Anxieties of a Reluctant Traveller
By Jack Harry - Winner of BackTracker Erasmus Competition 2015
For one reason or another Iāve never had āthatā trip away. A lack of enthusiasm, money or organisation have always come between me and my seminal exotic getaway. Fortunately this isnāt a sob story; Iāve had my Vodka and 0% beer fuelled post-GCSE coming of age week away and my parentsā generosity meant I got drunk on Las Ramblas and went to clubs where I saw people on hard drugs for the first time after being accepted to university. In years that followed though, most of my spare money was put towards underwhelming scores rather than an Iguazu Falls piggybank, not that I minded, I was happy to watch Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents and its spin-offs in smoke filled rooms and decide that it wasnāt really for me.
The thing is, I study languages and now find myself in Chile for 5 months. The first part of my Year Abroad was spent in Bordeaux and it was easy enough not to drift too far from my āyeah itās pretty nice, very French, but a bit boringā line that Iād got in my head from the outset, but here Iām plunged into the world of the gap-year, the wanderlust afflicted and the nomads. I may have stopped smoking weed now (cheers panic attacks), but my opinions on travelling are still laden with some of the pretension and a lot of the cynicism from my wake and bake days. One of the things that has stayed with me is the uncomfortable immediacy of it all, seeing āX and two other friends are at Machu Picchuā pop up on my newsfeed seems hugely mundane and has induced in me a paralysing and restrictive fear of going to any ābait placesā so tangible that it led to a Bucharest ā14 mini-break.
I consoled myself with the thought that mine was a ānoblerā quest, that of the linguist who wouldnāt submit to any throwaway 21st century tourism and I stressed the importance of my studies to anyone whoād listen. I wasnāt bringing a Go-Pro, I was the second coming of Hemingway. Then came the first geotagged mobile upload swiftly followed by a tweet and an Instagram on the hostel WiFi. Iām not saying Iāll be taking selfies with Mapuche children before my time in Chile is out, but maybe the first inklings that I might have been a bit of a dick when I was denigrating others are starting to appear. I havenāt had a blindingly obvious epiphany that there isnāt just one way to travel, that itās subjective and everyone gets different things out of their experiences - I knew this already, but living abroad forces you to confront this and accept it as a truth rather than some wafty notion.
Safe to say that my voyage of self-discovery is already well underway, see you at a Full Moon Party soon. The first bucketās on me.












