Building a Travel Rhythm: Routines, Recovery, and Movement

We all have our routines at home. Our alarms go off at the same time for work every day, we have our preset rotation of restaurants for lunch, and we have our go-to evening pleasures, like TV shows or video games. Our days and weeks chug along more or less on autopilot as the rhythm of life beats along. As a long-term traveller, our rhythm is constantly being interrupted with new cities, travel days, exhaustion, and everything else that comes with life on the road. We live in a state of constant flux, and if we're not careful, that flux can turn our adventure of a lifetime into trip from hell.

Just like at home, it is important to establish a travel rhythm to keep your journey humming along. You need a routine of some kind, days to recover from the excitement and constant change, and the opportunity to call a single place home, if only for a week. While your travel rhythm won't be the same as the day-in, day-out routine of home, having even just a semblance of normal course of life will do wonders in reducing stress, saving money, and keeping your spirits high.

Find Your Travel Routine

When you first start travelling long-term, be it for six weeks or six years, it is natural to try to go everywhere and see everything all at once. It is a trap that is as much a rite of passage as buying your backpack. Eventually, though, we all learn such a pace is unsustainable. Eventually, we all need to settle into a routine that is fast-paced enough to keep us interested but slow enough not to wear us out. Every person is different, and routines will be different in different countries, but finding yours is absolutely crucial when living life on the road.

For me, the perfect routine when visiting new places is to travel in on day one, explore the city on days two, three, and four, and travel out on day five. That gives me an afternoon, evening, or night to recover from my travel day, three full days to explore the city, and a morning to relax before boarding my next plane, train, or bus. Each day differs, but I generally like to plan three things during my day; one before lunch, one after lunch, and one in the evening. That could be visiting churches in the morning, a museum in the afternoon, and a performance in the evening, or it could be three museums in a single day. Of course, I always take time for my morning cafe solo before hitting the ground running.

Take Time to Recover

The most underappreciated force in long-term travel is exhaustion. As travellers (especially American travellers) in a new place, we want to soak it all in during our limited time. After all, we only get so many vacation days a year to explore new cultures, eat new foods, and see amazing sights. But to keep long-term travel sustainable, you have to build in time to relax and recover from the toll on your body, and there is a toll.

Our modern brains are not wired to sleep in a new environment every night, nor to change our location every day. When we do, our brains go into hypersensitive mode, soaking up all the sights, sounds, smells, and changes in our environment. Every time someone coughs in their sleep in a hostel, your brain picks it up; every police officer walking down the street, you brain sees. Add in all the decisions you make in a single day (what to wear, where to eat, when to be at the bus stop, etc.), and you find yourself using more brain power than you do in your normal life back home where most of these decisions are on autopilot. After a while (I'm talking months, not days), you become accustomed to this, and the hypersensitivity and decision-making dials down, but for the new traveller, your brain being on high alert takes a physical and mental toll that we don't consciously register. That is, until you do.

That's why you have to build in recovery days. And by "days," I mean "days at a time." Taking a day off here and there won't do it. You need a few days to relax and detox in a single, preferably familiar place. No museums, no adventures, just an easy time of no commitments and as few decisions as possible. You won't get it right on the first try, and exhaustion will put you down against your will a time or few before you become attuned to the signals your body is sending you, but you will eventually get there. Exhaustion put me down hard in Malaga, Spain, and Ankara, Turkey, before I figured it out. What did I do the next time? Took a writing retreat to a deserted stretch of beach in Thailand. I did four things during that week: eat, sleep, write, and watch an afternoon bullfight online. That was it. No exploring, no adventures, not even diving. When you finally nail your routine and recovery down, you'll find your own place and ways to pass the time.

Movement Takes Time, Energy, and Money

One of the greatest recurring travel costs is movement of any kind. Local buses, cross-country trains, international flights, they add up over time. Worse, the financial cost is compounded by the physical cost of your travel time and energy. It doesn't matter how short that train ride is, walking all of your gear from a hostel in one city to the train station, on the train, and to the hostel in the next city takes more energy than most people realise. That's why controlling and deliberately planning your movement is important.

I said earlier that I like to travel in on day one followed by exploring on days two, three, and four. If I arrive in my new city at 10h00, I'm still not planning anything that day (with rare exceptions). Chances are, the travel day will exhaust me. Instead, I will drop my bags at my hostel and head out for a coffee or beer in a streetside cafe with my Kindle. Maybe I'll decide to walk around a bit, but most days, I'll just sit there and soak up the atmosphere while coming down from my travel day.

Of course, the best way to reduce the stress of travel days is to simply have fewer of them. Not only will moving less often save you money, but you will be able to get comfortable in your new destination and give your brain a chance to calm down with the hypersensitivity. I'm not saying to spend so much time in one place that you get bored (been there, done that, it's not very fun), but being somewhere long enough to have the option to waste a day watching movies or sitting in a still cathedral is a fantastic way to save your time, energy, and money on the road.

Parting Thoughts

Ultimately, your travel rhythm is your travel rhythm. What works for me won't necessarily work for you. When my friend Jo and I travelled together in Europe and North Africa, we quickly learned that our rhythms weren't in sync. I was a morning person, she was a night person; I liked to stay in once place for a longer time, whereas she got bored more easily; I was susceptible to exhaustion, but she could run like a diesel engine. And that's fine. Find what works for you and your travel companions. At the end of the day, finding your travel rhythm is about making your travel adventure as sustainable and enjoyable as possible, not a scientific study in become the perfect traveller. Remember, there is no destination in life; it's all about the journey.