The Travel Best Friend
Sometimes our travel best friends know us better than our own friends back home. We meet them on the road, and bond quickly. Maybe it’s the fact they have no preconceived judgement of us, and can love us for who they see now, and not from the past. The travel best friend can act as a momentary psychologist – help us see more clearly. They can even open up a new layer of yourself that you never knew before.
Our time is limited when we travel. And people look for those they can relate to.
A travel best friend can appear at any time, and maybe you never thought that person would be the type of friend you needed. But for a brief moment in your life, your paths crossed at the exact same time in the most random of places.
Travel best friends can come from such different worlds, maybe even a different culture, yet for that one day/week/month you are the same, and sometimes all you got.
You shared stories, perched on some 12th century church, as you looked over the foreign city lights and shared a bottle of wine in plastic cups you got for free from the mini mart.
When the road seemed lonely, and the earth was foreign, a travel best friend helped light the path to make it all memorable.
You really didn’t even know where both of you were going in life – who you were going to be – what was waiting for you around the corner when you got home. You just had now.
Maybe you decided to scrap your own travel plans and go YOLO to a new country together, and the only way to get there was a 12-hour sleeper train. But it didn’t matter, because the two of you were citizens of the world – open heart, dreams big enough to swallow the sea.
But journeys always come to an end at some point. A hug never seems enough for what you shared. You part ways and make promises to visit each other in hometowns, or at college, or plan another adventure. And again, you are standing facing the world head on.
When you get back to your hometowns, you explain your crazy adventure around the world to your friends – but they don’t understand. Those jokes you shared with your travel best friend don’t make sense, and you definitely can’t tell the story like your best friend had. And it’s that moment when you wished they were near.
Time ticks away, and those Facebook messages of your adventure slowly dwindle out. You both get back into the routine of your daily life; paying bills, driving your car, going to work. Those memories of doing cartwheels on the beach, riding camels, walking for 10 hours in flip flops to see ancient Rome, or giggling about the cute foreigner at your hostel…cannot be heard anymore.
Your travel best friend becomes another face in your sea of Facebook friends – only to receive an update every now and then about their trip to the hottest club, or a gym selfie.
But never forget that you were meant to meet for a reason – if only for a parenthesis in your life’s novel. We are meant to share, to learn from each other, and above all, listen and help figure it all out – whether you really do or not.
Here is to the travel best friend. May you meet again someday.
Do you have fun stories about a travel best friend? Please share your stories in the comments!
