Travelling the world on a gap year

Throughout 2022, I travelled the Rio de Janeiro coast of Brazil, the south of Thailand and interrailed around Europe in the Summer, each for a month. First, I travelled to Sao Paulo in Brazil with my two best friends and on arriving at our first hostel I immediately wasn’t sure about my decision to fly so far away from home.

It took just 24 hours for that to change.

Immediately arriving in Rio de Janeiro and picturing the vibrant city in the flesh I knew I was in the right place, and I should make the most of my time. The itinerary of my trip then later carried on to Thailand in May where I explored Bangkok and headed down South to visit the beautiful islands Thailand had to offer.

Then I returned home and luckily was able to work in between my trips to save up for my Interrailing trip throughout July across Prague, Vienna, Budapest, and Croatia.

Travelling was something completely fresh and out of my comfort zone and being exposed to entirely new cultures and people was a great life experience for me. Through my new understanding of different cultures, I was also able to pick up new languages and

found it is much easier to learn a new language when you are fully immersed within the speaking country.

It was amazing to be able to meet people from all over the world and to think I now have friends that I can potentially visit in the future in places such as Germany and Brazil.

Still, I found it difficult to get used to constantly leaving these places and the people behind, knowing it is unlikely you will see them again.

I found that the actual travel part to travelling does become draining towards the end of each trip feeling like you are consistently on the move. Many travellers have recounted that they would be on trains without a seat for nearly 24 hours on end, but majority of the time the end goal and destination made the hours wasted worth it.

Having a year out of education to see what is out there across the world felt needed at the time and I feel I have learnt a lot of different things from my experience.

Edited by Nadia Lincoln