Travel Friendships

Hey everyone!

Hope you're all having the best week!

I wanted to spend a bit of time today talking about something very close to my heart, and in my opinion, one of the best and also hardest parts of traveling. Travel friendships.

This is one topic that has been on my mind in the last few days as I have been struggling a tad with settling into Canadian life. Nothing too intense, and nothing that I really want to go into just yet over here, if ever.
But I just can't get over how fantastic some of my beautiful friends that I've met over here have been in helping me through that slight rough patch, even if they don't know it themselves.

So today I wanted to just go into the whole dynamic of travel friendships and just how strange but beautiful they can be!


I've always been a person who has held my friendships as the most important part of my life. I've constantly craved that closeness, that feeling of love and affection that comes along with a good friendship, especially while I've been out of relationships.
I'm someone who constantly feels the need to chat to my close friends, to see them and keep them close to maintain those relationships. It's been a routine for years for me.

But the minute you start making travel friendships, as a traveler, with other travelers, it's a whole new world.
You make the strongest connections, with the best people who are so like-minded to yourself for about 2 days and then you leave, or they leave or you both leave and that could be it. It's a difficult thing to deal with in the start, especially for anyone you may make a more romantic connection with.

As difficult as that can be, it can also be so beautiful because it is so pure. It's a friendship, a connection that isn't jaded by literally anything, life doesn't get in the way of these friendships, people don't get upset that you don't see them enough, you don't feel the need to sacrifice things or make allowances to spend time with these people, they are just there. There's no baggage, no previous arguments or background opinions of these people, they are what they are and you can be exactly as you are, together.

I was quite baffled recently with some of the travel friendships that I have made whilst over in America and Canada when I went through a day or two where I was struggling a bit, as I mentioned before. I got to a point where I was truly worried that because all of my long term friends were a world away, that I would really need to deal with the majority of that stress and that mental turmoil alone.
But that was before I reached out to a few people that I met while I was over here and was truly taken back by the love and support that they all gave me. It was such a humbling experience as a month ago, these people had no idea that I even existed, yet they were so willing to help and support me through life in general.
I can't even begin to describe how greatful I am for that.

But that's the thing that I love about traveling. That no matter what happens, you're in a hostel with 200 people staying there, but they're all in a similar situation. We're all dealing with the excitement, the troubles, the stress and the unknown of traveling, working and just being so far away from where we call home.
It's that fact that turns us all into a little family with one of the strongest connections that I've ever come across. 

And of course, every now and then, you meet a person, or a group of people, that even though you are traveling, even though you do only get a short amount of time to spend together before you go your seperate ways, that touch you and relate to you on a level where that friendship does last the test of time. The test of time and most importantly, distance.
There is nothing more beautiful to me than making a connection with someone for 2-3 days and then staying in touch and catching up for years to come.

It's these connections that make traveling so worthwhile. New connections with amazing people, amazing countries and just one more piece of the world. 


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