as I stopped, another rider came up too fast behind me on his scooter and crashed into the back of my bike. And as the crash took me by surprise, the impact caused me to tumble over on the left side, as the scooter was a bit heavy.

Luckily though, I walked away from this crash with just a graze on my foot, as I was wearing flip flops (*reminder to self: I should probably get a tetanus jab*).

Did you know: there is a spa just for elephants in India! For more crazy and interesting facts about India, click here.

#4. I once got Electrocuted in Mexico

In the summer of 2014 I had a literal, near-death experience whilst staying in a hostel in Playa del Carmen, Mexico.

After the initial shock, I saw the wall and realized I’d just been electrocuted . The switch panel was hanging loose, and there were exposed cables sticking out everywhere!

I reported this to the receptionist who was very calm and casual when I explained what just happened. He then came down to have a look, and all he did was hastily cover up the loose cables with some black gaffer tape!

Edit: I forgot the name of the hostel, so luckily for them I have saved them the embarrassment of being named and shamed.

Top Advice: Get Travel Insurance

You could say this near-death experience was a wake up call for me to ALWAYS take out travel insurance wherever I travel now.

For my travel cover I always use SafetyWing. They are one of, if not, the BEST insurance providers out there.

SafetyWing Travel insurance: simple & flexible

Planning a vacation in the Yucatan? Despite my accident, I had some of the most amazing adventure experiences there. Here’s my 2 Week Yucatan Itinerary Guide.

#5. Delhi Belly In Dehradun

During my second trip to India in January 2015, I came down with the dreaded ‘Delhi Belly’ – an illness that befalls many, but not all, who visit India.

It happened after I ate a plate of boiled eggs from a street vendor outside the gym. One evening after a workout with a mate, he suggested we have some chicken broth and eggs to top up on protein. I made the mistake of eating the yolk of five eggs – whereas my mate only ate the egg-whites. Lesson learned.

#6. Robbed by a Biker Thief

In January 2018 my partner and I were traveling in south Vietnam, having just seen in the New Year in Ho Chi Minh City. On our last night in the city, my partner’s bag was snatched by a thief on a motorbike.

We were completely taken by surprise and were overcome with dread when we realized what just happened, yet it was too late to do anything as the biker and the thief sped away into the night.

Naturally, my partner was very upset, as the contents of her bag included her iPhone, some cash, and some ID cards, though thankfully, NOT her passport.

We immediately reported the incident to the police who took a statement, but we realized soon enough, that there was absolutely nothing they could do about incidents like this, in a large city of over 9 million people.

Moreover, my partner’s bag was quite thin and light, with loose leather straps which made it vulnerable to rip, and therefore a very easy target. So we learned our lesson that night: if we have to bring our belongings with us, always keep them in secure and strong, tightly-fitting bum bags that can’t be ripped from us.

Safety and Security Gear for your Travels:

Below are some more top security travel gear that I would recommend for traveling anywhere in the world – and would not leave the house without these.

Anti-Theft Travel Purse

If you’re after the ultimate theft-proof purse, I highly recommend the Anti-Theft Travel Purse – it consists of five measures of theft prevention including:

PacSafe Bag Protector

Bring a small lock, #7. missed my flight (again) to hong kong.

In December 2017 I embarked on a flight to Hong Kong via Paris, from Birmingham. The weather at the time was very cold and it was quite icy outside, which had impacted the public travel systems all over the UK and as a result, my train to the airport was delayed and I was pretty late arriving at the airport.

I have been in this situation before (when I missed flights to India) – so I was quite calm and knew that patience was key.

There is really no need to take it out on airport staff who aren’t responsible for the actions of mother nature.

#8. My Arm BLEW UP From a Mosquito Bite

During my second visit to the Yucatan in Mexico, I received numerous Mosquito bites, but that’s nothing new as I got bitten a million times from my first Mexico trip, and actually – almost every tropical place I’ve been to – whether it’s Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, I’ve been bitten by Mosquitos (I mean, who hasn’t?)

But then, the area around the mark, on my elbow, started to go red again, and it began to swell. And it swelled really fast. I applied some brandy to the area to try and disinfect it, and it was seeping, so I was squeezing more fluid out.

But it got worse. The stinging from the brandy was nothing compared to what came next. The swelling became gradually more painful. In fact, it got to the point where it became so painful I could not even sleep at night – I would literally wake up clutching my arm, writhe around on the floor, and clench my teeth so hard to stop myself from screaming in agony.

The small lump had expanded so much that my entire forearm literally BLEW UP, so it looked just like Popeye’s arm!

I sought medical help soon after and was able to clear up the infection on a round of antibiotics. The doctor told me I was VERY lucky the infection wasn’t higher up my arm, as that could’ve been critical. Instead, it spread downwards due to the swinging motion of my arms from walking, hence the weird Popeye look.

Click here to read how I easily saved over $1000 in just ONE month for my travel funds

#9. I Once Received the WRONG Visa Stamp

He then called up another guard who arrived and they were talking about my visa (I couldn’t make out what they were saying or what even was wrong). And then they pointed the stamp in my passport, which I received on arrival in India a week earlier.

Yet surprisingly, they ushered me through immigration without another word.

I was slightly relieved, and was able to board my flight, except I was due to arrive in Moscow for a transfer flight to London. I was seriously hoping this visa doesn’t draw suspicion by the Russian guards in Moscow, as I was seriously beginning to worry they’d throw me into a gulag .

Several moments passed, my heart was racing and sweat began to drip down my face. And I could feel the stare of people behind me in the queue, which made matters worse.

10 of My Worst Travel Experiences

Living through a pandemic as a single woman with strained familial relationships has demanded a lot of strength. The last few days, I have been reminding myself of all the terrible times I have had to face by myself in the past. These experiences, though horrid, did make me a stronger being and in times like these I draw strength from knowing that this badass Manisha who handled these 10 of my worst travel experiences in unknown lands, resides within me. I can summon her when need arises.

I have listed 10 of my worst travel experiences below, not to discourage you from traveling, but to remind everyone who needs to hear this that this too shall pass. When we are not left with any other choice, we have to be stronger than we know ourselves to be.

Often times, in such situations people say ‘It’s for the best’, so I have added that to give readers an idea how I view those experiences now.

1. Forgot my phone in a Toilet Booth at Chennai Airport

I was returning from my first international trip (Sri Lanka, 2015) and was severely sleep-deprived. I was waiting for my connecting flight at the airport and decided to take a nap for a few hours. I woke up past the beginning of boarding time and rushed to the toilet only to discover my periods had started. It was around 5 am, everything was quiet and empty but my mind was racing.

I rushed out as soon as I could and immediately heard, ‘This is final call for Ms. Manisha Singh’. Needless to say, I ran out and was rushed to the plane. This was happening 20 minutes before the departure time. Almost like a trigger, the moment I sat down, I realised I didn’t have my phone on me. I had forgotten it in the toilet booth.

I informed the staff to check if someone could fetch it for me. The airport was fairly empty, I believed my phone would still be where I left it. The staff told me they will inform the ground duty and get it sent to my destination.

At my transit airport (Hyderabad), not one person from the airline crew (Spicejet) knew what I was talking about and seemed fairly indifferent to the whole thing. But a person from another airline (Indigo) was very helpful, called the ground duty staff, called my phone which was ringing then. He told me the procedures at the airport that prepared me to handle the situation at Mumbai airport.

What did I do to fix the situation: I spent a few hours at Mumbai airport only to realise the crew hadn’t spoken to anyone or done anything about it. I sought help from other airport staff and no phone had been submitted to the lost and found. Later, someone started disconnecting the call on my phone, and a few hours later, it was turned off.

I wrote to the airlines later, but it didn’t amount to anything.

Lessons learnt: My contacts are now synced with google and so are my photos.

I don’t trust what the airlines staff (I believe they are as clueless as anyone else)

Most of my travels are now via Indigo airlines

Was it for the best: Nope, I could have used the phone for a few month months. There was nothing good that came out of it.

A young woman in yellow t shirt and blue pants sitting in an old Sri Lankan temple

2. Stranded without a Hostel at 11 pm in Argentina

I was hitchhiking in Argentina. It was summers which meant sun set fairly late. My last ride dropped me near the bus stand and from there I had about 5 km to walk to the nearest landmark. Along the way, I stopped at a hostel to see if I was headed in the right direction. I had the address but my offline maps couldn’t exactly find the hostel. A guy at the hostel was headed in that direction and offered to drop me. I didn’t see any harm so I waited the 15 minutes he was going to take to pack up. around 9:30 he dropped me at the beginning of the street. I thanked him and started walking uphill. All the houses/hotels had gate locks so I couldn’t walk into a property to seek directions. I walked all the way up, couldn’t find the hostel, I stopped at a patch which was pitch dark, too afraid, I walked down believing I missed it along the way. Nothing. So, I walked back up all the way including the patch with no lights. Nothing again, there were no houses there either, just wilderness. Too afraid and tired (I had my backpack and daypack on me), I turned around, also tried a different smaller lane along, tried buzzing a house who cut the call after telling me they didn’t know where my hostel was. I reached back at the beginning of this road for the third time. It was well past 11 pm, I was afraid, along the way some dogs had started barking at me, one caught on to my trousers, and I just wanted to get away from the whole thing.

What did I do to fix the situation: I saw a couple in distance reaching for their car, I rushed to seek help. They didn’t know anything about my hostel but seeing me distressed they just took me under their wings. After a failed attempt at reaching the owners of the hostel, they called another friend of theirs and dropped me there. Needless to say, I was and am extremely grateful to them.

Lessons learnt: I swore to never reach a new place that late in the evening. At times I didn’t have a choice with the bus schedules but for those situations, I was better prepared.

I also switched to a different app (maps.me) that had much better offline data than google maps. This helped me with directions in new places.

Was it for the best: Yes, It’s because I didn’t find the hostel that next day I called the lady who had given me a ride to the town. She had invited me to her farm which turned out to be one of favourite memories from the trip. It’s exactly what I romanticised doing on my travels, cherry picking, making jams, sitting on the green grass with dogs.

A young woman in blue t-shirt standing on a ladder picking cherries

3. A government Bus left with my luggage on board

I was headed from Hampi to Gokarna on an overnight government bus which was packed. At around 6 am the bus took a halt at a bus stand. I checked with the conductor regarding how long would it stay and I was told 10 minutes. So, I quickly ran out to use the washroom. I got back 5 minutes later, got on the bus and see my bag was missing and wait, there were other people sitting in my seat. I was confused, I asked the men on my seat regarding my bag and it was then that I understood that this was not the bus I was traveling in. That bus had left.

What did I do to fix the situation:

Panic-stricken me got out, approached the two policemen nearby who were extremely helpful. They made some calls, spoke to others, and first got me on a bus, traveled on the bus for a bit then explained to me that the conductor and driver will help me further. And, like they had some along the way, this bus overtook my original bus and they both stopped for me to be able to board the bus.

My bag was where I had left it, intact.

Lessons learnt: I travel with a fanny pack now so I always have my most important things on me like cash, ID proofs, phone, etc. (This is not something I would do in a country where robberies are common though)

Was it for the best: Ummm, I don’t know. It was just an adventure. I didn’t lose anything so that’s good.

A near empty street in the small town of Gokarna

4. Denied boarding my flight to Cuba

I was all prepared for my month-long trip to Cuba which means I had my currency changed to Euros, spoke to a guest house in Havana, read everything I could on how to travel there, and even had a travel friend I was going to meet up with on day 1. Cuba has no wifi and I don’t take local Sim cards so I was preparing for a month of no internet.

I had met a traveler traveling on an Indian passport who flew to Cuba from Cancun (Mexico) a few weeks ago. He was issued a tourist card based on his Valid US Visa on the Indian passport. my situation was the same but I still wanted to be certain so I went to the airlines’ office on the west coast (3 days before my flight) where I was informed that there’s going to be no issue getting the tourist card in Cancun. So, I took their work, flew to Cancun from where I was going to fly out to Cuba in less than 40 hours. I went to the airlines’ office to get a tourist card to avoid last-minute hassle and of course, it’s never easy on an Indian passport. The man behind the counter looked at the list and told me that he couldn’t issue Indian passport holders a tourist card. Rules had changed recently and the only way for me to travel to Cuba was to get a Visa. Getting a visa meant going to Mexico City, waiting for 5 days, and submitting a gazillion documents, none of it I was ready to do anymore. I was tired of trying to go to Cuba and being misinformed (I had a similar experience in Colombia but my fights weren’t booked then).

What did I do to fix the situation: I dropped my plans of going to Cuba, got my flight rescheduled (which costs nearly as much as booking a new flight), and decided to go back to Colombia from Mexico city after 2 months. This time I decided to spend in Belize and Guatemala. Countries I hadn’t been to and had chosen not to visit the only coz I was quickly running out of money.

Lessons learnt: Don’t trust the staff of airline companies unless you have things on paper. I also learned that there are no wrong answers in travel, I would have enjoyed going to Cuba but I also greatly enjoyed my time in Belize and Guatemala and met some incredible people along the journey.

Emotionally, I wasn’t affected in the least bit but I lost money that I was low on already.

Was it for the best: Yes, I instead got to go to Belize and Guatemala, two stunning countries, I hiked an active volcano something that I wanted to do since the very beginning of my trip. I’m sure Cuba would have been good too but that’s the thing, there are no wrong answers in travel.

A girl looking at a mountain in distance with a cloud bed underneath. Rising sun in front.

5. Denied entry into Guatemala at the border

I was going to live on a boat for a few days, excitedly I took the bus from Belize to Guatemala border. Guatemala was also going to be last new country on the year-long adventure in South America. I exited Belize, paid my exit fee of $20, changed leftover currency to Guatemalan quetzal, and walked towards to the Guatemala border.

The short queue had me at the counter quickly, but only to be told that I couldn’t enter. India apparently was a type 3 country and on this passport a valid US visa made no difference to the entry into Guatemala. But I had done my research, I had read on the website, other people’s experiences and everywhere the information was same, Indian passport holders with a valid US Visa could enter Guatemala Visa-free. I tried convincing him to see the website, speak to a senior, or another colleague but nothing worked. So, I walked out, sat on the pavement and realized I was truly in ‘no man’s land’. I did not have a local SIM card from either Belize or Guatemala, there was no wifi, I didn’t know anyone in either of the countries except my host in Belize and my to-be host in Guatemala but I anyway couldn’t reach anyone.

What did I do to fix the situation: I asked an official where was the nearest Guatemalan embassy and was told in the town I had crossed while coming to the border. I sprung into action, walked back to the border, requested the person who had purchased my currency if he would give it back (he did), spoke. spoke to the officials at Belize border and requested them to let me in, took a shared cab to the town and landed at the Guatemalan embassy.

After a good waiting period, a gentleman came out and explained that I was indeed right, I don’t need a Visa for Guatemala with my Valid US Visa. The staff was very kind but I was afraid if I was turned a second time I wouldn’t have money to reach here and the office would probably be closed. I requested them to give me some official document that I can show at the border. The man obliged and gave me a piece of white paper with his signature and something scribbled in Spanish. They also called the border to clear things.

I hitchhiked my way back, exited the border (I had earlier requested them. to not charge me an exit fee again, they did not), joined the international queue at the Guatemalan border and my passport was stamped by. the same man without a word. It was at that moment I realized that none of it was about the rules, he was seeking a bribe.

Lessons learnt: On an Indian passport, be prepared for anything.

Was it for the best: It didn’t change much except that I lost some money but the time I had in plenty anyway. I didn’t get to stay on the boat but I took a different route that allowed me to go to a waterfall (Semic Champey) that was stunning.

6. Being stalked by a stranger in Colombia

Colombia clearly didn’t vibe with me. I had taken a bus that dropped me around the second-hand market lane, the only stop near my hostel. I started walking the few blocks to my hostel and noticed many shops were closed (It was weekly off). Since experiencing another worst travel experience (mentioned later in the post), I had gotten into the habit of watching my back often (literally). I cut a corner and a few feet later, turned around and my eyes met a man’s directly. And I instantly knew it was trouble. I was in a fairly busy block but after this, there was a near isolated section before I reached a central area. I stopped a little further at a stall and wasted time buying something, by this time the man had reached me and of course, didn’t go ahead. Instead, he went to the right and stood by a wall. I had nowhere to go, he was waiting for me to leave and he wasn’t being coy about it. All the shops in the building were closed, so I couldn’t go anywhere.

What did I do to fix the situation: I did what I had to, confronted him, in my broken Spanish but he didn’t flinch. He looked at me with his blank eyes. and then I saw some bikes coming towards me with police men. I started jumping in the middle of the road and spread my arms to stop one. The officer, didn’t bother checking this guy who casually walked away when I started yelling in Spanish that he’s been following me. I didn’t let the officer leave though and made him accompany me to the center from where I walked to the hostel by myself.

It had angered me not because I was in a vulnerable position, I had nothing on me then. I had already lost my phone and camera. I was angry because I had lost my valuables in that very city and someone wanted to rob me again!! I didn’t want another Colombian to rob even a pencil from me again.

Lessons learnt: No matter how rude it feels to turn around and look strangers in the eye, continue to do so.

Was it for the best: Nope, just made me more angry towards the country.

7. Discovering the last currency note gone on a Bus in Guatemala

I was on a chicken bus headed for the highway. From the highway I had to take a few more buses to reach Mexico border. It was my last day in Guatemala and I was headed back to Mexico. As the conductor approached, I dug into my wallet to get my last currency note, a 100 quetzals (~USD 13). I scrambled through my wallet but it was not there, I checked my backup wallet, not there, I checked my daypack pocket where I put away coins, not there. The conductor was standing looking at me probably wondering when will I stop with the act.

I asked him, ‘cuanto cuesta?’ (how much), I scrambled through my wallet and I had the exact change for ticket price so at least I was not going to be asked to leave midway which was also middle of a fairly empty route.

I knew the currency was gone, I had put it in my wallet only 2 days while preparing for a volcano hike. I had very cautiously spent money so I didn’t have to withdraw cash before leaving. Withdrawing cash drew a fee of around 50 quetzals. I felt saddened thinking who could have taken it, could it have been one of the locals when I left my backpack in the tent and went to see the sunrise? Could it be my hosts from last evening? Could it be the guy I shared a bus ride with? All options saddened me.

What did I do to fix the situation: Once on the highway I decided to hitchhike the 130 odd kilometers to Mexico border. I had Mexican currency left to get me through there before I could find a cash machine.

But hitchhiking in Guatemala is a bad idea. Nobody stopped for quite some time and eventually the car that did stop had 4 men inside. I was wondering how to decline the ride when a guy popped out and said ‘we’ll give you a ride but we’d like to discuss bible with you’. It turned out to be one of the most educating car rides on my trip. It was not just because we discussed the bible but we also spoke about each other’s lives and it was in this ride that I found words for my quest. ‘Don’t seek happiness, it’s temporary. Seek peace, it’s permanent. I truly believe in this and live by it.

Lessons learnt: No leaving cash behind, ever.

Was it for the best: Yes, that ride I hitched is a very important event in my life.

8. Finding myself on a Snow Hike Without Crampons

I was in Nepal during late 2018, the trekking season had just ended so I had given up on hiking the Annapurna base camp that year. I especially gave up the idea when I met a guy on my second day in Pokhara who entered the dormitory with such strong stench, he looked battered quite literally, and sought a soap from me. After his shower when we could talk, I learned he had just returned from the Annapurna circuit. That was a no for me.

In my second hostel stay, a few days later, I met another couple who had just returned from the Annapurna base camp and looked like they had returned from a stroll around the lake. They encouraged me to go for it if I wanted to. I met a few other people who said the same.

A few days later, I was hiking the Annapurna base camp by myself.

Towards the end of day 2 I did meet two super nice guys who continue to be my really good friends. I tagged along with and we continued hiking together. On day3, it started raining midway so we cut short our walking hours, it snowed afterwards. On day 4, we saw snow here and there but it kept getting thicker. It was evident I was not prepared for the weather but I was told I could rent crampons in the next village. So I marched on (mostly with the help of my friends) and before I knew it, I was beyond the point of return by myself. I would have needed help to cross certain difficult points.

There were no crampons at the next camp, which meant, I could stay back at this place and wait for my friends to return next day so I could hike back with them or I could continue pushing forward. I was so close to the top, I decided to continue walking plus I felt a lot more comfortable being with my friends than being holes up in a room alone.

The terrain kept getting worse (except the last stretch), we got caught in a blizzard that hampered the visibility but we reached with no injuries. On my way back, I couldn’t wait to leave the snow so we hiked until late evening to a base location with no snow.

What did I do to fix the situation: I took advice from the locals and put the largest pair of socks I had in my backpack and wore it over my hiking shoes. This is supposed to be better than crampons and I did find it extremely useful.

Lessons learnt: Nothing in the mighty Himalayas should be taken lightly.

Was it for the best: I didn’t die, so it’s okay.

A girl with a bamboo stick against snow clad Himalayan mountains

9. Being Stalked in India

I am not being precise in the heading because unfortunately, it has happened more than once. I don’t wish to undermine the issue but in my personal experience, a lot of times it’s harmless.

The two times when I felt trapped and threatened was –

I was walking the ghats of Varanasi (the steps near the holy river Ganga), I paused to get something from my bag when I noticed a man walk past me slowly and looking at me then looking back at me and a few steps later he stopped too. I didn’t think much of it but a few meters ahead noticed he was walking behind me (I was walking very slowly so it was unusual that we had the same distance between us as earlier). I stopped on purpose this time, and unashamed as he was of following me, he stopped too but a few steps ahead of me. This continued one more time. The third time I sat overlooking the Ganga though. I was afraid even sitting there because I had to turn around take some 50 odd steps, cross a few dark corners to reach my guest house. It wasn’t far once I climbed those steps but I am a slow climber and I feared being cornered along the way. One option was to go back and take a longer route that was busier. I sat there evaluating my options when I noticed two tourists walking up the steps. I quickly got up and went past them but continued walking in front of them. Once on top, I ran to my guest house. I had turned around from the steps to assess the situation, he was still sitting on the ghat but was not looking at the Ganga, instead, he had turned around and was looking at me.
The scariest experience I had of someone following me has unfortunately been in one of my favorite destinations – Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu . I was walking in a quiet lane, looking at old buildings. I was working on a project back then that required me to assess properties as potential hostels. So, I would often walk into buildings, speak to the caretakers and inquire about the owners. On such a visit, I was walking around the property but I could barely communicate with the caretaker. I continued checking out the nursery and see if I could gather any details on the availability of the property. Soon the caretaker called me to explain her son was here and he could answer my questions. As soon as I met him, I was afraid. his pupils were dilated and he looked deadpan at me. He said nothing, just stared at me. He was another friend on a bike, I tried to look at him and talk but the caretaker’s son would just not look away. I wanted to run away but I pretended to be all calm and just waited for them to leave. I left soon afterward, at the next property I met a dog who stuck around while I was walking in the vicinity. I took a turn at a road that connects to the lake which is generally busy but this stretch was empty, another turn and I saw the man with dead eyes again. He was standing on the side of the road and continued staring at me. I was scared, really scared. I didn’t know what to do so, I had to pretend to be composed. I pretended like the dog was mine and took an about-turn because I knew I could seek help quicker on that road. But the moment I cut the corner, I rushed and entered the first building, a guest house run by the church. I ran in, make small talk with some guests I saw. When I turned around (I was at an elevation), I saw the man walking on the road I had taken. He had started following me. As a reflection, I ducked and continued sitting on the floor, hidden from the road for some time. The problem with this was, I didn’t know which way he went. There were three roads I could take from there and all of them were fairly isolated.

What did I do to fix the situation: I stayed hidden for a 20-30 minutes and then chose a path that took me to a busier section quickest and I ran through this stretch.

Lessons learnt: Always have a taxi driver’s number handy, in case you need a pick up from such situations.

Was it for the best: Absolutely not. Nobody needs such an experience in life.

Sunrise over ganga with the silhouette of a man

10. Being Mugged at Knifepoint in Colombia

This hopefully remains one of my worst travel experiences because worse than this would be too much to handle. I was hiking back from this very popular tourist destination named – Montseratte in the capital city of Bogota. I was accompanied by my local host (a young woman), and it was about 4:30 pm (which means broad daylight). In fact, the reason we were rushing back was so we could make it back to her house while there was still daylight left. 10 minutes from the trail end (which joins a fairly busy road), three masked men jumped from behind a bulging boulder. In no time there was a man in front of me holding a machete to my throat and a man behind me. On my left, I saw another man with a machete chasing my host who was screaming and running backward.

They took my entire daypack (which had my camera, phone, passport, and both my debit cards, among other things that I had carefully picked 6 months ago for this trip of a lifetime). They also took my host’s sling bag which had her iPhone and her identity card.

What did I do to fix the situation: There were many things I had to fix in this situation starting from getting a new passport but the most difficult task was to access my money. The Indian banks I had accounts with had no presence in Latin America, they would not mail me the card either. It was a complicated task and a stressful 2 weeks.

After the robbery, I was left with less than $30 that was in my main backpack. I didn’t know how long I had to go on the $30 so I stopped taking dinner. I would cook lunch with just onion, tomato, garlic, and spaghetti.

I knew it was going to be an arduous few weeks, so the first thing I did was to find an alternate stay arrangement. I didn’t want my hosts to take the brunt of my situation. I knocked on hostel doors in the tourist town to find volunteer work. After nearly losing hope, and breaking down in tears in the middle of a street, I did find reception work in a backpackers hostel.

Two months later, I left Colombia for Mexico with a new passport, new US Visa, money transferred to my travel card, no camera, no phone (so no way to see the time or take pictures), but a great deal of determination to continue traveling.

Lessons learnt: I still struggle with this. I haven’t been able to make sense of that experience at all. Why did it happen, why did it happen to me, and what did I learn from it? I was already being as safe as I could. A few things that I experienced after the incident were:

The incident, unfortunately, made me slightly indifferent towards the poor, the addicts, the whole glaring economic disparity esp. in Colombia.
It reinforced the idea to never let the guard down. I was trying to book my exit tickets a day before the incident and had accidentally put my backup card in my daypack after that.
I learned that locals don’t always know best. I was recommended that place by both my previous hosts and none knew of the situation there.

Experiencing and fixing a situation like that by myself definitely prepared me for everything. Like Cheryl Strayed would say, I felt like a total “hardass motherfucking Amazonian queen”.

Was it for the best: NO. I was never able to buy a camera again (I had bought it when I had a job), now I’m always somehow in survival mode. Trauma from that experience haunted me for months and it permanently changed my interaction with strangers.

I hope sharing these 10 worst travel experiences of mine which required me to go back to those unpleasant moments, helps someone find their strength back.

10 thoughts on “10 of My Worst Travel Experiences”

all seems to be a spooky/ thrilling scenes from a movie, more power to you 🙂

Yes, quite dramatic when I look back but we all have it in us to endure what seems unimaginable. And i’m sure many people are experiencing that right now with Covid.

Hmmm… well covid is a more of like a organised catastrophe , like we know its coming yet we let it come

From leadership point of view and large group behaviour but on an individual level, that’s not everyone’s truth. I got a really bad case of Covid last September while following everything I was supposed to (Staying home, going out once a week to get groceries, mask, sanitize, etc.)

Hmmm i get it 🙂 hope you are well now

yes, I am. I was a long hauler so my symptoms (esp. social anxiety and loss of smell) persisted for months.

Yea , many of my friends experienced the same .

Bad incidents somehow do ruin your travel experience, I’m glad you found ways to get out of these although I’m sure it must not have been easy.

Yes, for sure. We are only human, many of these incidents hurt how I interact with strangers and the trust I put in them. But except the robbery in Colombia, every other incident led to only short-term discomfort.

Well said, Manisha

My worst travel experience (so far)

I just came back from what so far is my worst travel experience. It was a city trip to Riga, a beautiful city I would love to visit again. Next time, I would do things differently tho…

In a couple of days, I’m leaving for Botswana for 3 weeks. Three weeks of no internet. Which means I will miss my girlfriend, and she will miss me (I think). For that reason, we booked a trip together before I leave, so we can make sure we had our dose of each other.

We pick a date as close as possible to the trip, we go on TravelBird, and we book our trip. Not a dark cloud in the sky. We are over the moon when we find a nice city trip deal to Riga . Click, paid, booked.

And then shit hits the fan

TravelBird goes bankrupt. They stop completely. In the Netherlands (which also operates in Belgium), they have a commission that takes over the customers and makes sure everyone can go on their trip or get their money back.

I’m in the category that gets a guarantee for their departure. I’m happy with that. I still e-mailed the hotel that was booked for me to be sure. Or the hotel which should have been booked for me.

I explained the situation to them, and they confirmed the messages. TravelBird did go bankrupt and try to book for me. But the booking was refused because of non-payments by TravelBird. A decision of the hotel I can totally understand. They, too, have a business to run. And accepting bookings from non-payers can send them the same way TravelBird went.

Emailing back and forth

I emailed the commission, explaining they haven’t made the booking they guaranteed me. They send me a letter, signed by their CEO that I can show the hotel. I tell them it’s a bit ridiculous since everyone can make a letter like that.

“Yeah, but it has the signature of our boss!”

Fine, I’ll send it to the hotel. The receptionist’s reply was, “We can’t accept this letter as a form of payment as anyone can have written this letter. I couldn’t agree more.

A lot of e-mails go back and forth from me to the commission. I’m claiming I want to have my money back. They claim that’s not possible. I claim they make the booking that I will pay for myself and reclaim the money with them. They can’t guarantee it anymore and tell me I can get my money back if I want.

I’m flabbergasted by this change of decisions, and by then, it was only a day before departure. I wanted to visit Riga; the money-back thing came too late. I told them that.

Actually, I started my e-mail with: That’s the most friendly ‘Fuck You’ I’ve ever received.”

I don’t get mad easily, but don’t push my buttons by going back on your word.

I’m coming on my own terms

A day in advance, I emailed the hotel again to let them know I was coming and would pay for the room myself. I want to be sure I will arrive somewhere and have a room.

Of course, I only book the room. I will have to reclaim the money afterward, so the extra things like cocktails I booked on TravelBird aren’t in my package. The hotel asks for an extra 40 euros for it, but I’m still unsure if I will see that money back. So I skip it.

Upon arrival at the hotel, I notice it’s a nice hotel. Or at least, the reception is nice. In the room, I notice it’s a bit outdated. TravelBird lured me with the four-star hotel thingy but little did I know that didn’t have to mean anything.

The window of my room only has one-half of the curtains. Luckily we are on the top floor, and no one can look inside. But still.

The furniture is old, which isn’t a drama. But I expected more of all of it.

There are two beds for us. Two single beds. As you might know, I hate that stuff!

What’s your biggest hostel pet peeve? #travelquestion For me, it’s when they give you a bedroom for 2 persons, and it’s actually a room with two single beds put together. I hate sleeping in those beds! pic.twitter.com/uSoHK3Z2Yg — Fredography ? (@FredPaulussen) October 28, 2018

On the second day, after our long day visiting the beautiful city of Riga, we arrive back at the hotel to find our door is still open. Housekeeping left it open when cleaning the room. Or yeah, the door sucks. But they should know. Lucky for us, nothing is gone.

Except for our towels. Housekeeping did take the old ones with them. But never replaced them. So I needed to go downstairs to ask for towels at the overcrowded receptionist. He was there alone, helping three families check-in and bring my towels upstairs—poor him.

On the way back home, my RyanAir flight had the most turbulence I ever experienced. Which didn’t help to make me feel good either? But hey, that’s life—end of rant.

What was your worst travel experience so far? Let me know in the comments!

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Worst Experience of My Life Essay

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The Case Against Travel

An illustration of a tourist dragging along a suitcase while enclosed in a bubble.

What is the most uninformative statement that people are inclined to make? My nominee would be “I love to travel.” This tells you very little about a person, because nearly everyone likes to travel; and yet people say it, because, for some reason, they pride themselves both on having travelled and on the fact that they look forward to doing so.

The opposition team is small but articulate. G. K. Chesterton wrote that “travel narrows the mind.” Ralph Waldo Emerson called travel “a fool’s paradise.” Socrates and Immanuel Kant—arguably the two greatest philosophers of all time—voted with their feet, rarely leaving their respective home towns of Athens and Königsberg. But the greatest hater of travel, ever, was the Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa , whose wonderful “ Book of Disquiet ” crackles with outrage:

I abhor new ways of life and unfamiliar places. . . . The idea of travelling nauseates me. . . . Ah, let those who don’t exist travel! . . . Travel is for those who cannot feel. . . . Only extreme poverty of the imagination justifies having to move around to feel.

If you are inclined to dismiss this as contrarian posturing, try shifting the object of your thought from your own travel to that of others. At home or abroad, one tends to avoid “touristy” activities. “Tourism” is what we call travelling when other people are doing it. And, although people like to talk about their travels, few of us like to listen to them. Such talk resembles academic writing and reports of dreams: forms of communication driven more by the needs of the producer than the consumer.

One common argument for travel is that it lifts us into an enlightened state, educating us about the world and connecting us to its denizens. Even Samuel Johnson , a skeptic—“What I gained by being in France was, learning to be better satisfied with my own country,” he once said—conceded that travel had a certain cachet. Advising his beloved Boswell, Johnson recommended a trip to China, for the sake of Boswell’s children: “There would be a lustre reflected upon them. . . . They would be at all times regarded as the children of a man who had gone to view the wall of China.”

Travel gets branded as an achievement: see interesting places, have interesting experiences, become interesting people. Is that what it really is?

Pessoa, Emerson, and Chesterton believed that travel, far from putting us in touch with humanity, divorced us from it. Travel turns us into the worst version of ourselves while convincing us that we’re at our best. Call this the traveller’s delusion.

To explore it, let’s start with what we mean by “travel.” Socrates went abroad when he was called to fight in the Peloponnesian War; even so, he was no traveller. Emerson is explicit about steering his critique away from a person who travels when his “necessities” or “duties” demand it. He has no objection to traversing great distances “for the purpose of art, of study, and benevolence.” One sign that you have a reason to be somewhere is that you have nothing to prove, and therefore no drive to collect souvenirs, photos, or stories to prove it. Let’s define “tourism” as the kind of travel that aims at the interesting—and, if Emerson and company are right, misses.

“A tourist is a temporarily leisured person who voluntarily visits a place away from home for the purpose of experiencing a change.” This definition is taken from the opening of “ Hosts and Guests ,” the classic academic volume on the anthropology of tourism. The last phrase is crucial: touristic travel exists for the sake of change. But what, exactly, gets changed? Here is a telling observation from the concluding chapter of the same book: “Tourists are less likely to borrow from their hosts than their hosts are from them, thus precipitating a chain of change in the host community.” We go to experience a change, but end up inflicting change on others.

For example, a decade ago, when I was in Abu Dhabi, I went on a guided tour of a falcon hospital. I took a photo with a falcon on my arm. I have no interest in falconry or falcons, and a generalized dislike of encounters with nonhuman animals. But the falcon hospital was one of the answers to the question, “What does one do in Abu Dhabi?” So I went. I suspect that everything about the falcon hospital, from its layout to its mission statement, is and will continue to be shaped by the visits of people like me—we unchanged changers, we tourists. (On the wall of the foyer, I recall seeing a series of “excellence in tourism” awards. Keep in mind that this is an animal hospital.)

Why might it be bad for a place to be shaped by the people who travel there, voluntarily, for the purpose of experiencing a change? The answer is that such people not only do not know what they are doing but are not even trying to learn. Consider me. It would be one thing to have such a deep passion for falconry that one is willing to fly to Abu Dhabi to pursue it, and it would be another thing to approach the visit in an aspirational spirit, with the hope of developing my life in a new direction. I was in neither position. I entered the hospital knowing that my post-Abu Dhabi life would contain exactly as much falconry as my pre-Abu Dhabi life—which is to say, zero falconry. If you are going to see something you neither value nor aspire to value, you are not doing much of anything besides locomoting.

Tourism is marked by its locomotive character. “I went to France.” O.K., but what did you do there? “I went to the Louvre.” O.K., but what did you do there? “I went to see the ‘Mona Lisa.’ ” That is, before quickly moving on: apparently, many people spend just fifteen seconds looking at the “Mona Lisa.” It’s locomotion all the way down.

The peculiar rationality of tourists allows them to be moved both by a desire to do what they are supposed to do in a place and a desire to avoid precisely what they are supposed to do. This is how it came to pass that, on my first trip to Paris, I avoided both the “Mona Lisa” and the Louvre. I did not, however, avoid locomotion. I walked from one end of the city to the other, over and over again, in a straight line; if you plotted my walks on a map, they would have formed a giant asterisk. In the many great cities I have actually lived and worked in, I would never consider spending whole days walking. When you travel, you suspend your usual standards for what counts as a valuable use of time. You suspend other standards as well, unwilling to be constrained by your taste in food, art, or recreational activities. After all, you say to yourself, the whole point of travelling is to break out of the confines of everyday life. But, if you usually avoid museums, and suddenly seek them out for the purpose of experiencing a change, what are you going to make of the paintings? You might as well be in a room full of falcons.

Let’s delve a bit deeper into how, exactly, the tourist’s project is self-undermining. I’ll illustrate with two examples from “The Loss of the Creature,” an essay by the writer Walker Percy.

First, a sightseer arriving at the Grand Canyon. Before his trip, an idea of the canyon—a “symbolic complex”—had formed in his mind. He is delighted if the canyon resembles the pictures and postcards he has seen; he might even describe it as “every bit as beautiful as a picture postcard!” But, if the lighting is different, the colors and shadows not those which he expects, he feels cheated: he has arrived on a bad day. Unable to gaze directly at the canyon, forced to judge merely whether it matches an image, the sightseer “may simply be bored; or he may be conscious of the difficulty: that the great thing yawning at his feet somehow eludes him.”

Second, a couple from Iowa driving around Mexico. They are enjoying the trip, but are a bit dissatisfied by the usual sights. They get lost, drive for hours on a rocky mountain road, and eventually, “in a tiny valley not even marked on the map,” stumble upon a village celebrating a religious festival. Watching the villagers dance, the tourists finally have “an authentic sight, a sight which is charming, quaint, picturesque, unspoiled.” Yet they still feel some dissatisfaction. Back home in Iowa, they gush about the experience to an ethnologist friend: You should have been there! You must come back with us! When the ethnologist does, in fact, return with them, “the couple do not watch the goings-on; instead they watch the ethnologist! Their highest hope is that their friend should find the dance interesting.” They need him to “certify their experience as genuine.”

The tourist is a deferential character. He outsources the vindication of his experiences to the ethnologist, to postcards, to conventional wisdom about what you are or are not supposed to do in a place. This deference, this “openness to experience,” is exactly what renders the tourist incapable of experience. Emerson confessed, “I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated.” He speaks for every tourist who has stood before a monument, or a painting, or a falcon, and demanded herself to feel something. Emerson and Percy help us understand why this demand is unreasonable: to be a tourist is to have already decided that it is not one’s own feelings that count. Whether an experience is authentically X is precisely what you, as a non-X, cannot judge.

A similar argument applies to the tourist’s impulse to honor the grand sea of humanity. Whereas Percy and Emerson focus on the aesthetic, showing us how hard it is for travellers to have the sensory experiences that they seek, Pessoa and Chesterton are interested in the ethical. They study why travellers can’t truly connect to other human beings. During my Paris wanderings, I would stare at people, intently inspecting their clothing, their demeanor, their interactions. I was trying to see the Frenchness in the French people around me. This is not a way to make friends.

Pessoa said that he knew only one “real traveller with soul”: an office boy who obsessively collected brochures, tore maps out of newspapers, and memorized train schedules between far-flung destinations. The boy could recount sailing routes around the world, but he had never left Lisbon. Chesterton also approved of such stationary travellers. He wrote that there was “something touching and even tragic” about “the thoughtless tourist, who might have stayed at home loving Laplanders, embracing Chinamen, and clasping Patagonians to his heart in Hampstead or Surbiton, but for his blind and suicidal impulse to go and see what they looked like.”

The problem was not with other places, or with the man wanting to see them, but with travel’s dehumanizing effect, which thrust him among people to whom he was forced to relate as a spectator. Chesterton believed that loving what is distant in the proper fashion—namely, from a distance—enabled a more universal connection. When the man in Hampstead thought of foreigners “in the abstract . . . as those who labour and love their children and die, he was thinking the fundamental truth about them.” “The human bond that he feels at home is not an illusion,” Chesterton wrote. “It is rather an inner reality.” Travel prevents us from feeling the presence of those we have travelled such great distances to be near.

The single most important fact about tourism is this: we already know what we will be like when we return. A vacation is not like immigrating to a foreign country, or matriculating at a university, or starting a new job, or falling in love. We embark on those pursuits with the trepidation of one who enters a tunnel not knowing who she will be when she walks out. The traveller departs confident that she will come back with the same basic interests, political beliefs, and living arrangements. Travel is a boomerang. It drops you right where you started.

If you think that this doesn’t apply to you—that your own travels are magical and profound, with effects that deepen your values, expand your horizons, render you a true citizen of the globe, and so on—note that this phenomenon can’t be assessed first-personally. Pessoa, Chesterton, Percy, and Emerson were all aware that travellers tell themselves they’ve changed, but you can’t rely on introspection to detect a delusion. So cast your mind, instead, to any friends who are soon to set off on summer adventures. In what condition do you expect to find them when they return? They may speak of their travel as though it were transformative, a “once in a lifetime” experience, but will you be able to notice a difference in their behavior, their beliefs, their moral compass? Will there be any difference at all?

Travel is fun, so it is not mysterious that we like it. What is mysterious is why we imbue it with a vast significance, an aura of virtue. If a vacation is merely the pursuit of unchanging change, an embrace of nothing, why insist on its meaning?

One is forced to conclude that maybe it isn’t so easy to do nothing—and this suggests a solution to the puzzle. Imagine how your life would look if you discovered that you would never again travel. If you aren’t planning a major life change, the prospect looms, terrifyingly, as “More and more of this , and then I die.” Travel splits this expanse of time into the chunk that happens before the trip, and the chunk that happens after it, obscuring from view the certainty of annihilation. And it does so in the cleverest possible way: by giving you a foretaste of it. You don’t like to think about the fact that someday you will do nothing and be nobody. You will only allow yourself to preview this experience when you can disguise it in a narrative about how you are doing many exciting and edifying things: you are experiencing, you are connecting, you are being transformed, and you have the trinkets and photos to prove it.

Socrates said that philosophy is a preparation for death. For everyone else, there’s travel. ♦

New Yorker Favorites

An Oscar-winning filmmaker takes on the Church of Scientology .

Wendy Wasserstein on the baby who arrived too soon .

The young stowaways thrown overboard at sea .

As he rose in politics, Robert Moses discovered that decisions about New York City’s future would not be based on democracy .

The Muslim tamale king of the Old West .

Fiction by Jamaica Kincaid: “ Girl .”

High-Pressure Hope at the Paris Olympics

Wanderlust. Wander more. Wandercuse.

My Travel Horror Story – A Journey from Australia to the US

Last updated on March 4, 2019.

Hey fellow travelers! Today I’m bringing you a slightly different style of article – my biggest travel horror story. I am currently working on a collaborative blog post about travel failures with some of my amazing fellow bloggers and am anxious to start sharing some of my stories. So, I thought I should tell you about the worst experience I’ve ever had when traveling. Everyone has their own travel horror story – and I’d love to hear yours! For now, read on and see if you can relate to my experience moving back to the US from Australia. A nightmare at the time, but lessons well learned for the future!

If you’ve been keeping up with the blog, you know that I lived in Australia for a while. When I was getting ready to plan my trip back home, a friend from home said she wanted to come visit. Great! So, we started researching flights, knowing that we would be able to fly back together. We found a great deal on a roundtrip flight from New York to Melbourne and back, so we booked two. My friend flew out to meet me, and everything was going well… until it wasn’t.

Melbourne to Sydney

We got to the Melbourne airport, checked in and waited for our flight to board. When the gate attendant scanned my boarding pass, the machine made a disconcerting sound. I joked with the attendant, trying to put myself at ease, commenting that the noise didn’t sound good. She assured me that it was fine, and that I should continue to board the flight. Okay.

Sydney to Los Angeles

We arrived in Sydney and all seem to be going smoothly. But, when I went to check in for the next flight, I was told that my ticket was invalid. Seriously? I explained that the attendants in Melbourne had already let me on the plane there and I was already in the middle of my journey. Didn’t matter. I was sent to the tickets counter to purchase a new ticket or would not be allowed on the plane. I panicked. After spending a year and a half in Australia, away from home, all I wanted to do was be in my own bed. All my money had been spent on traveling around the land down under while I had the chance. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I couldn’t afford a same-day ticket around the world!

Thank Goodness for Good Friends

Luckily, my friend stayed with me (even though her ticket worked just fine) and had room on a credit card to use. But, before we got the new ticket, I argued with the ticket agent for the longest time about why my ticket was invalid. I had paid for it and had all my proof. She explained that you could not purchase a roundtrip ticket and only use the return half – which was explained nowhere when I purchased the ticket. I continued to explain that I could not afford to purchase a new ticket. Her solution? Purchase another roundtrip ticket and only use the first half. Seriously? She’s basically telling me to do what I had tried to do originally! I was so frustrated, but out of options. I just wanted to get home. So there went over $1,000 of my friend’s money.

Los Angeles to Chicago

Once we had purchased the new ticket, my friend and I then had different connecting flights for LA to Chicago. No worries, we would meet up again before our final flight to Syracuse. She was bummed because my flight was supposed to leave LA before hers – but in the end it didn’t matter. She beat me to Chicago. Why? Well here’s the craziest part of the story. I boarded my plane, ready to get even closer to home; to see my friends and family after so long. But the plane didn’t leave. We just sat there. Waiting. Then the plane started to roll out of the gate… only to stop. The plane came back to the gate, with all of the passengers left to wonder what was happening.

Wait.. What?

After some time, an announcement was made that the plane couldn’t leave yet. Apparently the wheel of the plane had run over the foot of one of the workers on the tarmac. They needed to investigate. Seriously? I mean, how does that even happen? How do you not see the giant AIRPLANE moving towards you? Ugh. We were told that we could not get off of the plane, that we would have to wait and it wouldn’t be much longer before we left. They lied. The airline decided that they couldn’t trust the crew that was onboard and that they needed to be replaced. More waiting. Tears started welling up in my eyes as I looked at the time, knowing that I was cutting it too close for my connecting flight home. In the end it was over three hours of just sitting, waiting on the plane for takeoff.

Chicago to Syracuse… or not.

With my new itinerary, I had a few hours between my connecting flight in Chicago. But you’re smart enough to figure out that I probably didn’t make it. You would be right. Of course I was sitting near the back of the plane, meaning I was one of the last to get off. Even though there was an announcement made to allow people with connecting flights to get off first so they had a chance to make it. People didn’t care.

I got off the plane and ran to my next gate. I don’t normally run. I’m one of those people who only runs in there is a clown chasing me with a knife. But I was desperate. The next few moments were like a scene from a movie. I ran up to my departing gate and saw them close the gate door. I can’t make this stuff up. But just like in the movies, they refused to reopen the door to let me on. (Later I found out that my friend had gotten on the plane and begged them to wait for me because she knew I was coming… They didn’t wait.)

Stuck in Chicago

So I was stuck in Chicago. I didn’t know it then, but Chicago would later become one of my favorite cities. But at the time, I was just upset. So close to being home, yet not quite there. Since I still had an Australian phone plan and couldn’t get wifi, I didn’t have a way to call my mom to let her know not to go to the airport to meet me. I ended up asking a stranger if I could use his phone, and he was kind enough to let me. Seeing my distraught appearance probably made him empathize. By the time I waited at the service counter top get my meal and hotel vouchers and then waited for the shuttle to the hotel, I had just enough time to cry it out in the shower and get a couple of hours of sleep in before my redeye flight.

Syracuse – Finally!

I did eventually make it back home later the next morning. Of course my luggage had been marked for the original itinerary, so it made it back to Syracuse the day before me with my friend. In a strange turn of events, she was able to take my luggage home, but hers had been lost along the way. Our luck just continued to be awful…

The Aftermath

Both my friend and I fought hard with the airline once we were both back in Syracuse. After weeks and weeks of back-and-forth, she did eventually get the new ticket refunded on her credit card. They also issued us two vouchers to be used on future flights. All in all, I‘m still not convinced the hassle and anxiety was worth my free flight to Orlando later that year.

Lessons Learned From My Travel Horror Story

Always have spare cash or room on a credit card in case of emergency.
Be thankful for WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and all of the new apps that allow you to text and call through wifi.
No matter how fast you run from one gate to another in the airport terminal, you cannot change other people holding you up or refusing to help you.
Give yourself plenty of time between connecting flights. You truly never know what could happen.

I have traveled extensively since this disastrous adventure, and I have learned so much. I never want to relive this nightmare! If you have a crazy travel horror story of your own, let me know!

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24 comments.

Its things like this that make traveling scary. Glad you made it!

Thanks! I’m glad too!

Feels like just yesterday this happened to you!!

Can you believe it’s been seven years?!

I wish there was a dislike button for this comment – wish it wasn’t so lo by ago!!!! Come back!!!!!

snaptravelandpop

Tough journey!! Thankfully you made it in the end and have a good story to tell 😂

Ana - JauntingTrips.com

Omg… it was one of THOSE days! The good thing is that you made it home eventually. And one more piece of advice… things happen. Once they did, no use stressing yourself more about the situation. It is out of your hands and more stress won’t do you any good.

Yes! Such great advice 🙂

Mateja Drobnic

There is often a ripple effect with flights, when 1 thing goes south it seems everything follows. So sorry this happened to you. I am glad you eventually got reimbursed. 🙂

Very true. The downside to traveling sometimes.

TheAmandatoryAdventure

That is so crummy! I’ve had a similar situation on sprinting to the next gate and not making it. The worst! Glad you made it home ok though! Always a bright side 😉

Ha. Me too!

So unfortunate that happened to you.. but you made it. What a great story to tell 🙂

Silver lining 🙂

This is so crazy! I actually just heard about the RT flight thing where you can sometimes get a better deal for half of the journey, but then heard that airlines started to catch on. yikes! That would be such a frustrating journey, sometimes it’s just the way it is when one thing goes wrong it comes in a chain of events. Makes for a good story now though 😉

Yea it was definitely an awful series of events, but a funny story now!

So many airlines trying to nickel and dime us and making up their own rules as they feel is convenient for them. I lost a return flight home just a year and half ago with an airline that was worth about 600 $ and never got it resolved, so I’m more vigilant now about my big purchases with airlines. lucky you got yours refunded and vouchers

Oh no! I’m sorry to hear about that! Airline problems are definitely some of the worst.

Ugh, airlines are the worst. I can’t believe they jerked you around like that – except I totally can. So funny, our post this week is also about travel drama, but our weapon of misery was a car.

Ugh I’ve been there too! That will be part of my next post…

OH my gosh this is my worst fear having to pay for another ticket!! I have a flight coming up with a connections of 38 unites hAha well see if I make I it!

Yikes! Good luck!

Well first I have never even though of just purchasing a round trip and using it for only half the journey.. so that makes you a genius.. ha! But second I have heard a lot of people buying one way tickets (atleast for domestic flights in US) with connection but get off in the connecting city. Why, coz that was cheaper than buying a ticket to that connecting city directly in the first place. There is even an website which offers such tickets (who United tried to sue!). Bottom line is, if airlines keep doing tricky things to raise price then us passengers have to get creative to find cheap flights. So I totally understand you here. I am glad that at the end you fought it out to get your money re-reimbursed and reached home safely 🙂

Hmmm I may have to check out that website. Thank you!! But yes, they keep finding ways to charge us more. It’s crazy because flights around Europe or within Australia are SO much cheaper!

Tell me your thoughts! Cancel reply

Tell Us: What's Your Worst Travel Experience?

A bunch of Atlantic readers in this discussion group are exchanging their travel horror stories. (If you’d like to sharing your own, please send us a note: [email protected] .) A short anecdote from the group:

I caught bronchitis when I was in Germany for a business trip. Spent the plane ride home sitting next to a strange drunk man who kept talking at me. Intolerable Cruelty starring George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones was the in-flight movie. I wanted to die.

Another reader shares that sentiment:

I was stuck in the snowbound Omaha airport with a three year old, a chihuahua, and a small carryon bag, for TWO DAYS. That was the ninth circle of hell. I wanted to die.

This next reader nearly did, for real:

Peace Corps: On a bus in Guatemala. A group of three teens in MS-13 [ a notorious gang ] decide to rob our bus. Being the only American on the bus and having just gone to the bank, I took all the money I had hidden in my bra and put it in my pocket ready to be robbed. People would get shot if they tried to run, so I prepared to give everything and pulled my passport out of its hiding spot in my bag so I made sure they knew they were getting it. Then some dude decided to John Wayne and open fire on these robbers, which resulted in a firefight on a very crowded bus. I had actually been the next passenger to be robbed, so the perp standing next to me was actively shooting. I dove under the seat and stayed there until literally everyone else had gotten off the bus. Bonus trip: I got a lightly armored security escort back to the embassy.

This reader’s experience is much more relatable:

I travel for work, so I have A LOT of these stories. I have two that beat out all of the other minor upsets though:

1) I started a flight with a guy interrupting me while I was reading just so he could tell me that he “might grab my knee” because he’s “afraid of flying.” I replied, “the fuck you will.” Then he proceeded to vape for the entire flight. When I pointed out that it’s a federal crime to do that, he said he had really bad cravings. AND THEN, as he was deplaning, he hit his lady-friend square on her read end ... it was the cherry on top of a disturbing trip. 2) THE WORST was when I was flying from Chicago to Manchester last October. The man sitting next to me spread all over my seat, took off his shoes, AND unbuttoned his pants. And when I asked to get out to use the restroom, he suggested that I just “climb over my lap, baby.”

Another reader, Nick, also had a creepy encounter:

On a six-hour train ride in China, a man stared at me the entire fucking time. Like literally he didn’t move his eyes off me. I don’t know if that was worse than the time I was really sick on a transatlantic flight, but it was definitely the weirdest.

This next reader thinks back to Memorial Day weekend in the late ‘90s:

I’m living on Long Island and using what precious little vacation and holiday time I have to visit my LDR girlfriend in Rochester. I have my friend drop me off at JFK in the late afternoon with maybe an hour to spare before boarding (plenty of time, as this is pre-TSA). As I’m waiting, the delays start piling up on the info screen because of some freak storm over half of the country, though the local weather is fine. My flight gets delayed, of course. Over the next few hours, the delay gets pushed further and further back. Finally, it gets cancelled. But by then it’s way too late to call any of my friends to pick me up. So I can either spend the night in pre-renovated JFK, or take a two-hour train ride home so I can sleep in my own bed for a few hours before trying again in the morning. Both options suck, but I figure some sleep is better than none and head out to the train. Now we come to the actual bad part. I have to take a rail shuttle from the airport to the station, then take two different subway rides into Penn Station, where I can catch a LIRR train to take me home. The first ride is uneventful. On the second one, however, I’m joined by a couple of young women a few seats in front of me, a younger man who goes to the back, and another younger man who does not take a seat but quickly sets to trying to impress the two women. Also worth noting is that I’m the only person on board who isn’t black. The young hotshot starts sort-of-rapping about how tough and badass he is. The women seem unimpressed as far as I can tell, but really this whole time I’ve just been trying very hard to focus on the Robert Anton Wilson book I’m reading. Hotshot changes tactics and tries to impress them by provoking me into a fight. He gets in my face and taunts me for being in the wrong place or something, but I just shake my head and keep my eyes on my book. The train slows and starts to pull up to the next platform. He disappears behind me, and a few seconds later something hard hits me in the back of my head. At this point I’m exhausted, frustrated, and already very angry about the flight situation. I was running on fumes and adrenaline. So when I got hit, something in me just snapped. I remember folding the book and putting it down. Thoughts about my physical abilities versus his and the possibility that he may have a weapon immediately popped up. The angry animal part of my brain was in charge, though, so I disregarded them just as quickly. I stood up and turned around to face whatever this guy thought he was going to do to me. The doors are open and he is gone. At my feet is the small, depleted corn cob from a discarded KFC meal box. I wipe some bits of kernel from the back of my head and neck. The women and guy from the back all rush over to me to make sure I’m okay. After we’re all sure I’m fine, the guy says, “It’s too bad he ran off. I was going to hold him so you could kick his ass.”

About the Author

Bad Trips: Wonderful Essays about Awful Travel Experiences

Vacations are sacred, especially in America, where we work longer hours than our counterparts in Europe and still aren’t legally entitled to a single paid day off . But what we often forget — that is, until we’re getting stung by a jellyfish or stranded at an airport — is that they’re also rarely the ideal escapes we build them up to be. In an essay about Disney World for last weekend’s New York Times magazine, John Jeremiah Sullivan reminds us. Since others’ holidays of misery make us feel better about our own failure to plan a summer vacation, we’ve rounded up some of our favorite tales of awful travel experiences, by authors including David Sedaris, Sloane Crosley, David Foster Wallace, and more.

John Jeremiah Sullivan on Disney World

Blood, ungodly heat, and a whole lot of marijuana turn up in Sullivan’s cleverly titled “You Blow My Mind. Hey Mickey!” The essay follows the author, his wife, their daughter, and another family on a roadtrip to Disney World. Complicated by bad weather, the other father’s pack-of-joints-a-day weed habit, and Sullivan’s ambivalence about the “Happiest Place on Earth,” the trip becomes a way of talking about the mega-theme park’s unsettling history. Did you know, for instance, that “Disney World is a giant mound, one of the greatest ever constructed in North America”? The park tourists know is actually about 15 feet off the ground, built on top of an intricate system of tunnels built to conceal off-duty characters and other not-so-magical sites. Then there’s the dark, weird origins of Epcot. Sullivan’s essay isn’t a straight-up condemnation of Disney, but it will definitely make you think twice before making plans to get back on that tram.

Sullivan photo by Harry Taylor

David Sedaris on Amtrak’s bar cars

David Sedaris has made a career on dramatizing his most embarrassing moments, in stories so conducive to uncontrollable laughter that we’ve had to stop reading them in public. But “Guy Walks into a Bar Car,” a piece Sedaris wrote for The New Yorker a few years ago, is more sad than funny. The essays follows our author on a train trip home from Chicago to New York, as he mourns the end of a six-year relationship and strikes up a brief friendship with a drunk who he’s drawn to because he finds “ruined-looking men” attractive. We meet the characters on the bar car — the guy who won’t stop telling terrible jokes, the woman in the “decorative sweatshirt” — and watch Sedaris hole up in a women’s restroom, high on pills and pot and alcohol. Not only is it a terrible moment in the writer’s life (pre-fame), but the piece also evolves into a meditation on aging, relationships, and diminishing opportunities for happiness.

Sloane Crosley on Lisbon

There are two great travel essays in Sloane Crosley’s wonderful second book, How Did You Get This Number . In “Le Paris!,” she explains why she and Paris have never gotten along. We’re partial to “Show Me on the Doll” (excerpted here ), though, which finds Crosley alone in Lisbon. The solo trip is supposed to be an empowering celebration of her 30th birthday, but she spends much of it hiding in her hotel room, getting lost, and wanting to go home. She finally does meet some locals on her final night in town — and it turns out they’re hipster carnies!

David Foster Wallace on cruises

In the world of neurotic travel writing, no essay is as widely cited or celebrated as David Foster Wallace’s “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again,” originally titled “Shipping Out: On the (nearly) lethal comforts of a luxury cruise” when it appeared in Harpers in 1996. We fear that going into too much detail will ruin it for those of you who haven’t yet read the piece, so let’s leave it at this: Wallace, in all his hyper-footnoted glory, simply cannot submit to the totalitarian regime of pleasure that rules the American cruise industry.

Umberto Eco on America

Years before anyone had ever heard of Second Life, the postmodernist Italian philosopher Umberto Eco wrote a long essay called “Travels in Hyperreality,” chronicling America’s bizarre fascination with simulated reality. Eco takes on everything from holograms to wax museums to William Randolph Hearst’s California castle, with its loud and cartoonish mix of genuine art and gaudy reproduction. Our favorite part will always be his exploration of the Madonna Inn , a hotel in San Luis Obispo whose themed guest rooms represent everything from a caveman’s quarters to a Hawaiian tiki-themed chamber. “The Madonna Inn is the poor man’s Hearst Castle,” Eco writes, “it has no artistic or philosophical pretensions, it appeals to the savage taste for the amazing, the overstuffed, and the absolutely sumptuous at low price.” You can read the essay, which appears in a collection of the same name, at Google Books .

Gary Indiana on Branson

Writer/filmmaker/photographer Gary Hoisington may have adopted as his pseudonym the name of a Midwestern city, but rest assured he has little love for Middle America. The title of “Town of the Living Dead,” a Village Voice piece that appears in his collection, Let It Bleed: Essays 1985-1995 , pretty much sums up Indian’s thoughts on Missouri’s own country-music mecca. From theme parks to the Osmond Brothers, Indiana points out that Branson represents the ultimate in reactionary nostalgia, whose visitors are “profoundly out of whack with the trajectory of American popular culture, which, for all its inanity, is generally libertarian, multicultural, and secular.” Or, to put it less gently, he describes the city as “the tightest little cultural sphincter you are likely to find in the United States.”

Rachel Shukert on Europe

A freshly graduated (and flat broke) Rachel Shukert uses an unstamped passport and a trip overseas as a bit player in a theater production to wander around Europe in search of, well… she isn’t quite sure. There’s love, intoxication, and other forms of embarrassment in Everything Is Going to Be Great , but (luckily for those who aren’t big on 20-something navel-gazing) Shukert makes it all funny. Bonus: The book doubles as an irreverent travel guide, featuring everything from “Foreskin FAQs” to a brief guide to the Dutch obsession with Phil Collins.

Ian Frazier on getting sick while traveling

In a piece for Outside magazine, New Yorker writer Ian Frazier tackles the ultimate vacation bummer: getting sick while we’re traveling — and why it seems to happen so often. “A Kielbasa Too Far” combines anecdotes from Frazier’s own life with a substantial history of diarrhea (which the author has the delicacy not to name) in travel literature of the past, some tips (“Alcohol, in strengths you drink, does not purify anything”), and a conversation with a doctor who notes the prevalence of travel-related psychosis. It’s enough to make you want to stay home. Almost.

Illustration by David Hughes at Outside

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Write a Good Travel Essay. Please.

Kathleen Boardman

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Editor’s Note: We know that many of you are looking for help writing travel experience essays for school or simply writing about a trip for your friends or family. To inspire you and help you write your next trip essay—whether it’s an essay about a trip with family or simply a way to remember your best trip ever (so far)—we enlisted the help of Professor Kathleen Boardman, whose decades of teaching have helped many college students learn the fine art of autobiography and life writing. Here’s advice on how to turn a simple “my best trip” essay into a story that will inspire others to explore the world.

Welcome home! Now that you’re back from your trip, you’d like to share it with others in a travel essay. You’re a good writer and a good editor of your work, but you’ve never tried travel writing before. As your potential reader, I have some advice and some requests for you as you write your travel experience essay.

Trip Essays: What to Avoid

Please don’t tell me everything about your trip. I don’t want to know your travel schedule or the names of all the castles or restaurants you visited. I don’t care about the plane trip that got you there (unless, of course, that trip is the story).

I have a friend who, when I return from a trip, never asks me, “How was your trip?” She knows that I would give her a long, rambling answer: “… and then … and then … and then.” So instead, she says, “Tell me about one thing that really stood out for you.” That’s what I’d like you to do in this travel essay you’re writing.

The Power of Compelling Scenes

One or two “snapshots” are enough—but make them great. Many good writers jump right into the middle of their account with a vivid written “snapshot” of an important scene. Then, having aroused their readers’ interest or curiosity, they fill in the story or background. I think this technique works great for travel writing; at least, I would rather enjoy a vivid snapshot than read through a day-to-day summary of somebody’s travel journal.

Write About a Trip Using Vivid Descriptions

Take your time. Tell a story. So what if you saw things that were “incredible,” did things that were “amazing,” observed actions that you thought “weird”? These words don’t mean anything to me unless you show me, in a story or a vivid description, the experience that made you want to use those adjectives.

I’d like to see the place, the people, or the journey through your eyes, not someone else’s. Please don’t rewrite someone else’s account of visiting the place. Please don’t try to imitate a travel guide or travelogue or someone’s blog or Facebook entry. You are not writing a real travel essay unless you are describing, as clearly and honestly as possible, yourself in the place you visited. What did you see, hear, taste, say? Don’t worry if your “take” on your experience doesn’t match what everyone else says about it. (I’ve already read what THEY have to say.)

The Importance of Self-Editing Your Trip Essay

Don’t give me your first draft to read. Instead, set it aside and then reread it. Reread it again. Where might I need more explanation? What parts of your account are likely to confuse me? (After all, I wasn’t there.) Where might you be wasting my time by repeating or rambling on about something you’ve already told me?

Make me feel, make me laugh, help me learn something. But don’t overdo it: Please don’t preach to me about broadening my horizons or understanding other cultures. Instead, let me in on your feelings, your change of heart and mind, even your fear and uncertainty, as you confronted something you’d never experienced before. If you can, surprise me with something I didn’t know or couldn’t have suspected.

You Can Do It: Turning Your Trip into a Great Travel Experience Essay

I hope you will take yourself seriously as a traveler and as a writer. Through what—and how—you write about just a small portion of your travel experience, show me that you are an interesting, thoughtful, observant person. I will come back to you, begging for more of your travel essays.

Take Notes in a Cute Journal

Keep track of all the crucial details- and even the ones you might forget, in a durable and refillable journal.

More from SmarterTravel:

Genealogy Travel: How to Find Your Family Tree
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My ten worst travel experiences

After my feel good top ten travel moments of 2013 post and my ten amazing experiences while travelling the world , I thought I would head over to the dark side of travel for this Flashback Friday and go through some of my worst travel experiences.

Travel is not always fun, in fact sometimes it’s bloody horrible. It’s easy to focus on the good because, thankfully, mostly travel is awesome. There are some experiences I never want to live again though. My tag line for this site states that I will share the good, the bad and the ugly of travel – here is the ugly! Here are my top ten worst travel experiences in chronological order…

1. Fainting on my flight to Europe on my second international trip

I have posted about this one before, so you can read the whole story . Basically, I started to feel sick just before I flew to Europe and became very sick on my third and final flight from Singapore to London. I actually ended up fainting!

The crew were horrible to me. I was told I was lucky to be given water and that it was my own fault for drinking too much – even though I hadn’t had any alcohol. I was also criticised for travelling alone. On arrival at Heathrow airport, I was actually taken off the plane in a wheel chair by paramedics!

It was all very dramatic and not a recommended way to start a holiday, particularly my first backpacking trip alone at 21.

2. Getting gassed in Quito, Ecuador

I have no idea exactly what happened, but it was not good!

In bad travel experience #2, we were walking around Quito, checking out a market when suddenly we were coughing. Everyone around us was coughing too and starting to pass out on the ground!

We thankfully reacted quickly and started running as fast as we could. Once we left the area, we were ok and stopped coughing.

3. Being sexually assaulted in Turkey

I loved Turkey, but I struggled being a solo female traveller in Turkey.

Men were constantly trying to pick me up. I covered up – despite being very hot, I wore ankle length skirts or trousers, and t shirts that covered me up. I wore the fake wedding band, did everything I could basically, but it was relentless. I would end up back at my room upset as I felt I had to start being very rude to everyone who tried to talk to me, as no matter how innocent their conversation started, it always lead to them asking me to come to their home. I do not recommend young females travel to Turkey alone – the only place I have been where I would say that.

Anyway, on my final day in Istanbul, I went for a long walk to an airline office. It was all on main busy roads, and I would have thought I was perfectly safe. On the way back, I soon realised that someone was following me. I dodged around and thought I had lost him. Then, when I was walking behind a bus that was parked at the side of the road – blocking the cars going past from seeing me, he appeared out of nowhere and grabbed me around my waist and between my legs, rubbing my girl bits.

I screamed and yelled as loud as I could, and he thankfully jumped back and started screaming at me. He actually looked shocked. Do some men really think women want to be treated this way? I ran onto the road and when I reached the median strip, I broke down on the ground and cried for quite awhile in the middle of a main road.

It was lucky I was flying out that night anyway, as I couldn’t stay in Turkey a second longer after that. The whole incident still makes me want to cry today. I have rarely told anyone this story, as I hate thinking about it. It is without a doubt my worst travel experience.

4. Visiting the Egyptian Pyramids

My Flashback Friday post on why I hated my visit to the Egyptian Pyramids is actually one of my most popular posts. Basically, there were so many touts hassling us in Egypt and at the Giza Pyramids, that it was impossible to enjoy them. My whole three days in Egypt were horrible and this is definitely one of my worst travel experiences.

5. Mexico/US border dramas

I had some dramas crossing from Mexico to the US by land in 2006. It started when the Mexican Army tried to take us away from a bus we were travelling in, saying that we had to leave the country immediately. It didn’t improve from there!

We made our way immediately to a US border crossing , only to have them not allow us to get an exit stamp from Mexico, not believe us that Australians don’t need a visa and to give us the third degree.

It was all made worse by the fact that we had to travel back over the next day to get our Mexican exit stamp and repeat the whole drama again .

This is just a summary. It was a stressful 24 hours and a bad travel experience that I never wish to repeat. You can read the whole drama in the links above!

6. My travelling companion having a sudden seizure on a Grand Canyon tour.

I was riding along on a bus, when bam, my then boyfriend had a seizure. He had never had one before, and I had never seen one before. It was very scary.

The tour guide rung 911 and soon there were paramedics and police there. We ended up spending a night in hospital and changing our plans to remain in the US while he had tests. We had 7 months of our trip still to go and we nearly had to cancel it all. Thankfully, he ended up being ok and we continued our trip. It was a horrible couple of days though.

7. Nearly being robbed in Sofia

I was walking along the main road in Sofia when I heard a zipper sound… I started to turn around and there was someone’s hand in my backpack!!

I looked around and I realised I had been surrounded by young women, and my travelling companion was a few steps ahead of me. I screamed at the girl, and she pulled her hand out. The group then encircled her and they slowly walked away, while I screamed out to my friend and at the girls.

I tried to check if they had taken anything while my friend tried to get to the girl who had had her hand in the bag to see if she had something. My bag was full and it was hard to tell. My friend couldn’t get to the girl thanks to the circle surrounding her. He told me later that one of them had stood in front of him, so he had to walk around her and that is how they separated us.

While this was going on, an old local woman was screaming at us in Bulgarian. It seemed like she was telling us to leave them alone. Everyone else just watched or walked on. I’m not sure what was worse, someone trying to rob me or all the people that were complicit in it. It seemed like the old woman was part of it too. I would have thought it someone tried to rob you, they would at least run off! Even if she had taken something valuable, I’m not sure I would have been able to get it back.

Luckily the zips on my bag were loud and not that easy to open so I had been on to her straight away. My bag had also just been stuffed full with bakery products on top, so she hadn’t been able to get to my wallet at the bottom. When we got back to our hostel, we saw a sign on the wall that said to be weary of groups of well dressed, young women and described exactly what had happened to us!

We had loved our time in Bulgaria, so it was a shame it had to end on such a sour note with one of my worst travel experiences. In saying that, I think things like this from time to time can be good reminders to be on our guard. I have always been aware since then to not let people get in between me and other people I am travelling with like that again.

8. Being in Bangkok during a Thai military coup

Waking up in the morning to hear the news that the country I was in had just had a military coup is a very strange experience. It is hard not to think of violence when hearing the words “military coup”, and it was quite scary. It turned out to not be that big a deal, but we did not know that at the time. In fact, we knew very little as all the news stations were turned off. Many people have told me they are jealous that I was there for such a big occasion, but I wonder if they would have been if it had turned out to not be peaceful. It was definitely a bad travel experience.

9. Being kicked off a chicken bus in Guatemala

I had loved loved loved Guatemala on my numerous trips there until our last one.

It felt like everyone was trying to rip us off constantly and it was very trying. The final straw was the last day we were in the country on our way to the Mexico border. Yet again, the chicken bus guy tried to overcharge us and yet again we had to argue to try to pay the right fare. In the end, he refused to lower the price and we refused to pay, so they stopped the bus until we hopped off! It was all quite dramatic and a little bit upsetting that no one stood up for us.

We ended up getting on the next bus that came through and having to pay the fare again. Needless to say, we were happy when we made it into Mexico!

10. KL accommodation mix up

This was the most recent bad travel experience. Some of you will remember that we flew Bangkok – KL – Manila last year and I accidentally booked our night round KL airport for the wrong night – so we turned up and not only did we not have a room but the hotel was fully booked and we had a hard time finding somewhere else that wasn’t booked.

This may not seem like a huge deal but after a long day with a baby and a two year old, driving round in a taxi in the dark to yet another hotel that was full was hugely stressful. It was not one of my finest moments as a travel planner and not one I am likely to forget any time soon. I check any booking x 1000 now (compared to the x 100 I did before this happened!). It was right up there with the other silly mistake I have made – when I booked two seats on a pricey plane trip from French Guiana to Brazil – both in my name instead of one in J’s name!

There you have it – my top ten worst travel experiences. They were all bad and a couple were downright terrifying, but really, given just how much I have travelled, there is really not that much that has gone terribly wrong. I have done a fair bit of travel as a solo young female too. Perhaps something to consider if you are someone who is a bit scared to get out there and see the world 🙂

You can also read some other travel bloggers worst travel experiences .

What was your worst travel experience?

Want to learn more?

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engraving of men being led by ox in snow

These are the worst trips in the world

Here are 13 thrilling real-life stories of journeys gone wrong.

Seeking adventure or escape wasn’t without peril even before the coronavirus pandemic stilled travel. Some trips don’t go as planned in dramatic ways. Food poisoning pauses your sushi-tasting tour of Tokyo . A trip on the trail in Yellowstone results in a broken arm. A pickpocket complicates your museum visits in Paris .

But other times real disaster strikes—especially for adventure travelers and expeditioners. From the summit of Everest to the jungles of the Amazon , from harsh elements to deadly insects, the world can be a perilous place.

One way to avoid trips gone bad is to read about them from the safety of your armchair. Here are some of our favorite cautionary tales.

Waylaid by water

In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette (2014), by Hampton Sides. With the pacing of a thriller writer and a historian’s attention to detail, Sides recounts the twisting, turning story of a late 19th-century polar expedition-gone-wrong . Bad luck—and a faulty theory about warm arctic seas—strands the crew literally on thin ice, where the challenges (snow blindness, polar bears, starvation) are as compelling as the characters.

Kon Tiki , (1948), by Thor Heyerdahl. In 1947, Norwegian writer/adventurer Heyerdahl and five companions successfully sailed a primitive wood and hemp raft from Peru to Polynesia. But the 4,300-mile, 101-day journey came with perils including shark encounters, men overboard, and a final crash into a coral reef. Though Heyerdahl’s prose and views seem a bit dated today, it’s still a ripping yarn of adventure and misadventure on the high seas.

Madhouse at the End of the Earth (2021), by Julian Sancton. In 1897, Adrien de Gerlache set sail aboard the Belgica, chasing dreams of being the first to reach the magnetic South Pole . After a number of setbacks, de Gerlache stubbornly presses on, trapping the ship in the frozen Bellingshausen Sea. Facing months of darkness, illness, and madness, crewmembers Frederick Cook and Roald Amundsen hatch a risky escape plan. Today, the isolation endured by the Belgica crew is studied by NASA scientists for future missions to Mars.

The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey (2005), by Candice Millard. A “delightful holiday,” thought Teddy Roosevelt about his upcoming trip to chart the Rio da Dúvida, a tributary of the Amazon River. But the 1913–1914 expedition, led by renowned Brazilian explorer Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon , was doomed from the start. Three men and half the pack animals die; Roosevelt nearly succumbs to malaria; his son Kermit narrowly escapes drowning. Flesh-eating piranhas, poisonous snakes, and a murder add to the epic misadventure that ultimately changed the map of Brazil .

( Meet the fearless women taking on the ‘Everest of the seas.’ )

Terrors on terra firma

Bad Tourist: Misadventures in Love and Travel (2020), by Suzanne Roberts. In this collection of essays, Roberts recounts her adventures while traveling mostly solo to 15 countries. Along the way she navigates mishaps both large and small, from a dangerous mudslide in Peru to a tricky romantic entanglement in Greece . Each experience offers a chance to probe her inner “bad tourist,” as she wrestles with issues of privilege, cultural blind spots, and her own insecurities on a journey to self-discovery.

Death in Yellowstone: Accidents and Foolhardiness in the First National Park (Second edition, 2014), by Lee H. Whittlesey. “The park is not Disneyland, Rocky Mountain version,” says Whittlesey, a former NPS ranger whose meticulously reported, droll book catalogs the numerous ways nature can kill you in this grand expanse in Wyoming and Montana . There are fewer bear attacks than you’d expect, but readers may find themselves newly terrified of Yellowstone’s hot springs (they can boil you alive!) and bison (fuzzy looking, but apt to charge you or gore you).

In Trouble Again: A Journey Between the Orinoco and the Amazon (1988), by Redmond O’Hanlon. “There are no leeches that go for you in the Amazon jungles,” notes O’Hanlon at the start of his four-month trek through the Venezuelan Amazon. But there are “amoebic and bacillary dysenteries, yellow and blackwater and dengue fevers, malaria, cholera, typhoid, rabies...plus one or two very special extras.” The author’s exhilarating expedition on uncharted rivers in a dugout canoe aims far—to reach beyond where 19th-century explorers went, to find a community of Yanomami peoples, and to survive encounters with all manner of deadly insects and animals.

The Wilderness Idiot: Lessons from an Accidental Adventurer (2019), by Ted Alvarez. “Just say yes” is the mantra for Alvarez, Backpacker magazine’s northwest editor. That often means the author will find himself in sticky situations, such as the time he spent chasing his clothes across a frozen tundra, naked. Hilarious stories like these break down any fear readers may have about venturing outside of their comfort zones. And that’s exactly what Alvarez is after in this humorous collection of the good trouble he gets into.

( Read about the boldest polar expedition of modern times .)

Mishaps in the mountains

Annapurna: A Woman’s Place (1980), by Arlene Blum. In 1978, Blum was part of the first all-female expedition to summit Annapurna 1 in the Himalayas , the world’s tenth-highest peak. The record-breaking accomplishment came at a high price—two women fell to their deaths. In this eye-opening account, Blum brings readers to Base Camp, as the women battle the ever-present threat of avalanches, freezing winds, and altitude sickness—all while changing the world’s perception of what women are capable of.

Dark Summit: The True Story of Everest’s Most Controversial Season (2008), by Nick Heil. Seasoned climber and former editor of Outside magazine, Heil focuses on the 2006 Mount Everest climbing season, when 11 people died—the deadliest season on record. Among the victims was David Sharp, who lay dying as 40 climbers trekked passed him. Another, Lincoln Hall, was left for dead, but was later found alive. With an investigative reporter’s precision and a mountaineer’s expertise, Heil delves into the two mens’ fates and the problems that arise as high-altitude climbing becomes commercialized.

Into Thin Air (1999), by Jon Krakauer. No story about Everest would be complete without Krakauer’s contribution. In 1996, while on assignment for Outside magazine, Krakauer summited the iconic peak. But that day, a sudden storm killed eight others. In this now classic story, Krakauer examines the events of that tragic day and attempts to come to terms with the emotional aftermath.

( These 10 books will take you on real-life adventures .)

More tales of travel terror

Stampede: Gold Fever and Disaster in the Klondike (2021), by Brian Castner. In 1896, when a Yukon River tributary was found to have veins of gold so thick they resembled cheese sandwiches, it set off the largest gold rush in Canadian history. Castner, known for mining history for colorful characters and rich detail in previous books like Disappointment River , follows ill-equipped wannabe prospectors and profiteers (including adventure writer Jack London ) as they suffer from scurvy, freeze, plunge to their deaths in icy crevices, and otherwise mostly fail to strike it rich.

Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Travel (2001), by Joshua Piven and David Borgenicht. It’s safe to say that the chances of encountering a runaway passenger train or an unconscious pilot while on an average vacation are slim. But as the authors assert, danger is lurking everywhere, and you can never be too safe. This edition in the popular Worst-Case Scenario series humorously breaks down all manner of sticky situations (however unlikely), based on advice from U.S. State Department officials, movie stunt people, and railroad engineers, among other experts.

Meet the Himalayan trekking guide reclaiming the mountains for women

Walk across the sky in the U.S.’s highest-elevation city

How to plan an epic road trip through the Canadian Rocky Mountains

How to plan a trip around the world

This thrilling Chilean trek is the world’s southernmost hike

Before you go hiking, read these life-saving tips from first responders

How to visit the Gila Wilderness

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The Worst Vacation Ever! — a Talking Points lesson plan for reading and speaking

This is a complete lesson plan that you can use in your English or ESL class today. You can use it for IELTS too.

Please let me know what you think in the comments below!

Table of Contents

The Worst Vacation Ever!

I knew this was going to be a terrible vacation as soon as we arrived at the hotel.

The travel agent told us that it was a brand-new hotel in a quiet part of the island. But when we arrived we found that it was not brand-new at all — the hotel was not even finished.

There were construction workers still building parts of the hotel!

But the manager assured us that our stay would be fine. In fact, he told us we would have a great stay.

We got to our room and it didn’t seem too bad. Everything looked like a normal good quality hotel room.

Then we looked in the bathroom. There was no shower. Only a washbasin and a toilet.

I asked the manager how we would take a shower and he just shrugged and said that we could use the showers in the spa. My wife asked what time the spa opened every day and he said 10:00am.

At that point, we had had enough, so I said to my wife that we would leave immediately. I didn’t say another word, just took hold of our luggage trolley and went to leave the room.

Then the manager stopped me. He was very apologetic about it. That week was one of the busiest times on the island. Apparently, there was a wine festival that had just started the day we arrived.

Every hotel is fully booked, said the manager. I can’t let you leave. You will have nowhere to sleep for the night.

My wife raised her hands to the ceiling and rolled her eyes.

I swore out loud.

The manager told us he would do everything he could to make it up to us. Then he left.

I lay down on the bed and kicked off my shoes. My wife unpacked our things and put them in the wardrobe. As she was doing that, she let out a scream.

I jumped to my feet and she leapt onto the bed. She was pointing at something in the wardrobe. I looked inside and I saw a huge dead rat. It looked like it had been dead for several days.

I was furious. I told my wife that we would go downstairs and tell someone on the front desk to change our room. And then hopefully go to the bar and get a stiff drink.

We left our room and went to the lifts. It was then that we saw a sign that said only one of the lifts was in operation. The other one was being repaired.

Things were just getting worse and worse!

Eventually, we got downstairs and I told the front desk about the dead rat but they said they couldn’t change our room as they didn’t have any other rooms available.

At that point, I didn’t need just one drink — I needed three or four.

I asked them where the bar was and they pointed to a door. Above the door was a sign that said The Lounge Bar.

We went in and there was no one around. No customers and certainly no barman.

I just shook my head. My wife started to cry.

Essential Vocabulary

travel agent	brand-new	construction workers
washbasin	shrugged	spa
at that point	had enough	immediately
luggage trolley	apologetic	wine festival
fully booked	raised her hands	rolled her eyes
ceiling	swore out loud	make it up
kicked off	unpacked	wardrobe
let out	leapt	pointing
furious	a stiff drink	lift
sign	in operation	repaired
available	barman	shook my head

Write down all the words and phrases in your vocabulary notebook. Look in your dictionary and find the meaning of each word. Write the definition next to each word.

Then make up your own sentences using each word or phrase.

For example:

Notebook — a small book with pages of blank paper that students use to make notes when

“ I left my notebook at home so I was unable to make any notes in my English class.”

Reading Comprehension Questions

When did Mike know that it was going to be a terrible vacation?

Is the hotel new or old? Is the hotel in a noisy or quiet location?

How did Mike know the hotel was still being built?

What was the problem with the bathroom?

What alternative did the manager offer as a bathroom? What time did it open?

Why did the manager stop Mike from leaving the hotel?

What did Sylvie find in the wardrobe?

Why did Mike want a drink after seeing what was in the wardrobe?

Why did Mike and Sylvie go downstairs?

What was the problem with the lift?

What was the name of the bar?

Why couldn’t Mike get a drink?

Discussion Questions

Why does Mike and Sylvie’s hotel have all these problems? Is this acceptable do you think?

Should the hotel offer them an alternative? Or compensation?

How did the dead rat arrive in the wardrobe do you think?

What did Mike mean by wanting a ‘stiff drink’?

If you were in this situation, what would you do? Talk about all the steps you would take.

Have you had a ‘vacation from hell’? What was it like?

What is the worst hotel you have ever stayed in? What about the best?

How can we check the quality of the hotel before going there? Provide details in your answers.

What are the ten most popular complaints that hotels receive do you think?

Have you ever lost your luggage on a vacation? What happened? How did you get your luggage back?

Have you ever lost your passport or a large sum of money while on vacation? What happened? Did you recover the lost items?

A Vacation From Hell!

Work on your own or in small groups.

You have to make up a story similar to Mike and Sylvie’s experience in the story above.

Try to make your story as crazy as possible!

Use your imagination and think of all the terrible things that could happen when you go on vacation.

When you are ready, tell your story to all the class.

Offering Help Using ‘Will’

If someone asks us for help – or tells us of a problem that they have – we often use the word ‘will’ to explain the things we want to do to help them.

For example, maybe a guest has arrived in a hotel and they tell the front desk that the airline has lost their luggage.

They don’t know what to do.

And the front desk might say:

I will call the airline and ask them what they can do to find your luggage. Then I will give them your flight number and your name and boarding pass details. After that, I will call the airport security and see if they know anything.

Once the airline or airport give me any information, I will call you and let you know what they said.

In this exercise, pretend you are working on the front desk in a hotel. Many guests have some problems today and need your help.

Using the word ‘will’ explain to them what you plan to do and how you can help them.

Look at all these guests’ problems below and prepare things to say.

Our room is too small! We booked a room for three people.
We are hungry but the restaurant is closed.
Last night, some workers were repairing something on our floor and made too much noise.
We went to the beach but it was really dirty! Lots of trash and litter all over the sand.
We got sunburned lying on the beach because there were no sun umbrellas available.
We tried to make some coffee in our room this morning but the kettle was broken
We tried to brush our teeth this morning but there was no toothpaste
Last night we tried to sleep but the bed was too cold
We wanted to watch a movie last night in our room but we didn’t know how to use the TV remote
The air-con in our room is set to hot and it makes us uncomfortable

This is a role play exercise using the exercise above.

There are two main people in this role play:

1. You are working on the front desk of a five-star hotel. The hotel is very busy but sometimes the guests complain about the smallest things.

It is your job to deal with these guests and ensure they are happy at all times.

Many guests approach you with complaints. You must help them.

2. You are a guest in the hotel. You have a complaint using one of the examples in the exercise above.

Express how unhappy you are to the front desk. Make sure you get complete satisfaction from the staff as you are a high-paying guest in a top hotel.

One student can be the front desk while the others take on the role of hotel guests. Each hotel guest has to express a complaint to the front desk.

You can change the student who is at the front desk. Let other students take on this role too.

You are Mike from the reading exercise at the beginning of the lesson. You have just got back home with your wife and you have had the worst experience in the hotel.

Write to the travel agent company and express how angry you are with their service.

Go through all the complaints and things that went wrong one by one.

In the end, ask the hotel what they will do about it. And see if you can get some compensation.

What did you think of this lesson plan? Was it useful for you class?

Let me know in the comments below!

Why not download this full lesson plan for free today? Just click the link below!

You can also join my mailing list. I will send you lots more free lesson plans!

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2 thoughts on “the worst vacation ever — a talking points lesson plan for reading and speaking”.

Hi David, this was a very funny story and I thought the activities that went with it were great. They stimulate creativity and fun for the student. More lessons should be like this, because students can get emotionally involved which enables better learning.

Thank Leona! I’m glad you liked this lesson plan.

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Roaming Around the World

Travel Guides, Tips, and Tales

Our Top 20 Worst Travel Experiences: A Year in Review

January 9, 2015 By John Widmer 39 Comments

The end of 2014 also marked the end of our first full year of travel. So we recently posted about our absolute favorite experiences from this past year roaming around the world.

But life on the road isn’t all gumdrops and unicorns. We certainly incurred our share of misfortunes too. Some of these tales are humorous takes from a few of our more calamitous situations, while others are downright terrifying.

But even with these ill-fated circumstances, there’s always a bright side. And I’m a firm believer that’s there’s always a lesson to be learned from others’ misfortunes. So maybe one of these travel mishaps may one-day help you avoid a similar situation. If nothing else, come laugh at us and our Top 20 Misadventures from the past year, which are in chronological order from when they occurred.

1) Breaking a Rental Car in the Yucatan (Mexico)

Ok, well this sign was altered a bit (for laughs) but you get the idea.

Driving across the Yucatan using rural back roads sounded like an awesome adventure early in our big round the world trip. But we were nowhere near prepared for the bad conditions of these dirt roads and the severe lack of signage. It’s a wonder we were able to navigate it with a simple pocket compass and a little luck. But what was even more surprising was that we got the car back in one piece (well, sort of).

After going over so many vicious potholes that were more like pot-craters and speed bumps known as “topes” that seemed to just spring up out of no where, the car’s undercarriage was completely wrecked and hanging on by a thread. I got my hands dirty and reattached it countless times. It’s a miracle the car was even still running. I was so nervous that the agency was going to bill us horribly for the damages incurred. But when we returned the car, they signed off on it and we made a speedy exit. I don’t feel dishonest about doing that either, because I’m fairly certain that the undercarriage was already in bad shape when I got the car.

Silver lining :

We returned the rental car and weren’t charged any damages!

Lessons learned:

Consider sticking to the main roads in the Yucatan when possible.
A little patch-up work and a friendly smile can go a long way when returning a beat-up rental car.

2) Becoming Homeless in Tulum (Mexico)

January in Tulum is high season and accommodation can get booked solid. So we were sure to secure a room in advance. Yet the day before we were arriving, we received an email from the owner apologizing that he overbooked the place and informing us we had no room. That pissed me off but I was able to find somewhere else to stay and booked it immediately.

Then our bus to Tulum got sold out. So we had to take a late bus, arriving at about 11pm. We go to check in to our hotel and no one was around. We rang doorbells, called office/cell numbers, and yelled… but nothing. After walking past one “no vacancy” sign after another, we were at a complete loss for what to do next. It was now the middle of the night and we were officially homeless in Tulum, Mexico .

We finally decided to go to original place we had booked, who actually happened to make room for us after all. But although we booked a private room, the next morning we discovered we were sharing this room with a family of scorpions! Ahhh!

Silver linings:

Hotels.com refunded our stay-that-never-was and gave us a generous $100 credit for our troubles!
We ended up switching to a scorpion-free hotel, which we really liked.
Make bus reservations in advance during high season in Mexico.
Reserving through third-party booking sites do have benefits.
During high season, have backup plans for where to stay.

3) Becoming Deaf in Belize

Heather first learned to dive when we were in Caye Caulker , Belize. During this time there was a cold going around the islands and Heather caught it. But it wasn’t very severe, so no need to stop our scuba diving pursuits. Yet when getting to depths, depressurizing (clearing) her ears was proving problematic. It just wasn’t working. She fought through the pain and dealt with it.

Over the next few days I noticed she wasn’t hearing half the things I was saying. I’m used to her ignoring me from time to time, but it was getting beyond that. Her ears never really unclogged and she was partially deaf. We later found out that you really shouldn’t dive with a head cold, as it completely screws with your ears.

She still managed to successfully complete the course and get her certification.
A doctor prescribed her some eardrops and medicine that cleared up the issue in a few days.
Hearing is fully restored.

Lesson learned:

Don’t dive with a head cold.

4) The Sunrise that Never Was (Guatemala)

The guidebooks raved on about how amazing the Tikal sunrise is. So much so that, as non-morning people, we decided it would be worth waking up at 4:00am to catch the spectacle. We trekked into the Guatemalan jungle and hiked to the top of one of the highest pyramids. Our efforts were rewarded with a sea of fog.

Silver lining:

After the sunrise, we truly were rewarded by seeing lots of animals who are otherwise inactive during the day.

Lessons learned:

Sunrises aren’t always worth waking up early for.
Check the forecasts.

5) Dangling Off a Cliff on Central America’s Highest Peak (Guatemala)

When we noticed that Central America’s highest point was near our planned route through Guatemala, we couldn’t refuse the challenge, so we decided to attempt the summit of Volcan Tajumulco . But we weren’t properly acclimatized and suffered horrible altitude sickness. And being only about a month or so into our trip, it probably didn’t help that we were still a bit out of shape.

But after a sleepless night, camping out under the summit in the absolute freezing cold, we woke up super early to make the final ascent and catch the sunrise. But because we were slower than the rest of the pack, we were led by the official guide’s 7-year old nephew. And this lad took us climbing up the wrong peak, which left us clinging on to the side of the mountain for our lives. Its probably a good thing it was pitch black and couldn’t see what was down below.

We did eventially reach the true summit and the views were spectacular.
Be sure to acclimatize before pursuing tall summits like this.

6) That Nasty Skin Infection (Guatemala)

Ewwwwwwww!!!

Back in Guatemala, what looked like a small bug bite on my leg started looking worse and worse. Next thing I knew a mass nearly the size of my fist was building up and I was walking with a limp. I was long overdue for a doctor visit. I finally went and the doc bandaged me up good, gave me a strict dose of antibiotics, and ordered me to stay off my leg. It took nearly a month to fully heal.

Then when we got to Panama, it happened again – on my other leg! WTF! How is that even possible? Thoughts started swirling that maybe this is something other than an infected bug bite but the Panama doctor gave it the same diagnosis as my first skin infection in Guatemala , and I was soon on another antibiotic regiment, which also eventually cured things up.

Doctor visits in Guatemala and Panama are super inexpensive – I only paid $5 USD in Panama!
Seek medical attention early before things worsen.

7) The Longest Bus Ride Ever (El Salvador)

Getting from Antigua, Guatemala to our next destination in Leon, Nicaragua proved to be no easy task. You must cross through two countries – El Salvador and Honduras – and it takes about 13 full hours. But we found a shuttle bus that offers this transfer, so we got up at 3am to begin our long day of travel down Central America. We first went to a beach in El Salvador to pick up some more passengers but ended up stopping here for hours to fix a mechanical issue. No problem, the beach was really nice.

But a few hours later, we were broken down again, this time at a gas station in the middle of nowhere. No one knew how long it was going to take. We figured maybe another an hour two. We chit-chatted with fellow disgruntled passengers, ate gas station food, and walked around the rest stop like lab rats. It was a full eight hours later when a backup van finally arrived to take us the rest of the way. There are horror stories about the dangers of driving through Honduras at night, which was now inevitable, adding to our worries.

Very sleep deprived, we finally got in to Leon almost exactly 24 hours from when we left, about 12 hours later than expected. We went right to sleep. But to add insult to injury, an hour later, an earthquake abruptly woke us up!

We got to see the beautiful Pacific Coast in El Salvador.
We got to fill up on delicious El Salvadorian papusas.
Make the most of a shitty situation.

8) A Trifecta of Mishaps from Panama to Colombia

We blew chunks for days, got threatened by an island native, and I managed to loose my wedding ring. What a trip! Looks like I’ll need to break down each of these mishaps…

8a) A Sea of Sickness (Panama to Colombia)

We were about to set sail from Panama to Colombia across the Caribbean Sea and were advised to take seasickness medicine. I rarely ever get seasick so declined to do so. Once on the small sailboat, a most delicious coq a vin was somehow whipped up in the cubicle-sized kitchen. I stuffed myself with seconds, if only to lap up the wonderful sauce alone. And although I wasn’t supposed to be drinking on the antibiotics to treat my nasty skin infection, I decided to give in to the festive atmosphere and choke down some nasty Panamanian Guinness as we said “bon voyage” to mainland Panama. This was all a recipe for disaster.

Our cabin pre-spewing

I was the first to blow. And things only got worse as the sailboat tipped to what seemed like 90-degree angles and it all made for a completely sleepless night unsuccessfully trying not to fall out of our bed in between vomit sessions. It was just awful. We had another 36 hours of this on the back-end of our trip.

Our fantastic experience visiting the beautiful San Blas Islands in calm waters, outweighed the rough nauseating nights during the rest of the voyage.
We all dosed up on plenty of sea-sickness medication on the latter rough nights which kept spewing to a minimum.
For rough seas on a small boat, just take the damn seasickness pills.
Don’t overindulge.
While Guinness made in some countries (like Belize) is great, it can still be pretty awful in others.

8b) Being Threatened at Knifepoint by a Drunken “Pirate” in the Caribbean

While sailing through the remote San Blas islands on our way to Panama, we stopped at a group of islands known as Coco Bandera, which were the most gorgeous islands of our voyage. We swam out from the sailboat to one of the tiny islands, which was perhaps less than 100 meters wide and long, and spotted with palm trees.

It was here that we ran into an indigenous Kuna man who had motored his little wooden boat to the island so he could chop down some coconuts with his machete. Upon locking eyes, I greeted him with a smile but he just gave me a stern look and continuously yelled “Mi isla!” (My island). Then he demanded that we pay him a $2 entrance for being on the island. I told him in Spanish that his “island was very pretty, but I do not have any money with me.” He replied that if we didn’t pay him, he would have our heads. After taking another glance at that machete, I just apologized and slowly backed into ocean.

This was NOT the culprit. (This was a very nice Kuna we met on another island.)

After a fast swim to the sailboat, this crazed Kuna motored over to it. He was even ballsy enough to demand to our Captain that everyone on the boat must pay him $2. Much shouting back & forth ensued between him and the Captain for the next 10 minutes, but he finally left and started harassing the few other boats in the harbor. Apparently he was completely drunk and acting all out of sorts. This was not reflective of all the other most pleasant experiences we had with the Kuna people who call these islands home.

We didn’t pay his made-up fee and still left with our heads intact on our bodies.

Lessons learned :

If there’s ever a weapon present during a heated conflict, get the hell out of there!
Don’t bother arguing with a drunk person.

8c) Oops! Losing My Wedding Ring (Panama to Colombia)

During this same sailing trip from Panama to Colombia , we stopped occasionally to snorkel the beautiful reefs around the San Blas islands. By this point in our trip I had lost a little weight and was afraid my ring may slip off in the water, so I decided to store it on a shelf in our cabin, for safekeeping.

But days later when I went to put it back on, it was missing. I looked closely at the shelf and noticed there was a small hole, just big enough for a ring to slip through. In all the rocking in the rough seas, I’m certain that is exactly what happened. I tested the theory with a coin and could here it drop all the way to the hull of the sailboat. The captain explained there was no way to access the area unless the boat was put in dry dock and several days of work was done to pull off the panels. So to this day, my wedding ring still sits rocking back and forth on the Mintaka sailboat.

Our travel insurance fully reimbursed us for this loss and I was able to replace it with the exact same ring.
Be careful about where you leave valuables.
Travel insurance can be a very wise investment for international trips.

9) Getting Threatened with Cobras (Morocco)

The $80.00 photo with a cobra

When in Marrakesh, a quintessential tourist experience is to go down to the Jemaa el Fna square and have your picture taken with the cobras and snake charmers. We just couldn’t resist this unique opportunity in Morocco, so we went to the square and I took Heather’s picture with the snakes. Its all tip based, and the snake charmers were nice and fun, so I went to give him a few bucks, which I thought was pretty generous tip, considering wages in Morocco. His demeanor quickly changed and he wouldn’t take my cash. He then explained to me that he charges about $80 USD to take pictures with his snakes. WTF!? I would never pay that much for a couple of mediocre snake pictures taken with my own camera.

After I adamantly refused, he said it would be okay if I paid about $50. “Sorry, still – no way I’m paying anything even close to that!” What a scam. This is basically robbery! The back and forth went on for about ten minutes, voices got louder, and he finally started threatening me by putting the cobras in my face! Yikes! I finally just threw the couple of dollars I initially offered him in his hat on the ground and we quickly scurried off without looking back.

We got our quintessential snake photos.
When dealing with street performers anywhere, always determine a price before taking pictures. (Rookie mistake.)

10) Getting Blasted by A Freak Sandstorm in the Sahara (Morocco)

Sandstorm in the Sahara desert in Morocco

Riding camels through the Sahara desert was a bucket list experience that we were super excited to tick off. But being in the heat of summer, we would have to patiently wait until the early evening to leave the town of Merzouga, which lies on the edge of the vast desert. We were all packed. Our camels were there. Our guide had arrived. It was finally time to go on our three-day overnight trek. Yet nearly a half hour past our scheduled departure time, we were still waiting at the tour organizer’s riad. Growing impatient, I finally asked the tour organizer what the hold-up was and he calmly explained to me that a sandstorm was approaching. A sandstorm? I went to the rooftop terrace of the riad and could see a cloud of darkness in the distance getting closer and closer. I helped the owner tie down some patio furniture and then it hit!

It started with a blast of warm air. Strong winds whipped furiously through the town and rivers of sand began to flow through the barren streets. I tried to stay atop the terrace to witness this spectacle but after inhaling mouthful after mouthful of sand, I decided it would be wiser to seek shelter. The sandstorm raged on. Finally our guide signaled for us to go and outfitted us with scarves to keep the sand out of our ears, noses, and mouths.

The sandstorm was still blowing full force yet we hopped on our camels and off we went into the desert as the murky sunlight began to fade away behind a blanket of sand. We rode on and watched as some dunes dwindled, while others were being built up. The landscape was being shapeshifted right before our eyes. Our Berber guide miraculously navigated us to camp, where we immediately ducked into tents to escape the horrible lashings we’d been receiving.

Silver linings :

When we awoke the next day, the storm was over.
The storm had created fresh dunes to go sandboarding down!
If horrendous weather strikes, try to marvel at the unique spectacle rather than let it ruin your day.

11) Getting Attacked by Barbary Apes (Morocco)

Just hanging out with my monkey friends

We were so excited at the chance of seeing the Barbary Apes of Morocco’s Cedar Forests and were just hoping to get a glimpse or two of these wild animals. So we were thrilled to see dozens of them who were all fearless in getting nice and close to us. There were some vendors selling peanuts to feed them, but that just didn’t seem right.

After admiring them, taking pictures, and even playing with them a bit; it was time to have a picnic lunch. But these monkeys had other plans for our food and decided that it would be their lunch instead. Next thing you know they had attacked us stealing all of our food. How rude! We did manage to retain a canister of Pringles. But when we walked about a mile away to pop the top, out of nowhere, they reappeared and snagged our chips too!

Hanging out with these primates was still pretty awesome.
Don’t feed the wildlife, as it encourages bad behavior.

12) Learning Why Not To Go To the “Good View” (Spain)

The beaches of Cabo de Gata were among our favorite and prettiest beaches we’ve been to so far. The clear waters were incredible and I feel like this remote region is one Spain’s best-kept secrets.

Boat and swimmer floating in the super clear ocean water in Cabo del Gata

But its no secret to nudists, as they were everywhere. Sure, there really were some beautiful women but there was also everyone else. Perhaps what gave us the biggest laughs were the two hippy guys who were very aggressively playing paddleball with one another. (You’ll have to use your imagination for that visual.)

There are many scenic cliffside trails which wind their way through the craggy coast. While exploring, I came across a sign, which read “Buena Vista” (Good View) and an arrow. So I followed the arrow, which led me to a 600-pound man, spread-eagle, who simply smiled at me. This was not a Buena Vista at all.

While that wasn’t a particularly good view, everywhere else in this area certainly was.
Don’t be overly trusting of signs.

13) Attempting to Drive Manual Transmission Through Spain

Learning to drive a manual transmission in Spain

Renting a car in Europe can sometimes be challenging for Americans, since many of us are accustomed to driving automatic vehicles. In fact, I’ve never driven a car with a stick-shift in my entire life. Throughout Europe it can be nearly impossible to find automatics and if you do, you’ll end up paying about ten times the price of manual. To get to some of the far reaches of Spain, a rental car was necessary, and a manual was our only option. So I figured, “how hard could it be?”

It was time for me to learn how to do this. So when visiting friends in Cabo del Gata, I got a brief 15-minute lesson using their rental car. A week or two later, I watched a quick Youtube video on “how to drive a manual” and was off to the rental car agency.

I was horrible. I definitely stalled out more than a few times and felt bad for anyone driving within 100 feet of me. Spain was probably not the best place for me to learn a new driving skill. Unfamiliar roads, signs in Spanish, endless roundabouts, and lots of hills make for a recipe for disaster. The absolute worst was approaching red lights while going uphill. My palms would sweat at the stoplight as I rehearsed in my head putting the car into gear once the light changed. Instead I’d roll back and/or stall, nearly smashing the unfortunate car behind me. I still get panic attacks just thinking about it.

I found Spanish drivers to be very courteous drivers, which helped my cause.
I never hit anyone.
I can now drive manual (err, sort of).
Stay on flat roads when first learning to drive stick.

14) Escaping to Ukraine with No Place to Stay

We never considered visiting Ukraine , but when we found ourselves in Poland with only a few days left on our Schengen visa, it was the closest non-Schengen country nearby. So we thought it might be an interesting place to escape to and we’d work out the logistics once there. With all the negative press recently facing the country, surely there would be an overabundance of accommodation available.

Overnight train to Lviv

After a rough overnight train ride being constantly awoken by customs officials, we arrived to Lviv early in the morning. But our search for a hotel came up empty. Everywhere was actually completely full, booked solid. How could this be? Well, it was was Ukraine’s independence day and patriotic Ukrainians around the country had flocked to Lviv to celebrate. There were no vacant Airbnb apartment rentals, hotels were booked solid, and we couldn’t even find an empty bed in a hostel. We were starting to consider last-resort options like sleeping on a train station bench.

We then thankfully managed to find a strange pseudo-resort town named Truskavets, located a few hours away and known for its healing spring water, that happened to have a few rooms available. So we quickly booked one and hopped on bus to discover this off-the-beaten-path destination.

Truskavets turned out to be a very interesting side-trip that gave us an opportunity to visit an area we would have never considered.

Lesson learned:

Research when each country’s holidays are and plan accordingly.

15) Getting Too Drunk in Ukraine and the Worst Hangover Ever

It was our last night in Ukraine and we had an early bus ride the next day. So we decided to go out for a few beers to celebrate and call it an early night. We ducked into a pub with some live music and were eventually invited to a table of Ukrainians our age, who were quite insistent on sharing their multiple bottles of vodka with us. Shot after, after shot, after shot, after shot. These bottles were seemingly endless and it felt rude to refuse their generosity, so we continued to oblige. I think Heather and I probably finished off an entire bottle’s worth ourselves during the hour period we sat with them, and that was after a good number of beers earlier in the evening.

Next thing you know, Heather is dancing with strangers and I can barely see straight. Yup, it was definitely time to form an exit strategy before those last few shots caught up to my brain. I grabbed Heather and we hurried out of the pub, which I recalled was right next to our hotel. Except, in this extremely drunken state, I couldn’t seem to locate it. Just then our phone died, so Google Maps wasn’t going to help us either. I tried to ask some taxi drivers but between the harsh language barrier and my slurred speech, it was going nowhere. Meanwhile, Heather sat in a drunken stupor with a now upset stomach.

Finally a cab driver was willing to help us and took us on a 10-minute drive across town. “Well this doesn’t seem right, but we’ll see where it goes.” He took us to a hotel that definitely wasn’t ours and I finally had the epiphany to show the night manager our room key. She explained to the taxi driver where to take us. We were thankfully taken back to the doorstep of our hotel which turned out to be about a half block away from where the cab had picked us up. SMH.

Needless to say, we missed our bus and suffered dearly the next day. It was honestly one of the worst hangovers of our lives. Vodka will never be the same again.

Don’t feel bad about refusing a shot, particularly if it’s the seventeenth one.
Its wise to travel with a backup phone battery.
Know when to leave.
Before we were in a drunken stupor, it was a really fun night with new Ukrainian friends.
The fare of our very round-about taxi ride still only came out to about $2 total.

16) A Rumble in My Tummy in Transylvania (Romania)

Biking through the Transylvanian countryside past the UNESCO-listed fortified churches was a wonderful experience. That is, until we were cycling through farmland, miles away from the nearest town and my stomach began to churn.

Biking through the countryside in Romania

I only had a matter of minutes before I was about to explode. This was farmland and there were no trees to hide behind to relieve myself. So I found a haystack which would have to make do so I could do my business. Flies and other insects were instantly attracted. Being in Transylvania, I wondered if I Dracula had cursed me.

I won’t go into much further graphic detail, but will just say this eruption was an extremely uncomfortable experience, which went on for nearly an hour. I did have a single lone napkin in my pocket, thankfully leftover from lunch, to attempt to clean myself with. Yuck. Luckily my stomach settled enough to ride back into town and things got better from there.

Silver lining:

This stomach bug was very short lived and I was fine by the next day.
Whenever doing any outdoor recreation, always be prepared with some toilet paper, just in case.

17) Getting Caught in Deadly ISIS Riots (Turkey)

During our visit to Turkey, tensions with the ISIS/ISIL activity in neighboring Syria were beginning to flair up. Yet everything in Turkey still remained safe. One day in the town of Antalya, we were getting ready to take a trolley to the bus station, but the trolley wasn’t arriving. I attempted to ask someone official-looking at the tram stop, and he just uttered something about “riots.” I thought I may have heard him wrong, as it was a nice and peaceful day in the seaside town.

But next thing you know there was a stampede of people heading right for us. Business owners began to shutter their shops as protesters rushed through. Smoke and fire soon filled the streets. Riot police soon followed.

I nervously asked someone what was going on and was explained that it was a protest for ISIS. I know ISIS has no mercy, so we quickly found a local bus to hop on and escape this tense situation. I later found out that the protest was actually Turkish youth protesting against their country for not doing enough to combat ISIS. Protests went on across the country that day, and although this was not in support of ISIS, many of these riots were violent and sadly caused dozens of people to loose their lives.

Silver linings:

We made it to the bus station without further incident.
No deaths or major injuries were reported where we were in Antalya.
Always stay abreast of evolving political situations.
If violence erupts, leave immediately.

18) The Missed Ferry (Turkey)

We only had six very short days using ferries to explore the vast Greek Islands between Turkey and Athens. We devised a carefully planned out itinerary to make the most of our time. From Fethiye, Turkey there’s only one ferry leaving each morning, so we booked our tickets and arranged to arrive early. We showed up a full 30 minutes early but the ferry wasn’t there. Actually no one was. We went to the tour agency we booked the ticket with and discovered that the ferry actually decided to leave early !

With that, we kissed goodbye to one of our few days in the Greek Islands. It actually screwed up our entire itinerary, since each day relied on subsequent ferry connections and pre-booked hotels. We’d heard that Greek ferries are notorious for being late but never heard of them leaving early! We can now confirm to you that it does, in fact, also happen.

We had an enjoyable extra day in Turkey.
We worked out a new itinerary and were able to cancel hotel reservations.
We weren’t charged for the missed ferry tickets.
When catching an international ferry, consider arriving extra, extra, extra early.
Be flexible to replan when travel hiccups occur.

19) Getting Pickpocketed in Athens (Greece)

We were on a packed subway in Athens. Everyone was cramped, standing shoulder to shoulder. One man kept poking me in the ribcage, perhaps signaling me to scoot over. I tried to scoot but he kept poking me. It was becoming really annoying and was all I could think about. It was at that exact moment that I recalled some advice that an Argentinian friend had gave me if ever visiting her home country. She had explained that the pickpockets would poke you in an area away from your wallet, thereby distracting you from lifting your wallet.

I immediately reached down for my wallet but the thief’s hand had just grabbed it. Yet, I managed to smack it right out of the criminal’s hand and actually got it back! This happened right at our stop, so I quickly exited the subway car. At that moment an unfortunate passenger who was also getting off had realized his wallet had been lifted.

I thwarted the thief and was able to keep my wallet!
Never ignore good travel advice, particularly when it comes to your safety.
Always hold on to your belongings in crowded situations.

20) Merry Christmas To Us: A Smashed Camera (Chile)

We were spending the holidays in Santiago, Chile and so decided to take a nice Christmas picture to mark the occasion. The photo was snapped just seconds before the fateful moment when the camera was smashed to the ground.

You see, we went up to the rooftop patio of our apartment building to take the shot. We set up a tripod that we had placed on a bench to give it the little more height it needed for the picture. We set the autotimer and then got into position. The picture snapped just before a gust of wind came, sending the camera on a forceful 7-foot fall smack down into the concrete below. It was a horrible site.

We were able to get the camera repaired and it should be covered by our travel insurance.
Be careful using tripods in windy situations.
Travel insurance is worthwhile for international trips.

Look on the Bright Side!

Even with these misfortunes, we wouldn’t trade in this entire experience for anything. You just have to take the bad with the good. And we find that the “bad” makes the “good” all that much better.

And if this is the worst of our past year in travel, I’d say we’re doing A-Okay.

Now for a more uplifting and inspirational review of our past year, be sure to also check out our Top 20 Favorite Travel Experiences from the past year!

Our Top 20 Favorite Travel Experiences from 2014!

April 16, 2019 at 1:44 PM

Better Homeless in Hawaii For spring break this year we rented a VRBO suite in Hawaii. Two days before arriving we were told that the pool was out of service – this was our major search criteria. Over the first two days we discovered that not only was it out of service it was under full repair with jackhammering right outside our window. We had to move from this rental from hell. VRBO has acknowledged the misrepresentation but has not refunded the rental pinning that on the owner. Any idea what we can do to pressure them to refund us?

April 18, 2019 at 4:46 PM

Yikes, that’s pretty bad. What a nightmare! We usually do home rentals from Airbnb, so not really familiar with VRBO’s policies. It definitely sounds like you’re entitled to a refund, at least for the nights you didn’t stay, if not a full refund. Even if VRBO is putting that onto the owner, I’d seek help from VRBO to help mediate this dispute. Best of luck!

January 17, 2016 at 11:54 PM

I couldn’t stop laughing at #15 and especially the photo of Heather. 😀

January 18, 2016 at 4:19 PM

Haha! Oh, Cairo, what a crazy, crazy place! The chocolate covered picture of Heather? I laughed so hard when that happened. She got chocolate all over her face and then she immediately did it two more times! Lol, I suppose that’s what no sleep + a few strong Belgian beers will do to someone.

May 28, 2015 at 11:28 AM

I loved your post! It’s great that you can take a bad situation and find the good in it. I find some travel mishaps so funny (afterward) that I actually start wishing more things would go wrong. Happy everything turned out all right!

May 31, 2015 at 11:55 PM

Thanks Becky! We try to find the good in things and we hope others are able to learn from some of our mistakes. Everything has turned out alright for the most part. Even with all the wacky mishaps, we still decided to go for a second year of travels!

January 24, 2015 at 6:10 PM

This post is full of gems. I remember hearing about the cobra incident, but the drunken man proclaiming his island is beyond hilarious/ terrifying. Happy travels!

January 25, 2015 at 8:56 PM

Haha – thanks Bonnie! Yeah, we definitely froze up for a bit with the drunken Kuna man wielding a machete. That guy was nuts!

January 14, 2015 at 4:09 PM

This is a great post.

Looks like Guatemala was pretty sucky for you. I returned a while back and had a great time. Went to Tikal at sunrise and abandoned a shitty tour. Didn’t make Tajumulco due to protests closing all the roads; almost got stuck in Xela.

May the Silver Jews be with you

January 14, 2015 at 9:07 PM

Thanks! Actually, we loved Guatemala! Sure we had a few sucky incidents, but overall Guatemala was very good to us and has been one of our favorite countries so far. You’ll have to go back one day and tackle Tajumulco. Although it made our “top 20 worst” list, it was still one heck of an experience and glad we did it! Cheers!

January 12, 2015 at 7:39 AM

Very interesting post! The skin infection looks horrid indeed and I know the pain of breaking a rental vehicle (in my case it was a motorbike in Thailand), but all experiences (even the bad ones) are worth living because they are an important lesson. Take care, guys and hope you won’t have any such bad luck in 2015!

January 12, 2015 at 5:58 AM

You had me chuckling throughout this entire long post, right form the topes. Since I live in Mexico, I am painfully familiar with those Mexican speed bumps and what they can do to a car’s undercarriage–just ask the mechanic who recently installed a new muffler for me! I have also been far more intimately acquainted with scorpions than I would like. On the other hand, I have no desire to live anywhere else. Mexico, for me, is magic!

January 12, 2015 at 12:54 PM

Haha! It sounds like you can definitely relate to driving on those backroads. And despite a few travel hiccups there, we also really loved Mexico and looking forward to a return one of these days.

January 12, 2015 at 5:22 AM

Hahaha, those Mexican scorpions sure now how to gate-crash uninvited 😛

Yes, what jerks! Haha!

January 12, 2015 at 5:16 AM

This is definitely my favorite post of the month! Not because I enjoy hearing of other peoples bad luck but because many of them are actually quite funny and you have a great way of looking on the bright side which is really important when you travel. Plus if course you both came out of it all safe and sound. Thanks for the laugh!

January 12, 2015 at 12:57 PM

Thanks so much for the kind words! Yes, we always try to find try to find some way to laugh at our past misfortunes. And some are certainly easier to laugh at than others. And despite just a few more-serious situations, we did come out safe and sound. Thank you for laughing along with us!

January 12, 2015 at 3:47 AM

Ha, I got caught in a Moroccan sand storm in 2014 too but it was a highlight of my year!

January 12, 2015 at 1:00 PM

Awesome! I wonder if it was the same one. We were there in May. For us, the sandstorm was a highlight and a lowlight. While it really delay our trip and was extremely uncomfortable, it was incredible to experience this amazing force of nature.

January 11, 2015 at 9:43 PM

After 2 years of going around South America, I’m on my way to Central in a month and definitely bookmarking this post!

January 12, 2015 at 1:04 PM

Fantastic! Despite a few mishaps, we just loved Central America and hope you do too. Definitely make sure to check out our ‘Best of Central America’ post too where we highlighted our favorite experiences in the region. Hope your Central America travels are amazing! Bien viaje!

January 11, 2015 at 3:12 PM

Wow! Lots to report and some of it definitely not fun! What I loved about this post is your sense of humor keeps shining through, even though there were some potentially dangerous, and uncomfortable situations. Here’s to 2015!

January 12, 2015 at 1:09 PM

Thanks for the kind words Betsy! Yeah, we try to make light of some of these crazy situations we’ve gotten ourselves into. Its fun to look back and laugh at some of these, but at the time I never thought I’d be able to. Here’s to hoping 2015 will bring a few more funny stories yet a few less travel hiccups!

January 11, 2015 at 11:36 AM

These are great stories. Sometimes the challenges are just as memorable. I’ve almost been beat up by a group of Gladiators that Tara summoned over the tipping for pictures, we’ve been so blind drunk we couldn’t find our hotel across the street and had a ferry catch fire, which resulted in the best four day detour.

Love the stories, good and bad. Looking forward to many more.

January 12, 2015 at 1:13 PM

Haha! Yes, the challenges do make for some memorable stories. Some of your experiences you mentioned sound oh so familiar to us. And its funny how some bad situations can lead to some of the best times, as your ferry fire did. Cheers Mike!

January 11, 2015 at 11:26 AM

I loved reading this, even if there were some bad situations! You guys have had quite a year I hope your next one is filled with more great stories 🙂

January 12, 2015 at 1:14 PM

Thanks so much Leasha! Yes, it was quite the year, but that just help things to continue being exciting. Am also hoping we have some more good stories for 2015 but hopefully less machetes, vodka, and cobras, lol!

January 11, 2015 at 4:39 AM

im so glad you have written this! far too many blog posts on the amazingness of travelling and there is just as much crap stuff to balance it out (well some anyway)! feel your pain on some of these

January 12, 2015 at 1:17 PM

Yeah, we can sometimes get carried away writing about all the ‘amazing’ experiences that we realized we weren’t really showing the full picture of our travels. So I thought it would be fun to mix things up and shed some light on our struggles as well, as painful as some were.

January 11, 2015 at 1:11 AM

You guys had quite a year! Though I got to say I love the story in the Caribbean, very pirate, a great story to share! And I hate those guys that try to get money out of you for just having you taking a shot with there animals. We saw that in Lijiang, the guys had a llama and I was thinking seriously? In China? But of course as soon as you start looking they try to get loads of money out of you… But you guys do have a lot to share for your next party and so many memories out of all of that!

January 12, 2015 at 1:19 PM

Yes those picture guys sure can be brutal! A llama in China? lol! And, yes, I suppose that is another bright side, we certainly did get a few good stories to share out of all the calamity. Cheers!

January 10, 2015 at 9:39 PM

Like most tragedies on the road, these are pretty funny in hindsight. The lost wedding ring though, that’s pretty sad. Glad the pirate did not leave with your head. Better travels in 2015.

January 12, 2015 at 1:22 PM

Yes, we were pretty bummed out by the wedding ring, but its replaced now even though its not the original. I left my information with the captain, so who knows, maybe if they ever do maintanance in the hull one day and find it, we’ll have a nice surprise to look forward to. Very doubtful, but you never know!

January 10, 2015 at 9:22 PM

Pleased to see there was plenty of good with the bad but you did seem to have more than your share of bad luck in your 2014 travels. Hope 2015 brings more unicorns and less machete wielding drunks.

January 12, 2015 at 1:23 PM

Haha, yes – we too are hoping for more unicorns and less drunk island natives!

January 10, 2015 at 2:17 PM

Wow…so much stuff happened to you guys! I love that you are able to look on the bright side of things. I can throw one into the whole losing your hearing thing – I was once flying when overcoming a cold and the pressure change must have messed up my hearing….because I couldn’t hear properly for the next 4 days after the flight! Probably something very similar to what happened while diving.

January 12, 2015 at 1:25 PM

Ah, that sounds very familiar! Its crazy (and scary!) how pressure changes can really mess with your hearing when you have a cold!

January 9, 2015 at 10:17 PM

Lots of ups and downs, but nice to know you can take the positives out of them (and have lots of funny stories for afterwards!). I’ve had many a travel-mishap which feel crippling at the time, but now I never even think about them!

January 10, 2015 at 2:25 PM

Yes, its definitely nice to now be able to look back and laugh at some of these!

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Writing About Personal Experiences

Introduction, what does it mean to write about personal experiences, what does it involve to write about your personal experiences, structure of an essay about your personal experiences, the process of writing about personal experiences, 1. preparation:.

b. Selecting a Personal Experience:

2. Drafting:

c. Climax or Turning Point:

3. Revising, Editing, and Final Draft:

General tips for writing the perfect narrative of your personal experience, topics about personal experience narrative, sample personal experience narrative.

English Compositions

Essay on Travel Experience [200, 500 Words] With PDF

Travelling plays an important role in our lives as it enriches our experience. In this lesson, you will learn to write essays in three different sets on the importance of libraries. It will help you in articulating your thoughts in the upcoming exams.

Essay on travel experience in 200 words, essay on travel experience in 500 words.

Feature image of Essay on Travel Experience

We travel to get away from the monotony of our daily lives. It’s a refreshing diversion from the monotony of everyday life. It allows our minds to relax and gives our inner child the opportunity to play. Some trip memories are nostalgic and melancholy, while others are daring and exhilarating. A trip to the graveyard, the poet’s corner in London, or one’s ancestral house, for example, is a voyage to nostalgia.

These travels allow them to relive memories and treasure golden memories from a bygone era. People who go on these journeys are frequently depressed and artistically inclined. Travelling instils a sense of adventure and encourages us to make the most of every opportunity. Some people prefer to travel in groups, whereas others prefer to travel alone.

Trips to amusement parks with massive roller coasters or a deeply wooded forest could be exciting. It’s important to remember that Columbus discovered America due to his travels. The journey becomes much more memorable when things don’t go as planned. For example, if a car tyre blows out on the highway and it begins to rain heavily, the trip will turn into an adventure, even though it was not intended to be such. A visit to a museum or a gothic structure, on the other hand, is sure to be exciting.

We travel to get a break from the mundane and robust lifestyle. It is a welcome change from the monotonous routine existence. It helps our minds rest and gives the inner child within us to have a good time.

Not all travelling experiences are adventurous and exciting, and some are nostalgic and melancholic. For instance, a trip to the cemetery or the poet’s corner in London or one’s ancestral home will be a nostalgia trip. Such trips help them re-live the moments and cherish the golden memories of bygone times. People who undertake such trips are often melancholic and have an artistic sensibility.

Travelling experiences bring enthusiasm and teach us to make the best of every moment. While some enjoy travelling in groups, some people love to travel solo. Adventurous trips could be to amusement parks with giant roller coasters or a deep, dense forest. One must not forget that travelling led Columbus to discover America. When things don’t go as planned, the trip becomes more memorable. For instance, if the car tyre gets punctured on the highway and starts raining heavily, the trip, even if not intended to be adventurous, shall become one. A trip to a museum or gothic architecture shall be thrilling.

Last Christmas, my trip to Goa with my friends was an enriching one. The golden sun-soaked beaches offered a refuge from the humdrum city life of Kolkata. The cool breeze, the rising and setting sun, and the chilly wind all transported me to heaven. It was paradisal and divine. The cuisine was exquisite. The Portuguese culture and the museums offer various historical insights.

Although it was the peak season and most crowded places, people were civilised and cultured. The melodious music was in the air in every nook and corner, and the happy vibes were contagious. I danced, sang, played and had a great time. I tried sky diving, and it was a thrilling experience.

Besides fun and frolic, I found the independent spirit of people commendable. We spent three days in North Goa and two days in South Goa. We stayed at a guest house as most hotels were expensive and very occupied. We booked scooters to travel far and near. We also went on the cruise for the casino night.

My favourite spot was Thalassa, where we enjoyed the spectacular belly dance performance by males and females. We spent Christmas at Curlies witnessing the waxing moon at midnight. The lap of nature enriches one travelling experience and soothes their soul. The chirping of birds, the sound of the waterfall, the waves of a beach or the snow-covered mountain uplifts the traveller’s spirit.

One must not restrict oneself to a specific type of travelling experience. Life, after all, is a long journey that offers us different durations of vacations to make us laugh and learn at the same time. As Francis Bacon puts it, “Travel in the younger sort is a part of education, in the elder, a part of the experience.”

Hopefully, after going through this lesson, you have a holistic idea of the importance of travelling in our lives. I have tried to cover every aspect of a traveller’s experience within limited words. If you still have any doubts regarding this session, kindly let me know through the comment section below. To read more such essays on many important topics, keep browsing our website.

Join us on Telegram to get the latest updates on our upcoming sessions. Thank you, see you again soon.

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What is the country you had the worst time in? Or, what is your worst travel experience?

I had some challenging times in Morocco. Nothing over the top, but I was harassed a little more than I was expecting. I've had worse horror stories, but I will just say that my experiences there did not live up to my expectations. So, my experiences there let me down the most. I don't blame Morocco exactly.... I'm sure its possible to have a great time there, but I didn't.

What about you? What is your story? Or, what is your place where things did not turn out as you planned?

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What’s the worst camping experience you’ve ever had?

I’m a huge fan of camping and I camp, in a tent, often. I’ve had countless, amazing camping trips, far and near, in the past. I’ve also had my fair share of not-so-great nights in a tent. One night stands out above the rest, without a doubt, when it comes to particularly bad camping experiences. No, it was not a night while camping miles out in the wilderness. No, a bear did not come and rip apart our tent. Rather, we were in a crowded campground, comparable to a KOA, outside of the Grand Canyon – complete with public restrooms, hot water showers and a convenience store. I mean, what could go wrong?

My husband and I were on a road-trip throughout the U.S. southwest with four of our friends in late November. Our one friend, John, bought an old Ford, ten passenger bus that he remodeled into a pretty retro camper-bus (we named her Gladys). Gladys was our ride throughout this road-trip and though she DID disappoint many times (that is a whole other story), this night was not entirely her fault. It WAS her fault that we ended up at the Grand Canyon – she forced us to rearrange our travel plans due to many mechanical failures along our journey. We were suppose to travel further and spend more time in areas such as Page, Arizona, Monument Valley and Zion. Thanks to Gladys, we spent unforeseen time in B.F.E. (aka Yuma). With a deadline to be in Vegas at the end of this trip, for Doug and I’s wedding, we had to nix Zion and Monument Valley. Since the Grand Canyon was along our route from Yuma to Vegas, she was our next best option and became our spontaneous destination.

Gladys only slept (yes, past tense… may she rest in peace) four people so each couple took their turn sleeping out in the tent every night. Our first night at the Grand Canyon was Doug and I’s shift for tent duty. When the time came to set up the tent (already nightfall at this point), I discovered that it was still wet from its previous use (thanks Joe and Maddie, haha). Oh, did I mention it was only 18 degrees (F) outside?! YES, 18 degrees and our tent was WET! Oh, joy! To give perspective, the tent immediately morphed into an igloo – that’s how bad it was. To make matters worse, since the Grand Canyon was not in our original plans, Doug and I only brought along mummy sleeping bags that went down to 40 degrees – it was suppose to be in the 40s/50s where we were originally headed. Again, it was 18 degrees out and we had sleeping bags that only went down to 40. Yup.

Extremely displeased at this point in the night, I accepted I would be cold and very uncomfortable. Yet, remaining optimistic as true to my nature, I chose to be proactive. I chose to drink lots of wine in order to pass out quickly and get this night over with. I thought I’d have a grand old time around the campfire, taking shots out of our shot ski and telling funny stories, then crawl into my igloo and fall into oblivion (like I typically do when drinking more than the norm). Yeah, yeah… I know that drinking alcohol while freezing is one of the worst things you can do. But, I didn’t think I was at risk for hypothermia so I figured no harm, no foul.

I was partially correct. I did fall asleep rather fast with all my layers on – literally ALL my layers – including my huge ski jacket and hiking boots. What I had not accounted for was being woken up mid-sleep.

Not long into the night, I woke up to coyotes howling and running through our camp. I shook Doug awake, exclaiming “Doug, our camp is being raided by wolves” (I mean..it kind of was?). Doug and I sat there listening to the coyotes outside our tent for a couple minutes, with knife in hand, too cold to move. But also too cold to be scared. In no time, they ran off into the night. However, at this point, I was wide awake and realizing JUST how COLD I was. I couldn’t feel my feet and my head felt frozen – a sensation I had never felt before. Words can’t even explain it, other than my brain felt like it was a solid ice block. You know how you get a brain freeze from eating ice cream too fast? Well, it felt relevant to that but.. I had not eaten anything cold. That definitely freaked me out.

After shivering HARD for a couple more sleepless hours (that dragged on for days), I had to pee. I went into the bathroom and, while doing my business, felt MAGIC. The magic was coming from a heat vent on the bathroom floor. Not giving it a second thought, I sprung up and locked the bathroom door. I sat on the floor in all my layers (gross, I know) and soaked in the heat – basking in all its glory. I slept, uncomfortably, for an hour sitting up on a campground bathroom floor – feeling very sick (two days before my wedding, mind you). That was really the only sleep I got; that hour and the hour in the igloo before the coyotes.

The moment I felt the first ray of the morning sun was the MOST glorious moment – a celebrated feeling. Never in my life have I appreciated a sunrise more. I never knew what cold was until this night. And to this day, I still use this night as a reference point saying, “Well, at least I’m not as cold as when I was sleeping in that igloo tent at the Grand Canyon”. Think about it: I was so cold that my survival instincts told me to sleep on a grimy, public restroom floor. I’d rather sleep in a bat infested cave and be warm vs. this scenario. I’ve had a giant, furry spider beside my pillow in a tent while camping. I’ve camped during a crazy lightning storm and tornado winds in the Badlands. I had to do my lady business in the middle of Slab City, nothing to cover me but a chest-high, bare bush (by lady business, I mean ‘time of the month’ stuff. That was no fun). Sorry if that’s T.M.I. but what I’m getting at is…none of that was as bad as how cold I was this Grand Canyon night. I would rather cuddle with that giant, furry spider than experience this endless, freezing night again.

LESSON LEARNED: Never camp unprepared. If it’s going to be considerably colder than your sleeping bag limit, don’t do it. Never, ever rely on a 40 degree sleeping bag in 18 degree weather, even with all your layers on.

Also learned: A pack of coyotes only want your campfire food scraps, not your flesh (thank you to whoever spilled their plate of spaghetti on the ground by our tent!).

There you have it folks! My worst camping experience to-date. If I have a worse one in the future, believe me, I shall share it! Regardless, this was not a fun night and I was truly worried that I would be deathly sick for my wedding. Turned out: not the case, praise the heavens!

The morning after this crap night was Thanksgiving morning and it was divine. We spent the best Thanksgiving exploring Grand Canyon National Park. We even made Thanksgiving crafts to hang on Gladys and ate a full-on Thanksgiving dinner around the campfire. So, thankfully, this story has a happy ending. 🙂

Now, time to answer my question: What is the worst camping experience you’ve ever had? Feel free to share in the comments, I’d love to hear ’em!

Much love and happy travels!

P.S. Check out my “Travel Vlogs” page and scroll down to the video titled “Western Wandering: Thanksgiving at the Grand Canyon” to see some of this day unfold.

5 thoughts on “ What’s the worst camping experience you’ve ever had? ”

That sounds like quite the experience! And I do appreciate the reference to lady business – it is definitely a travel inconvenience that is not discussed often enough!

I haven’t had any terrible camping experiences personally, I mostly went with family who were super prepared.

It is totally a travel inconvenience haha! Thank you for reading and I’m glad you’ve never had any terrible camping experiences! Hope it stays that way for ya! ❤️☺️

When I was in college, my roommates and I thought it would be fun to tag along with the ROTC on their weekend camping trip in the Pine Barrens in New Jersey. It was October. It gets cold at night here in October…at least back then it did. The army tents the ROTC set up for us had no floor. We didn’t have sleeping bags..ugh. I slept in one of the cars

Oh wow! That sounds freezing! At least you had a car ☺️👍🏻👍🏻

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Jessie on a Journey | Solo Female Travel Blog

19 Inspiring Travel Experience Stories About Life-Changing Trips

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Love inspiring travel experience stories ?

Then you’re in the right place!

Grab a snack and your favorite beverage and get ready to settle in, as you’re about to read some truly inspiring travel stories about life-changing trips.

In this roundup, some of my favorite bloggers share their best travel stories.

You’ll hear about travelers embarking on sacred pilgrimages, growing after a first solo female travel trip, deeply connecting with locals on the road, and getting out of their comfort zones in ways that completely alter the course of their life.

And if you’re looking for a unique travel experience, you’ll likely find it in the short stories about travel below.

Table of Contents

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But first… before we dive into these stories about travelling…

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There is so much included!

Plus, I’m constantly adding new resources, guides, and personality quizzes to help you travel beyond the guidebook!

On that note, let’s dive into the inspiring travel stories .

1. Travel Experience Stories In South America

My travel story takes place in South America, back when I used to travel solo for months at a time.

I was in my mid-20s, and even though I’d backpacked Europe, Southeast Asia, and China and had studied abroad in Australia, the mix of intense excitement and nerves I had leading up to my South America backpacking trip was different.

And despite family and friends warning me that South America wasn’t a place for a solo female traveler , it ended up being my best trip ever and one of my life changing trips!

There are so many interesting short travel stories and unforgettable travel experiences woven into this trip, like:

Getting invited to have dinner with my Brazilian plane seatmate and her grandma
Having a group of complete strangers on Couchsurfing take me out for dinner and dancing on my birthday in Mendoza
Attending a small house party in Argentina and learning about the tradition of mate
Getting stuck on a broken-down bus and having an impromptu language exchange with an elderly woman in Peru
Having a love interest back home break up with me via text, and then experiencing the kindness of strangers as a woman in my hostel who I barely knew treated me to ice cream to cheer me up
Having a romance with a hostel mate in Ecuador and then traveling through the country together
Living in a giant treehouse with a group of strangers during a solo trip in Brazil and spending our days exploring hiking trails and swimming and our nights drinking and exchanging stories about traveling
Taking a 4×4 from Chile to Bolivia across the Siloli Desert to see otherwordly sites like rainbow lagoons and train graveyards in the middle of nowhere
Experiencing some of the world’s most incredible natural wonders, like Iguazu Falls, Torres del Paine, the Amazon River, Uyuni Salt Flats, and Perito Moreno Glacier

At times the trip was also challenging, from dealing with long bus rides and car sickness to flipping over my bicycle handlebars in Peru and getting my body (and ego) badly bruised.

But, I was okay.

In fact, I was more than okay, as the trip showed me how independent I could be and what I was truly capable of. It also showed me the beauty of immersing yourself in cultures different than your own and connecting with locals who want to share them with you.

Years later, when people ask what my best travel experience has been this is the trip that comes to mind.

-Jessie from Jessie on a Journey

2. Traveling With An Open Mind

Many people think of travel as an experience and rightly so. Sometimes, however, you cannot choose the places you travel to.

This happened to me in 2019.

My husband found himself posted in Brunei for work.

Three months pregnant meant that I had a choice:

Either stay with him in Brunei for three months before returning back to India or remain in India, alone.

I chose the former. Not because of my love for the country but because I wanted to be close to him.

Brunei had never held any appeal to me. Whatever research that I pulled off the Internet showed me nothing other than one beautiful mosque.

The flights in and out of the country were expensive so traveling frequently out was not an option either.

I was engulfed by a sense of being trapped in a remote place.

Needless to say, I reached Brunei in a pretty foul mood. I think one of the things that struck me the most even in the midst of that bad mood was the large swaths of greenery that surrounded us.

Mind you, we were not staying in the big city but as far away on the outskirts as you could imagine. I’m not a city girl by any stretch and the greenery eventually soothed my nerves.

It took a week, but I soon found myself interacting with people around me. Fellow expats and locals all went out of their way to make me feel comfortable.

The more comfortable I felt, the more we explored. We trekked (yes, while pregnant!), we joined the board game community, and we enjoyed the local cuisine.

Three months later when it was time to leave, I found myself reluctant to say goodbye to the warmth of the country I had called home for a short while. I ended up having some of the most meaningful travel experiences there.

I think that my time in Brunei taught me a valuable lesson:

Don’t judge a place by what others say or a lack of information.

Sure, you may not always like what you see, but there will always be something that you will like. You just need to look hard enough to find it!

-Penny from GlobeTrove

A slow travel experience across the Portuguese Camino de Santiago

3. From Half-Day Hiker To Walking Holiday Enthusiast

I’ve always enjoyed walking but never in a million years did I imagine I’d end up walking over 200 kilometers (~124 miles) in 10 days, become a fan of walking holidays, and end up developing self-guided hiking routes in Portugal with a local tour operator as part of my business.

The shift from being someone who was content with an easy three-hour walk to an experienced multi-day hiker began with a brief taste of the Portuguese Camino de Santiago, an ancient pilgrim trail through Portugal to Santiago de Compostela Cathedral in Spain.

Back in 2013 I did a guided one-day hike along one of the most beautiful stretches of the Camino, north of Ponte de Lima. It’s also one of the most challenging sections so it was hard work, but the views from the top of Labruja Mountain made the climb worthwhile.

My guides were so enthusiastic about the thrill of arriving at Santiago de Compostela Cathedral after the challenges of day after day on the Camino that I began to think I might want to give it a go, despite not being religious.

Fast forward a few years and I set off from Barcelos with a friend of mine to follow the Portuguese Camino de Santiago.

Apart from suffering from chronic back pain, I thought I was quite fit but nothing had prepared me for how utterly exhausted I would feel at the end of each walking day.

This was truly a slow travel experience, as we were averaging about 20 kilometers (~12 miles) per day and by the time we reached our hotel, I would barely have enough energy to get cleaned up and find food before collapsing. I had envisioned plenty of sightseeing but that ended up being minimal.

Quickly, I realized the moral of this unique travel experience:

The Camino was all about making the most of the journey rather than the destination.

For me, that was quite a shift in thinking as I am usually all about getting to where I want to be as soon as possible so that I can start exploring. It was, perhaps, also my first step on the path towards mindfulness.

I will never forget the sense of achievement and progress at the end of each walking day, and the relief and pride I felt when we finally made it to Santiago de Compostela.

We met people who had walked the Camino several times and I can totally understand how it can become addictive.

Walking the Camino is one of the life changing travel experiences for many people!

-Julie from Julie Dawn Fox in Portugal

A story about traveling the Banda Islands

4. A Story About Traveling & Its Ripple Effect

Tucked away in far eastern Indonesia is a tiny archipelago of islands called the Banda Islands.

Apart from world-class snorkeling and some crumbling colonial buildings, the Banda Islands are mostly forgotten and would be described as a backwater by all accounts.

However, the Banda Islands are possibly the main reason that I am who I am today.

Well, the Bandas are the original Spice Islands.

Nutmeg used to grow on this tiny group of islands alone and nowhere else. The Dutch colonized Indonesia and promptly became the owners of islands where money grew on trees.

The only problem was that Indonesia was so far away that they needed a halfway stop to and from Indonesia.

That’s where my travel experience story comes in.

The same Dutch East India Company that traded in spice set up a halfway station at the foot of Table Mountain to break up their long journey. As a result, my Dutch ancestors arrived in the southernmost point in Africa , and generations later we are still there.

When I visited the Banda Islands, it dawned on me how something happening on the other side of the world can ripple out and affect people on the other side of the planet.

And I’m not the only one!

The spice trade was so important to the Dutch that they even traded a tiny island in the Banda archipelago for a much bigger island…Manhattan.

Yes. That Manhattan.

Before visiting the Banda Islands I never really knew about this part of my history.

Along with the spice that the ships carried back to Amsterdam, it also carried slaves. These slaves, more often than not, ended up in Cape Town.

Just like my European ancestors, they too became a part of Africa and added another shade to our beautiful Rainbow Nation.

It was in the Banda Islands that I realized how much of my culture, food, stories and even words in my mother tongue, Afrikaans, actually originated in Indonesia.

Because of these tiny islands, I am a true mix of Europe, Africa, and Asia. While I always thought I knew how all things in life are somehow connected, I didn’t really grasp it until my visit to Indonesia.

This could have been a resort travel experience story, as I went to Indonesia to swim and snorkel and relax on the world’s best beaches. And while I did get to do that, I also learned a lot about who I am as a person, my people, and my country…on another continent.

It is a travel experience I will never forget!

My visit to the Bandas has sparked a fascination with Indonesia, which I have visited seven times since. I’m already planning another trip to this spectacular country!

-De Wet from Museum of Wander

5. Awakening My Spirit In A Costa Rican Cloud Forest

In February 2017, I was just coming out of a decade of mysterious chronic illness that had shrunk my world.

And one of the things that finally helped me to resurface during the previous year was an online Qi Gong course I stumbled upon:

Flowing Zen .

To the casual observer, Qi Gong looks a lot like its better-known cousin, Tai Chi — the ancient art of moving meditation — but it’s actually energy medicine for healing.

In fact, it’s commonly used in Chinese hospitals.

My daily practice that year made such a difference for me that I dangled a reward for myself:

If I stuck with it all year, then I’d head to Sifu Anthony’s annual retreat in a cloud forest in Costa Rica the following February.

And I did! It was my first trip out of the country for more than a decade.

Just like that, I booked a solo trip — something I hadn’t done since I was an exchange student to Europe 30 years earlier — to San Jose where I met up with a dozen strangers and Sifu Anthony, our Qi Gong master.

We boarded a tiny bus and rode up, up, up around carsick-inducing curvy mountain roads into a magical cloud forest jungle where we finally arrived at The Blue Mountain (“La Montana Azul”) for a weeklong Qi Gong retreat.

There were no Internet or distractions here — just delicious organic vegetarian meals made with love and shared with the community under a gorgeous open-air palapa.

There were also colorful tropical birds singing in the jungle, as well as the largest arachnid I’ve ever seen in my gorgeous (but also roofless) room for a little extra adventure.

I’d felt a little energy movement during my year of online practice, but during that week on The Blue Mountain, my body began to really buzz with Qi — life force energy — as I Lifted the Sky, stood in Wuji Stance, and practiced Shooting Arrows.

I felt electrified and joyful.

And that was when everything changed for me.

At home, I had a successful career as a freelance writer, but I decided during my week in the cloud forest that I wanted more from life.

I wanted to explore the beauty, diversity, nature, and culture in every corner of the world.

And I wanted to share this intoxicating joyful feeling of life-giving freedom and adventure with anyone who wanted to come along for the ride.

Shortly after that, at age 53, I launched my travel blog.

Dreams really do come true. They are just waiting for you to claim them.

-Chris from Explore Now or Never

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6. From Rome With Love

This wasn’t the way I wanted to see Rome.

Sure, I was happy to spend Christmas in Rome and stand in awe of the city’s many iconic attractions. But, life wasn’t meant to turn out like this.

I was supposed to go to Rome with my mom back in 2012; however, life had different plans, because a week before our trip, I got a double kidney infection. A condition that required a week of hospitalization.

Although I was annoyed I had missed my trip, it wasn’t the end of the world since I was fine and everything seemed okay…until my mom developed a cough.

A cough that later became a heartbreaking diagnosis of stage four ovarian cancer.

My mom spent the final months of her life in chemo, desperately trying to fight a horrific disease so that she wouldn’t let her family down.

And she didn’t.

Instead, she showed us how to never give up on life, even if it was a losing battle.

So, when she eventually passed away, I booked a trip to Rome.

Sure, it wasn’t the trip I had hoped for. But, I knew that as her daughter, it was my job to live enough for the both of us.

And that’s exactly what I did.

Was I an anxious, sad, angry mess of a person?

Absolutely. I was still getting used to a world that my mother wasn’t a part of.

And honestly, you never get used to that world. You just deal with it because you don’t really have a choice.

But I also knew that I wanted my mom to live on through me and that I didn’t want to live a life where the haunting phrases “should of,” “could of,” and “would have” swirled through my head and ate away at my happiness.

So, I went. I packed a boatload of tissues, sobbed my heart out, and attended Christmas mass at the Vatican.

I also threw a coin in the Trevi Fountain, walked through the Colosseum, chowed down on gelato, and spent two weeks doing all the things my mom and I had wanted to do.

And that’s when it hit me. I had never gone to Rome alone because my mom had always been there with me. Maybe she wasn’t physically there, but I thought of her and felt her presence every minute of every day.

Her presence also reminded me that life isn’t about the things we buy or the money that we have.

It’s about making memories with the people we love; people that never really leave us since they are constantly influencing our lives in countless ways.

And after my trip to Rome, I finally knew that my mom would always be there because she had forever changed my life in the best possible way.

-Kelly from Girl with the Passport

7. Studying In Finland

One of my major life-turning points happened during my exchange studies in Finland.

Until then, I was studying at a university in Prague, had a part-time job at a renowned management-consulting firm, and thought I was on the right path in life.

At the University of Economics where I studied it was notoriously difficult to get on an Erasmus exchange trip abroad since the demand was huge. Everyone wanted to go!

Regardless, I decided to sign up early for my last semester, just to see what the process was like to be better prepared for applying again in a year.

I did make it through all the three rounds and surprisingly got a spot at a University in Turku, Finland! I was ecstatic. The success brought its own challenges, but once you set your eyes on the goal, nothing can stop you.

And I had the time of my life in Finland. It was a fantastic personal travel experience.

I met the most amazing people, traveled a ton, partied a lot, and bonded with friends from all over the world.

Given I was one of the few people there who really needed to pass all her courses and additionally write her thesis, I managed to run on an impossible sleep schedule of four hours per night. But I made it!

My studies in Finland opened up my horizons, too.

The summer after, I wrapped up my life in Prague and went on to study in Germany and China . The whole time I traveled as much as possible, often going on solo adventures. It was only a matter of time when I’d start my own travel blog.

My Finland adventure led me to a life of freedom made up of remote work, travel blogging , and plenty of traveling. I couldn’t have asked for a better outcome. And it gave me one of my favorite true adventure stories that I can now share with others.

-Veronika from Travel Geekery

8. How Cuba Changed My Life

One of my favorite inspiring stories about travel takes place in Cuba.

I visited Cuba in February 2013 and it changed my life — and I like to think it did so for the better.

Interestingly, I expected a completely different country and was compelled to write about it when I got back home.

But let me tell you more.

I read copious amounts of blogs and travel diaries to prepare myself for the trip to Cuba so I thought I’d go in with a fairly good idea of what to expect. Each and every post I read spoke of marvelous landscapes, pristine beaches, crumbling but charming cities, and welcoming locals.

All of it was true, in my experience — except for the locals.

I didn’t find them so welcoming. At least, not genuinely so. They only seemed to welcome me as far as they could get something in exchange: money, clothes, pens, soap, you name it.

Each and every day in Cuba was a challenge to avoid the scams, to avoid being ripped off, to fight off each and every attempt of people trying to take advantage of me. I usually managed, but it was exhausting and it left a sour taste in my mouth.

Once I got back home I felt the urge to write about my experience — not for other sites or papers as I’d often do. This time I was afraid I’d be censored.

So I opened my own blog. With zero tech knowledge, zero understanding of online content creation and SEO, I started writing and telling people what they should really expect during a trip to Cuba.

I’d put up the occasional post, but continued with my usual job.

At the end of the year, my contract as a researcher in international human rights law at the local university ended, and I decided to stop pursuing that career for a while.

I packed my bags and left for a long-term trip to Central and South America . I started writing on the blog more consistently and learning, and eventually took my blog full-time , turning it into a career.

As of today, I have never looked back and have no regrets. This was a life changing traveling experience.

The one thing I’ll do, as soon as I can, is travel to Cuba to say thank you — because it changed my life in a way nothing else has ever done.

-Claudia from Strictly Sardinia

9. A Short Travel Story About Finding Inner Peace In Patagonia

Life in London is hard.

Life in London as a gay single brown refugee is harder.

Juggling between work, my passion for traveling, and the prejudices that I dealt with on a daily basis eventually took their toll on me and I reached a breaking point.

The fact that I couldn’t return home to see my family and being away for them for almost nine years was enough to hammer in the final nail in the coffin.

I almost had a nervous breakdown and in that moment of desperation, which I knew would define the rest of my life, I took a month off and headed to Patagonia.

It was probably the best decision I’ve ever made in my life. The 36 hours it took me to get to El Chalten from London were tiring but Patagonia blew me away.

On my first day there I did a 28-kilometer (17-mile) hike which included a steep mountain climb. It was incredible how moving through the forest helped me clear my mind. And as I stood in front of Laguna de Los Tres, the rain and clouds gave way to sunshine and a rainbow.

I felt at peace.

The countless hikes, great food, and the warmth of locals in Chile and Argentina helped me get back in my skin and find the peace I was missing in my heart.

Nature is indeed the best medicine when it comes to stress relief and I won’t be coy about hugging trees to speed up the process (it did).

Patagonia was life-changing for me.

The beauty of nature struck me at each point and every time I thought it wasn’t possible to beat the view, the next one did just that.

I came back a changed, resilient, and most importantly, a happy person.

-Ucman from BrownBoyTravels

10. Looking Inwards & Making Connections With Strangers

It was decades before I traveled solo for the first time in my life.

This trip — a six-day escape to Colorado — was the first trip that was not for business or family reasons but just to travel and discover.

As I prepared for it, I had a strange feeling of excitement and nerves at the same time. I had all sorts of thoughts and doubts:

Would it be fun?

Would I be bored?

Would I stay in bed all day or would I bounce with excitement to do the next thing?

I wasn’t sure. Little did I know that it was going to be a memorable journey of self-discovery.

As a good wife and mom, for me travel is always about the family; always thinking of who would enjoy what. It’s about family time and bonding. It’s about creating memories and travel stories together. It’s all so wonderful.

But on a solo trip who would I connect with? What would I say?

Well, I found that I got to do anything I wanted!

Usually when I travel with my family, if I feel like going on a drive that’s not on the itinerary or getting a snack no one else is interested in, we simply don’t do that.

So it was weird to just go do it. Really, that’s a thing?

As for making connections, it was so easy to meet locals while traveling and also to connect with other travelers. Honestly, I had conversations everywhere — on planes, while hiking, in restaurants, in the hotel lobby.

It was quite an eye-opening experience to meet a mom of 18 kids and hundreds of foster kids, a cookie baker, a professional photographer, a family of Fourteener hikers, and an internationally ranked marathon runner.

The inspiring stories I discovered were amazing and nothing like my wonderful safe life at home.

In terms of travel safety , I got to go rock climbing, solo hiking, driving up a Fourteener, eating alone.

And it was all fine. Actually, it felt surprisingly normal.

It was was just me, my SUV, and my backpack for a week. Most of all, it was a breath of fresh air that I didn’t know existed.

It’s wonderful to be back home and know that possibilities are endless and there is so much more out there to explore and be wowed by!

-Jyoti from Story At Every Corner

life-changing travel experience stories in Colombia

11. A Solo Hike To Find Connection

I have traveled solo many times, but I admit I was a bit uneasy booking my trip to Colombia . In part, due to the country’s dark past. But also because I desperately wanted to do the Cocora Valley hike, and if I’m honest, I was terrified.

This hike is located in the Coffee Triangle, an area recognized for its beauty as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It features both rainforest and a stunning green valley speckled with cartoonishly-tall wax palms rising 200 feet or more.

It’s incredibly beautiful.

It’s also a long hike and quite challenging — it generally takes between six and eight hours and there is a steep area with over 3,000 feet of elevation within a quarter of a mile.

I wasn’t in hiking shape, so I was a little concerned. But, worst of all for me were the seven dodgy-looking suspension bridges.

I’m terrified of heights.

And, I’d be going alone.

I decided to go anyway and I met an incredible woman on the bus to Salento, the town near Cocora. She was also traveling solo and we agreed to hike together.

The town is a backpacker enclave and we met up with a small group of people all traveling solo. As the days passed, our group got larger and it was such a magical experience.

As much as I love city travel, this small town won my heart.

My new friend and I set off on the hike and met two other women who were nervous to do the hike. We all went together.

When we got to the first suspension bridge, I paused. I was embarrassed to admit my fear, but the bridge swayed widely and there was nowhere to hold onto.

When they realized how out of my comfort zone I was and how scared I felt, everything changed. Instead of me dealing with it alone, they were all there to encourage me.

One crossed the bridge to encourage me from the other side and they stayed off of it to limit the sway. Crazy enough, I not only crossed the seven suspension bridges, but I also crossed one an extra time when we went the wrong way on the trail.

I did it!

I was prepared to be blown away by Cocora Valley’s beauty, but what I wasn’t expecting was what a life-changing travel experience my time there would be.

-Sam from My Flying Leap

short stories on travel and sustainability

12. How A Pet Sitting Travel Experience Led To A Passionate Career

We wanted to go to the Caribbean but didn’t know much about the islands or how we were going to afford it.

By chance, a friend of ours in Australia mentioned “pet sitting” and that it is something you can do all over the world.

We quickly created an account on a pet sitting website and began searching for options. There were only a couple of sits available in that part of the world, but we tried our luck, sent a request, and to our surprise landed a three-month gig in a beautiful house in the US Virgin Islands — with an infinity pool overlooking the British Virgin Islands.

A month into our sit, we had explored the destination pretty well and so had a lot of time on our hands. We managed to secure another sit in Grenada, so our year was going to be taken up with Caribbean pet sits.

Inspired by a Canadian couple that had previously stayed at our Grenada housesit, we decided to start our own travel blog. We began by writing about The Virgin Islands, highlighting the beautiful beaches and funky bars.

But for every photo of a beautiful beach there were 10 photos of trash.

It was hard to ignore the plastic pollution issue, especially on such pristine and remote beaches. So, we began to share photos of the trash we saw and how much we could pick up on our daily dog walks.

The more we looked into plastic pollution, the more we realized the severity of the global plastic pandemic. From that point, we used our platform to create awareness and highlight ways to say no to plastic and travel plastic-free .

We changed our daily routines, our way of living, and even our diets to accommodate more organic foods and little to no plastic packaging.

It’s been over three years now and we continue to do what we can. This journey has led us to some amazing places, working with great conscious brands and even organizing a country-wide beach clean-up campaign in Grenada.

Our aim now is to keep on going.

We love connecting with like-minded people and love the shift over the last few years that brands have made towards creating more sustainable products and services.

It’s been an amazing few years that was sparked by a conversation about pet sitting. Who would have guessed?

-Aaron & Vivien from The Dharma Trails

13. Learning To Slow Down The Hard Way

On Christmas of 2017, I was born again.

We like to spend our Christmas holidays somewhere warm abroad, and that year we chose Uganda.

Nature, wildlife, and sunny days were a blessing when it was so cold and dark in Europe. Life was beautiful, and we had a rental car and a busy schedule ahead to explore the country.

This is where this short travel story turns into one of my more scary travel experiences :

At Murchinson Falls National Park, we had a car accident.

I lost control of the car, and it rolled over, destroying windows, chassis, and engine.

But we were alive! My right arm was severely injured, but we managed to walk to our lodge, not far inside the park.

In the lodge, I was happy to learn that there was a pretty decent American hospital in Masindi that was just a one-hour drive from the lodge. Moreover, one of the lodge’s guests was a nurse who cleaned the wound while we were waiting for the taxi from/to Masindi.

The hospital took care of us, and after a couple of injections and stitches, I was ready to head to our new hotel in Masindi; however, my wound required daily dressing and more injections, so we were asked to stay in town for a few days.

Masindi is the kind of place where you may want to stop to buy some food or water, but that’s it.

The town’s highlights were the market and our daily visit to the hospital, so we ended up looking for the small things, chatting with the medical staff, the hotel staff, the people in the market, and learning more about their customs.

We learned to slow down the hard way.

When we were allowed to leave, we took a road trip south through the country to see something else. We did not care about our travel bucket list anymore — we were alive, and we wanted to enjoy Uganda’s unique nature and its people.

In the end, our Uganda trip was not about the places that we saw, but the people that we met. It was travel for experience vs sightseeing.

I hope to revisit Uganda one day, with a stop at Masindi for some food, water, and maybe something else.

-Elisa from World in Paris

14. A Cycling Trip To Remember

During the summer of 2019, I cycled solo from London to Istanbul. This huge bicycle tour took me 89 days and through 11 countries.

As you might expect, it was a challenging yet incredible journey, which saw me pedal along some of Europe’s greatest rivers, pass through some of its best cities, and witness some of its most beautiful scenery.

It’s becoming more and more important for us to think about the impact that travel can have on our environment. This was the inspiration for my bicycle tour; I wanted to find more responsible ways to explore the world and avoid flights where possible.

I discovered that bicycle touring is one of the most eco-friendly ways to travel, as using nothing but a bicycle and your own pedal power you can carry everything you need while covering surprising distances each day.

The simplicity of life and the sheer amount of time I spent cycling alone gave me a lot of time to just think . This really helped me to come to terms with some personal problems rooted in my past and, as a result, I arrived solo in Istanbul with newly found confidence, independence, and liberation.

Cycling across the entire European continent may seem like an impossibly daunting task, but I assure you, it will make you feel like a new person, just like it did for me.

-Lauren from The Planet Edit

15. How The Caribbean Shaped Me Into A Fully Sustainable Traveler

One of my first international trips as an adult was traveling around the Caribbean .

I checked into my hotel in Jamaica and asked for a recommendation for a local place to eat. The receptionist told me that under no circumstances should I should go into the town because it was really dangerous, but that — to my luck — the hotel’s restaurant offered wonderful Caribbean food.

I pondered my options:

Did I really want to spend all my time on the beach without getting to know a single local?

I was a very inexperienced traveler and very young, but there was only one answer to my question:

Absolutely not. I was not going to be visiting a new place and staying hostage in a hotel chain. So out I went.

The poverty hit me in the face. After only seeing fancy resorts, the reality was hard to swallow.

A few locals approached me and were super curious as to what I was doing there alone, since most tourists didn’t go there.

I told them I was interested in meeting them and experiencing their culture. And just like that, I was embraced.

We met more people, had some food, and then we danced the night away. They had so little, yet they wanted to share it with me. They wanted to make me feel welcome.

And they undeniably did.

The next morning all I could think about was how all the money most tourists spend goes to big corporations. The locals have to be thankful if they get a job that pays minimum wage, while foreign businesses earn millions.

I have always been environmentally conscious, but this trip made it clear that sustainability goes well beyond nature and wildlife.

It’s also about communities.

From then on I always look for locally owned accommodation, eateries, guides, and souvenirs.

Sustainability, with everything it entails, became a motto for me and changed the very essence of the way I travel.

-Coni from Experiencing the Globe

16. Lessons From My Students In Peru

One of the most life-changing trips I’ve ever been on was a volunteering experience in the stunning city of Cuzco in Peru.

In this last travel experience, I spent a month there teaching English and Italian to a group of local adults. And even though my time there was short, the travel experience was so humbling that it changed my outlook on life.

My lessons took the form of active conversations, which essentially turned into a massive multilingual cultural exchange between me and my students. Hearing my students talk about their lives — and realizing just how different they were from mine — made me look at my own life with a fresh new perspective.

One person spoke about the three years he spent living in a jungle with his dad, where they fed off of animals they hunted in order to survive.

Another student told me about her ultimate dream of mastering English so that she could become a tour guide and have a more stable future.

For me, these stories were a reminder of just how small I am in this world and how much we can get consumed by the small bubbles we live in.

Most of all, my students showed a passion and appreciation for life that I’d never witnessed before.

This is true for the locals I met in Cuzco in general. The quality of life in Cuzco is very modest; hot water is scarce and you learn to live with little.

But the locals there do way more than just that — they spontaneously parade the streets with trumpets and drums just because they’re feeling happy, and their energy for the simple things in life is incredibly contagious.

It was impossible to not feel inspired in Cuzco because my students always had the biggest smiles on their faces, and the locals showed me again and again that simply being alive is a blessing.

I went to Peru to teach, but ended up learning more from my students and the locals there than they did from me.

Ever since I got back from that trip, I made it a goal to slow down and not take the simple things in life for granted.

Every time I get upset about something, I think about the Peruvians in Cuzco parading their streets in song and pure joy, and I tell myself to stop complaining.

-Jiayi from The Diary of a Nomad

inspiring traveling stories about overcoming obstacles

17. Braving Travel With Chronic Pain

Santiago de Compostela is a beautiful city with a prominent cathedral positioned centrally within the city.

While the historical cathedral attracts numerous visitors, even more well-known is the route to Santiago de Compostela, Camino de Santiago –- the world-famous pilgrimage route that has a plethora of trailheads and ends in Santiago.

Home to locals, students, English teachers, and those on a spiritual pilgrimage, personal conquest, or a great outdoor hiking excursion, Santiago is a magical city.

My introduction to Santiago de Compostela doesn’t begin on the pilgrimage route, yet ends with a spiritual awakening analogous with those other unique pilgrimage stories.

It was my first solo trip abroad teaching English in Spain, a country that’s always been on my travel bucket list. A small town outside of Santiago was selected as the school I’d be teaching at for the year.

Unknowingly, this teach abroad program chose the perfect city for me to live in.

A year prior, I suffered a traumatic brain injury that left me unable to function normally and complete average tasks. Migraines, headaches, and dizziness became my body’s normal temperament, a hidden disability invisible to the naked eye.

Braving travel with chronic pain was the first lesson I learned during the trip.

The vast green outdoors and fresh dew from the morning rain enlivened me daily and reminded me about the importance of slowing down so I could enjoy traveling with my hidden disability.

I also learned to stop often for daily tea breaks and to embrace the long lunch hour, siestas , with good food, company, and a nap to rest.

Meeting locals , indulging in local food, and learning Spanish allowed me to connect deeply with the beautiful culture of Santiago. After all, my dream was to travel to Spain, and I more than accomplished that dream.

Difficult or not, I learned to own my dream and I was more than surprised with the results.

Who knew that a year after my injury I’d be traveling the world with chronic pain, and for that, I’m eternally grateful.

-Ciara from Wellness Travel Diaries

18. A Blessing In Disguise

2020 has been a wild year for all of us and foreign students in China are no exception. As soon as the malevolent virus began to make its rounds in China, our university sent us home for “two weeks.”

However, within a short time, countries began to shut their borders and these “two weeks” turned into months, a full year even.

Crushed by the burden of online lectures and virtual labs, my boyfriend and I packed our bags and caught one of the first flights to his home country of Pakistan.

I had always been an over-ambitious traveler. I believed numbers were everything — the number of countries I visited, the number of hours I spent on a plane, the number of international trips I took in a year. These numbers were what defined me.

My feet were constantly itching and I never liked to spend more than a few days in a place before heading to the next country. Revisiting a place felt superfluous to me.

That’s why I was hoping to spend a month or two in Pakistan and then continue to check new countries off the list — after all, my online classes finally granted me the freedom to “work on my numbers.”

But as is usually the case in 2020, things turned out quite different from what I had expected. Borders remained closed and worldwide infections stayed rampant. At this point, I have already spent nearly half a year in Pakistan.

During this peculiar time, however, an amazing thing happened:

My mindset about travel started to change and I began to look at my long stay in Pakistan as perhaps my most valuable travel experience ever.

I may not have visited dozens of countries like in previous years but my experiences were deeper than ever before.

From trekking to one of the world’s tallest mountains to sharing tea with heavily armed officers at nearly 5,000 meters altitude to exploring hidden beaches in the most secluded regions to spontaneously being invited to village homes, my adventures in Pakistan couldn’t have been more incredible. They opened my eyes to the sheer diversity of many countries and completely transformed my idea about traveling.

It took me nearly a full year of heavy restrictions on international travel and a few months in one of the world’s most fascinating countries to give up on my superficial ideals and become a more mature traveler.

This time will always have a special place in my heart.

-Arabela from The Spicy Travel Girl

short travel stories about life-changing trips

19. What The River Taught Me

My travel story takes place in the summer of 2017 — the final summer before I graduated university — as it continues to play a significant role in the person I’ve become.

When I say that, people ask me if it was the portion of the summer I spent solo backpacking in Europe . And to their surprise, it wasn’t. It was actually the latter portion of the summer where I stayed closer to home.

For July and August I worked as a canoe guide leading whitewater canoe trips on remote rivers in Canada. It was here that I got to canoe the powerful and iconic Missinaibi River, a river that continues to influence me all these years later.

The Missinaibi River flows from the powerful Lake Superior to the even more powerful salty waters of James Bay. Here, I led a group of eight teenagers through dozens of whitewater rapids over 500 kilometers (~311 miles).

With no cell service for 25 days, we were forced to disconnect from anything other than the river.

During this trip I learned two important lessons:

First, I learned to be confident in my own abilities as a leader and problem solver.

There were a few rapids where my campers’ boats flipped and I had to rescue the campers and the canoes. One rescue saw two boats flip on a mile-long rapid. It took six hours to make it down the rapid, and during this time I managed stuck canoes and crying campers.

And while this was one of the most difficult rescues I’ve done, I was amazed at how calm I was throughout it. I gave clear directions, prioritized effectively, and kept my campers safe throughout the entire experience. Following the rescue, I had a newfound sense of confidence in my abilities.

The second lesson I learned on the Missinaibi was the power of disconnecting from society and connecting with the people around you.

A wild river commands all of your attention. Each day, you and your group must take down camp, load canoes, paddle up to eight hours while navigating both rapids and portages, get to a new campsite, set up camp, cook dinner, and go to bed.

And without the distraction of technology, your attention has nowhere else to be. You focus on the river and your teammates.

As someone who had wrestled with anxiety and depression prior to this summer, I felt at total ease on the trip. Now I seek societal disconnection and human connection as much as I can.

Sometimes the most profound, life-altering trips are the least expected trips closer to home.

-Mikaela of Voyageur Tripper

Do you have any inspiring travel experience stories about life-changing trips to share?

Enjoyed these inspiring stories about travel? Pin this blog about travel experience stories for later!

About Jessie Festa

Jessie Festa is a New York-based travel content creator who is passionate about empowering her audience to experience new places and live a life of adventure. She is the founder of the solo female travel blog, Jessie on a Journey, and is editor-in-chief of Epicure & Culture , an online conscious tourism magazine. Along with writing, Jessie is a professional photographer and is the owner of NYC Photo Journeys , which offers New York photo tours, photo shoots, and wedding photography. Her work has appeared in publications like USA Today, CNN, Business Insider, Thrillist, and WestJet Magazine.

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These stories are so much fun to read! Thanks so much for putting a post like this together. It’s great to be able to check out other people’s blogs and read about other people’s experiences!

Always great to read about travel experiences of others. Some great stories to read over coffee. I’ve Pinned your post for future reference and to share with others. Will check out each story author’s blog as well. Great Job! 🙂

Amazing story for new traveler like me thanks for your contribution

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People Who Quit Their Jobs And Set Off To Travel The World Are Getting Real About What It Was Really Like

"When your boss hands you a mop and points you to an actual pile of shit on the floor, that's when you know. So I quit, and I did something I encourage you all to do at least once in your life: I bought a one-way ticket to a place I’d never been and I just let life happen..."

BuzzFeed Staff

Have you ever fantasized about leaving your job and your life behind, packing up a bag, and embarking on the adventure of a lifetime? I know I do all the time. Well, Someone over on Quora asked, "What is it like to quit your job and travel the world ?" Here's what people said.

1. "my wife and i have been on the road for seven months. we quit our jobs last june, sold everything, and packed our stuff into two big backpacks. we walked about 1000 kilometers in china and 700 kilometers in vietnam so far, and we will travel mostly on foot in the next few years...".

Two people inside a tent with their feet sticking out, overlooking a scenic mountain view at dawn. Camping gear and misty mountains visible in the background

"...We don't want just to visit places or rush to as many destinations as possible in a short period. We plan to live our lives on the road.

We mostly do our own cooking, make delicious sandwiches for the day and cook some noodles at night. If the hostel we stay in allows us to use the kitchen, I make some nice dishes with rice. We figured this is much healthier and cheaper than eating out for every meal (although it won't keep us from sampling local cuisines occasionally).

Spending a lengthy period in a culture gives us an advantage in understanding it. Although I can only speak some daily phrases now to bargain in a local market in Vietnam, it still gets me closer to the Vietnamese people. The books about Vietnam I've read on the road equip me with some extended knowledge (compared to the short paragraphs in Lonely Planet guidebooks) to enable me to appreciate the art, architecture, and music and to understand the culture and the people, especially their feelings.

IMO, traveling like this improves one's sensibility and empathy. You are not just dealing with people in the tourism industry or fellow travelers. You meet local people who speak no English or your own language, who have never traveled outside their own village. You realize that while the cultural difference could be vast, we are all humans and share many common emotions , sympathies, and excitements. This realization motivates us to explore more, improve our language skills, and share our understandings with fellow countrymen or our communities.

I am looking forward to visit the rest of the world like this, it brings me joy and fulfillment."

2. "In short, it is heaven, and it's also hell. I never thought traveling the world would be as hard as it was. Quitting my job, giving up on my career , and facing uncertainties was way easier than expected. Back then I was so frustrated that I wanted to know what life has to offer. I had a good job and a very decent salary. It didn't make me happy. But it helped me to save enough money to make a dream come true. The journey itself was heaven. I lived in a flow-like state for a year. Coming back home was quite the opposite. I felt like a stranger in my own country..."

"...Everything was so familiar, yet I did not feel any connection to my environment. I was an alien in my own country. This was not the end of it. Things became even more challenging. Although I began feeling 'at home' again after a few months, I was still trying to understand how my journey shaped me. From an outsider's standpoint, I explored some countries and cultures. But for me, it turned out to be a journey to find myself. It took me years to integrate this lesson."

3. “' Alex, someone has taken a shit on the floor. Can you go clean it up please.' Call me crazy, but this was the moment I knew it was time to leave my bartending job behind. Sure, bartending was fun. It was easy to slip some vodka into a glass of soda water and act like you weren’t drunk at work. And the odd phone number on a coaster was always appreciated. But when your boss hands you a mop and points you to an actual pile of shit on the floor, that's when you know. So I quit. I’d saved a few thousand dollars over the previous months and I had nowhere to go and no one to answer to. I did something I encourage you all to do at least once in your life: I bought a one-way ticket to a place I’d never been and I just let life happen..."

A hiker walks on a forest trail near a serene lake surrounded by trees and mountains

"...I rounded up my three best mates and pointed my compass to Canada. I was on the road for six months before finally returning home to Australia. I visited some incredible places including Lake Moraine (Alberta, Canada), Niagara Falls (Ontario), Yellowstone National Park, Puerto Viejo (Costa Rica), Panama City, Mount Rushmore, Chicago, New York City, San Blas Islands (Panama), The Cocora Valley (Colombia), and Easter Island (Chile). To sum up what it’s like to quit your job and travel the world… At first, it’s scary. It’s confronting. You might even have second thoughts about rolling the dice and leaving your life behind. But you will never, ever regret it. You should know that you won’t come home the same person you were when you left. And that’s exactly why you should do it."

— Alexander P.

4. "By the time I was in my final year at university, I was exhausted from running the rat race. I still remember my six-year-old self under pressure to be at the top of the class. And it never stopped. Board exams. Joint Entrance Examinations. University exams. College placements. I wasn’t running away from hard work, but I hated the fact that life was all about grades rather than knowledge and salary rather than job satisfaction. So, I decided not to apply for any job. I knew if I got a job, it would be immensely difficult to quit. I knew I would be swayed away by the baits of promotions, comfort, and predictable income...So I quit my job before I got one. I still don’t have a college degree..."

"I'm traveling full-time and visit home only to meet my family and get visas. I always wanted to travel slowly so traveling isn't all about ticking off the touristy attractions of a place from an itinerary prepared by travel agents. I immerse myself in its culture and local life when I spend 20–60 days at a place. I rent a room, get a scooter, and make local friends. I feel a part of the community. I feel I'm no longer being seen as an outsider. I feel accepted. I feel connected. This would have never been possible with a regular job. I'm never in a hurry to return home. Living this lifestyle, I feel every place I visit is a home...

I never run out of exciting places to see. As I can choose where I want to spend my time, I pick the ones most appealing and gain a new perspective. People say travel broadens your outlook towards the world and people. And it isn't easy to know until you see the world from a different perspective. Sometimes you get surprised by the differences in cultures and sometimes you are amazed by the similarities....You are surprised by how some stereotypes of places its people are shattered and how some of them are strengthened.

For me, traveling is always more about the experiences than the destination. Despite being an unmatched brilliance, the Taj Mahal doesn't evoke any emotion in me. However, I have sentiments attached to diving and exploring the magnificent underwater world of corals and sea creatures, biking through the clouds in the mountains, braving heavy rains, getting high on local drinks, losing my way in the forest, and many other experiences (some of which I won't mention publicly).

Finally, traveling is all about the people. 'H appiness is only real when shared.' A good company can lighten up even a wrong place. I've met people from around the world and made many friends. I made a friend in Chiang Mai, and I met her again in Kuala Lumpur. I have friends all over the world.

Ultimately, ' I took the road less traveled, and that has made all the difference.'"

5. "The night before my 24th birthday, I decided to do something I always wanted to do. I hated my corporate job. My favorite way to pass time at work used to be updating an Excel file containing my tentative itinerary to travel the whole country of India. It used to be my only source of entertainment amidst the mind-numbing, monotonous routine. Three days after my birthday, I put in my papers. My boss was more confused than angry. Those few days, while I served my notice period, were awesome. Surprisingly, my body aches vanished. I got my voracious appetite back. My parents came to terms with the idea of me traveling alone . And then I left Mumbai..."

Person stands under an archway, gazing at the Taj Mahal in Agra, India, with the sun shining above the iconic monument

"...Man, it was liberating! Three days into the trip, I canceled all my tickets. Then onwards, it was just impromptu planning every day. I ate on the streets and sometimes slept in the open. I did whatever I was cautioned against. I made friends daily. They helped me chalk out my next destination, ensuring they were my trip's best hosts. I hitch-hiked whenever I could. I asked for free food and a free stay, shamelessly. And I was welcomed with open arms. I befriended a dog in Goa, learned how to travel without a ticket in Jan Shatabdi, observed with awe as a Kathakali performer put on his makeup, stayed in a hut alone all day, just breathing, witnessed Deepavali on two consecutive days (Tamil Nadu celebrates a day before the rest of India). And I conversed with people without having any common language. There were numerous experiences. I felt like a toddler, suddenly starting to walk and looking at the world from a very different angle. And then I came back to Mumbai. Only this time, I was much more calm. I felt a sense of satisfaction, having learned a lot about nature and life. And never once did I feel any regret about leaving my job. Now I'm waiting for my passport and some savings. Next stop, Europe!"

— Soubhik S.

6. "In 2017, I was 21 and working for a very informal company in San Diego. I wouldn’t say I liked it, but I needed the money. I saved for a while. One night, one of my best friends sent me a screenshot of plane tickets to Iceland and persuaded me to have a trip this summer with some other friends, and magically, without thinking about it, I said, 'screw it, yes, I’m in.' We went to Iceland, which was not a common destination for vacations then. After that, we flew to Switzerland and visited the most popular cities. Amazing country. It is beautiful, peaceful, and well-organized...:

"...After that, we went to Paris. It was like a dream. Meeting a place you have only seen in a lot of movies, seeing the Mona Lisa, Eiffel Tower, etc. Our last city was Amsterdam, a very chill place. I bonded a lot with my friends in there. We had a lot of fun in Dam Square at night. A very pretty downtown! After that trip, I returned to Mexico with not too much money but many memories. I met new people, made stronger friendships, and started to meet a new person, me, based on the experiences I had. Changing money for memories is the best investment, and now I understand it. If I have the money again, I will do it one more time. Traveling while young with your friends is the best experience you could ever have."

— Richard A.

7. "This past April, I quit my job at Dell, crammed some stuff into a backpack, and went to Southeast Asia (and a few other places) for about six weeks. It was not exactly 'traveling the world,' as we only went to a few countries, but it was more of a backpacker/adventure travel experience than I had ever had. (Last month, I made another two-and-a-half-week trip with a backpack to Australia and New Zealand, which has gotten much less scary since then). The trip was much more modest than others described on this thread, so I won't act like it was some kind of transformative experience or anything. That said, I did learn a few things..."

Two people are sitting by a tent on a coastal hill, admiring the sunset with a surfboard nearby, suggesting a camping trip and surfing adventure

"...I learned I don't need that much 'stuff' to exist. Back in the U.S., I had an amassed closet and a dresser full of clothes, most of which I never wore. My travel clothes consisted of two pairs of shorts, three pairs each of underwear and socks, about six T-shirts, and a sweater.

I vastly underrated "home" while I was living there. Adventure travel is a tempting siren when you're sitting at your desk job and dreaming of grand adventures at Mt. Everest or the Great Barrier Reef. I think this caused me to ponder the future and underrate the present. Home is fantastic . I live in a country where I can freely travel and live in any of 50 states, where all of my friends and family are easy to see and contact, and where I'm relatively unmolested by the police/government/taxman/whatever (I'll grant that this doesn't describe everybody's experience in the USA and that I'm luckier than most in this regard.). For some reason, at the beginning of my trips, I always think I'll never want to return home, but every time, I'm mistaken. It's made me more thankful and observant in my regular life in the States.

People are people are people. No matter what country you go to, people put their pants on one leg at a time. Even though different cultures can be vastly different, most humans share many everyday experiences...

There's nothing so special about 'backpack travel,' but it's still awesome. I think everybody should take at least one backpacking trip, even just for the opportunity to have a terrible time and learn a lot from the experience. There's a lot to see out there."

— Patrick M.

8. "I was 28, single, had a high-paying job and a new mortgage. I was also running out of time. If I didn't move quickly (before I turned 30), I'd lose out on the working holiday visa opportunity forever. Then, the guilt kicked in. By 30, I should have had a good job, a house, a wife, and kids...During that time, I learned a valuable life lesson: There is nothing scarier than settling for a life that is less than the one you can live. I had a well-paying, respectable job that didn't light me up. I had a mortgage. And I felt trapped. I realized that staying in my comfort zone was not comfortable at all. So I asked myself, 'How might I make this work?'"...

"...First, I researched where I might move and got excited at the possibilities. Then I nervously asked my company for a transfer overseas, and surprisingly, I got it. I explained my decision to my dad, and he said something that has always remained with me...' Son, go now while you can. Don't have regrets like I have now when you're my age.' With his encouragement, I booked a one-way ticket to Toronto. A month before my departure, I put my house on the market and found a tenant to cover my mortgage repayments. I felt liberated by deciding to chase my dreams and listen to what 'I' wanted.

Ten months later, I was on a flight to Toronto. Over the next two years, I made wonderful lifelong friendships, traveled to places I never knew existed, flash-mobbed, free-hugged, and hitchhiked across Canada, became an entrepreneur, and grew in more ways than I thought possible. Now, I'm on a mission to empower creativity, freedom, and connection so we can make a positive difference in the world. So, if you're debating whether to chase a dream and follow an opportunity right in front of you, ask yourself: Are you settling for a life that is less than the one you have the chance to live? If yes, how does that sit with you?"

— Anfernee C

9. "It was exhilarating, exciting, exhausting, educating, confusing, boring, frightening, and humbling (not necessarily in that order). You will see things in a new light. When you return, things that were 'big problems' before you left will seem petty and insignificant. You will have to confront your preconceived notions about people and places. You will learn a lot about other cultures and yourself. It's one of the best things you can do. I wish more people would do it. Then the world wouldn't be so full of hate and bigotry."

— Christer N.

10. "I just resigned for the third time in the last ten years to travel. I'm going to rewind to 2012 when I'd visited around four countries. I had been working for the last few years with the same company in multiple roles, getting a good steady income, but I knew I was young, hungry, and passionate to see more than my little city in England. I come from an Indian background, and it's unusual in our culture to leave a good job to 'travel.' I know in my family it's almost unheard of..."

People enjoying a seafood meal with gloves, cracking shells, and sipping on drinks outdoors. The image focuses on hands, food, and drinks

"I was 23, and the only thing I was sure about was I wanted to travel to see the world. I did a lot of research and set my sights on Canada and Central America. I booked a one-way ticket, told my family, and set off to Vancouver in the Summer of 2012. I travelled for around eight months..I worked in a summer camp and slept in a hut made of palm trees in wooden cabins in the jungle.

I took dangerously high-speed packed buses and boats that felt they were going to break at any moment, and I crossed land borders in the most violent countries in the world and hitchhiked in cities. I lived with a family in the city and stayed with a tribe on an island without electricity. I ate local food, went volcano boarding, and learned unbelievable amounts of history. To answer your question, what is it like? It's exhilarating; it's educational, and I learned about life, people, culture, languages, and food to anybody reading this and wanting to quit traveling. I say do it! You have more to gain than ever, and later in life, when you reflect, you will remember the incredible places you've traveled to rather than the job you've always had! Fast forward to now, 30 countries later, I just quit my job again, saved a little more, and started my next travel adventure.. this time to Australia and Asia."

11. "Perhaps the single greatest feeling in my life came on the first day of my first (of three) 'quit your job and backpack the world for months' trips. My friend and I had arrived on one-way tickets to London the night before. It was a beautiful day, and we were sitting in St. James Park, trying to decide what to do. And not just what to do that day but what to do in the coming weeks and months. It was exhilarating. With no plans, we were just throwing out ideas: let's go to Marrakech; they say Prague is beautiful; can we get above the Arctic Circle? Could we take the Trans-Siberian railroad? We did all those things, and I saw and experienced things that changed (and I think improved) me forever..."

"But to be honest, none of those topped that incredible feeling of freedom we had that morning of infinite potential. I don't believe there is any other way to get that feeling than to commit to a step-into-the-void, open-ended, I'll-know-where-I'm-going-when-I-get-there adventure fully. One of the worst feelings I've ever had has happened to me on all three of my multi-month trips. And each time I felt it, I knew it was time to go home. It is the flip side of the freedom coin. The first time I was in Shanghai—seven months into my trip—walking to the train station.

Suddenly, I became acutely aware that everyone hustling along that sidewalk was going somewhere or doing something that mattered. Except for me. They were going to work. To meet friends. To see the doctor. To play soccer. Whatever. I felt rootless, decadent, and parasitic, spending my days, weeks, and months wandering through museums and temples. I could not wait to get back to work, relationships, family, and permanence. I don't believe there's any other way to appreciate the importance of purpose and community than to consciously cut those ties and float free of them for a while."

12. "Deciding to quit my secure and reliable job in the finance industry to travel the world was one of the most exhilarating feelings I've ever experienced. The scariest part of it all was realizing and deciding that this was what I needed to do. My journey is not exactly typical, but it proves you can figure things out along the way..."

A woman in a patterned skirt and sheer blouse stands before ornate traditional Balinese temples, gazing upwards. The background features intricate temple details

"...In 2013, a friend of mine mentioned to me one night that she wanted to travel to Australia and South East Asia for a few months. For some reason, I immediately said I'M IN! I took some comfort in the fact that this was my knee jerk reaction, like my body was pulling me forward before my brain had time to throw fear in to the equation...Perhaps this was a long time coming because I knew my job made me dread waking up in the morning, and the idea of the unknown was far scarier than the idea of staying in this job and in this lifestyle for one day longer.

I spent four amazing months working and traveling in Australia and one month exploring Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia, where I sipped homemade rice wine with our Indonesian taxi driver, witnessed endangered wild orangutans in the jungles of Borneo, and snacked on four-inch grasshoppers in Bangkok. I had no idea what I planned to do after this, but I figured I might as well take advantage of 6 months left on my work holiday visa in Australia! What happened next was unexpected. I landed a job at Australia's number one investment bank and decided to stay and be sponsored. At this time, it was more important to me to stay and live in Australia than to create a new career. Do I regret it? Not one bit! I spent two and a half more years there, building lasting friendships, exploring jaw-dropping landscapes, and falling in love. However, the nagging feeling of my soul being crushed slowly in a career that didn't provide any fulfillment finally got the best of me, and I knew I had to leave.

I packed my bags with the biggest smile on my face. I spent two months traveling Fiji and New Zealand alone, something I'd never considered if I hadn't taken that initial journey to leave the US, get out of my comfort zone, and distance myself from the toxic idea that traveling alone is just weird. I kayaked through the Fijian jungle that I could only explain as a scene from Jurassic Park , trekked (more like stumbled) through Tongariro National Park, home of the famous 'Mount Doom' from Lord of the Rings ,' and experienced the most wondrous three hours of my entire life: swimming and playing with hundreds of dolphins in the ocean off of Kaikoura, New Zealand!

Now I'm back in the States (for the time being), growing a career coaching business that incorporates these fundamental lessons I've learned from conquering my limitations with my business partner's headhunting expertise in the hiring process. My love of exploration and culture does not end here. In a few months, I'll be working out of Lima, Peru, networking, coaching, and building a business while living the life I only dictate for myself."

13. "I quit my job to travel, and it was the most rewarding experience ever. On so many levels, I tested myself, challenged my prejudice, met new people, discovered new cultures, and (kind of) learned about myself too. It sounds like a cliché, but it's the truth. I can't recommend it enough. I always knew the rat race wasn't for me, and my travel experience confirmed it to me…"

Person holding an open passport with visa stamps against a scenic coastal landscape, featuring a shoreline, ocean, and a town

"... After getting a job at 20, I worked and saved hard for five years. I had saved around €30,000 to travel for 18 months on a budget, but I could still allow myself a few pleasures: fees for attractions/sights and a good amount of beer for fun. I designed my route and brought it to a travel agent for a quote. I broke up my trip into several stretches. Still, the route was London to Delhi, Delhi to Bangkok, Singapore to Sydney, Sydney to Queenstown, Queenstown to Santiago, and Rio to London.

I wanted to start my trip in India to test my resilience and adaptability: it's meant to be such a culture shock that if I survived India, the rest would be a walk in the park.

It's about what's right for you. I enjoyed having a rough plan, knowing roughly where to go and what to see, but I also value flexibility, so take that into account. You will meet fellow travelers who've been to a fantastic place you hadn't heard of; you will get stranded somewhere overnight, caught in a tropical storm, a fallen tree on the road will delay your progress, the bus won't leave on schedule because it's not complete yet… no worries, take it in your stride it's part of the fun…"

— Philippe O.

14. "It was fun but stupid. I got away with it for a few reasons: I was in my mid-20s when a flaky 'pursue your passions!' attitude was tolerated in the young; I came from a privileged background so mom and dad could bail me out if need be; The economy was still pretty good, and I was practically assured I'd get a decent job when I re-entered the workforce; and finally, I was healthy as a horse and didn't really 'need' health insurance..."

"I flitted about Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Canada, parts of Central America, and the interior of Mexico, and also jotted all over places in America that I wanted to see. The 'rents did have to bail me out financially a few times. I don't know what I would have done without the family money. I settled down at age 28, got serious about my career, and limited my travel to the vacation time I'd earned. It might seem more limiting, but it's great, knowing that I have an apartment, a job, and a paycheck to come home to!"

— Melissa M.

15. "I quit Microsoft, got an around-the-world ticket, and went on a solo nine-month, 13-country trip. It was the best thing I've done. I'm back to working for Microsoft, but the experience opened my eyes to many things..."

A traveler with a large backpack sits in front of a historic cathedral, admiring the architecture

"You'll learn to trust your instinct, intuition, and judgment. You'll learn to read small prints and achieve new levels of open-mindedness and humility. You'll learn what really matters to you. You'll learn to challenge authorities. You'll learn how strong and weak you are. You'll learn about loneliness and how to make friends with it. You'll learn it's fantastic to be completely alone. You'll learn to be grateful for little acts of kindness. You'll learn the world is big and beautiful and people are kind and generous. GO FOR IT!!!

Have you quit a job or left something comfortable behind to travel the world? Do you have any regrets? Tell us about your experience in the comments or in this anonymous form .

Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.

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My Top 9 WORST Travel Experiences

Planning your trip? Use my favorite resources!

#1. Missing my Flight Home

#2. Missing my Connecting Flight to India, Twice! (and Lost my Baggage)

#3. Scooter Crash in Goa

#4. I once got Electrocuted in Mexico

Top Advice: Get Travel Insurance

SafetyWing Travel insurance: simple & flexible

#5. Delhi Belly In Dehradun

#6. Robbed by a Biker Thief

Safety and Security Gear for your Travels:

Anti-Theft Travel Purse

PacSafe Bag Protector

#8. My Arm BLEW UP From a Mosquito Bite

#9. I Once Received the WRONG Visa Stamp

Further Reading

10 of My Worst Travel Experiences

1. Forgot my phone in a Toilet Booth at Chennai Airport

2. Stranded without a Hostel at 11 pm in Argentina

3. A government Bus left with my luggage on board

4. Denied boarding my flight to Cuba

5. Denied entry into Guatemala at the border

6. Being stalked by a stranger in Colombia

7. Discovering the last currency note gone on a Bus in Guatemala

8. Finding myself on a Snow Hike Without Crampons

9. Being Stalked in India

10. Being Mugged at Knifepoint in Colombia

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