It’s Great to be Gone, It’s Better To Be Home!

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I’m happy to be back to the business I love. I haven’t felt this happy to be home in a long time. I think travel makes you forget how comforting it is to be sleeping in a familiar bed, next to a familiar cat, or a familiar partner. Hotel rooms, no matter how plush or how many stars, just aren’t as nice as your own bed.

People in our business commiserate about this often: Travel isn’t as glamourous or as much fun as people who don’t travel much think it is. The fun part is the excitement of going, that rush of anticipation when you’re about to board a night flight. There are exhilarating moments when as a journalist you are given the chance to do things like paraglide off a cliff, or spend a few moments in the absolute quiet of a New Zealand river after the speedboat is turned off, listening to the birds and seeing the sparkle of the water.
But the contrast is with the drudgery of travel: the dirty clothes in the suitcase, the wake-up calls that are way too early; the endless bus/ferry/plane travel that goes along with seeing a vast country in just a short week. Hey, don’t get me wrong, no traveler goes looking for sympathy. It’s just that after a while it’s damn nice to NOT have any place to go…for a while anyway.