Imagine: You’ve just eaten a delicious hamburger, one of the best you’ve ever tasted. It’s pure, juicy perfection. Satisfied, you sit back with a little burp. Then someone hands you another one.
You’re less enthusiastic, of course. You’re already full. Well, the same can happen with travel. If you’re rushing around from place to place, seeing the 20th castle that week or experiencing your fifth flight in as many days, it’s going to become wearying. You’ll experience travel fatigue.
It may be a physical thing, since too much travel, skipping time zones, long flights, rushing around with luggage, can all leave you feeling exhausted.
Or perhaps your mind has been overstimulated by seeing the Taj Mahal, Eiffel Tower, Great Wall and Colosseum all within a week, and the wonder and excitement of seeing new things has dulled. It isn’t that traveling has become less amazing, it’s that you’ve moved around too much in a short time.
Travel fatigue also hits people who have to travel a lot for their jobs. Picture Edward Norton’s ‘Jack’, at the beginning of Fight Club, who spent his insomniac life on planes and faceless hotels fingering single cotton buds wrapped in plastic and meeting ‘ single serve friends‘ on the plane.
So how to prevent travel overdose?
1. Sit Still.
Visiting one place and simply hanging out for a while can be a much better experience than one of those 12-countries-in-3-days packages.
2. Cut back or pad out.
In your company are you needlessly shouldering all the business trips? Is there someone you can delegate to? Tried webcams? If you must go, try padding out the visit with a few extra days for R&R.
3. Check your itinerary
Does just reading it make you exhausted? Not a good sign.
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July 13th, 2007 at 5:41 pm
Good way to battle travel fatigue? only 4 items necessary:-
Visa extension, hammock, pile of books, large bag of green stuff.
You’ll be recharged in no time.
Marvellous.
Nb. I won’t be offended if you don’t publish this comment
July 13th, 2007 at 5:49 pm
You make some good points in your post. When you have limited vacation time, it’s hard to resist the urge to schedule as many tours as possible and visit too many cities on one trip. But I find that by paring down my itinerary and sticking to one place, my trips often end up filled with richer, more memorable experiences.
July 13th, 2007 at 7:38 pm
Nath: Why would I not publish your comment? I’m a fan of parsley myself. Most relaxing.
Michelle: Yeah, it’s the old quality vs. quantity trick.
March 3rd, 2011 at 3:12 am
If you’re still on the fence: grab your favorite earphones, head down to a Best Buy and ask to plug them into a Zune then an iPod and see which one sounds better to you, and which interface makes you smile more. Then you’ll know which is right for you.