Another Goodbye: Hazards of the road less travelled

Said goodbye to a really good friend tonight...

Those moments really don't get any easier with practice. I'm not normally one to dwell on the downsides, but I feel like I've said goodbye to more special people in the past few years than anyone should have to in a lifetime.

I know, it sounds overdramatic. And it's not really the 'done thing' to complain when you're lucky enough to have the chance to travel the world, live abroad, soak up exotic cultures, and meet incredible people. But eventually, you or those incredible people move on, and you have to start all over again. Everything's transitory when you're a long-term traveller. You don't get to paint the walls, or put pictures in frames, or buy a dog. You're usually not around for your friends' birthdays, and they're not usually around for yours. You become an expert at packing things into cardboard boxes and being creative with the truth on the post office customs forms and at the airport (liquids? Nah...well, apart from the four jars of Argentinean caramel sauce and a bottle of Malbec...)

The great things, of course, strike a balance. You cross paths with people you may never have discovered back home; vagabonds, polyglots, couchsurfers, playboys, pumpkin farmers, and people so like you it makes you like yourself a little bit more. You become an expert too at making friends fast, opening yourself up to others in a way that most 'settled people' take years to do. You learn to share yourself, because when you're alone in a new city or out on the open pampas - it doesn't make sense to keep you all to yourself. There's only so much self-examination a sane mind can take (about half a morning for me).

And it's a cliché that makes most of us roll our eyes - but you do discover yourself on the road. At least you discover your limits. Your strengths and your weaknesses. The kind of people you like, the ones you don't like, and the ones you never thought you would like, but do. You notice things that you don't particularly like about yourself too, but resolve to change those later, when you're home (if you ever get there).

Like the mosquitoes that feasted on me through hot African nights, I was bitten by the travel bug long ago. It's a blessing and a curse. Some of my closest friends are people I met in passing - groups of us knitted together because we were all so far from home. I've created new families of friends over five continents - and anyone who insists that you can't become best friends with someone in five days has never talked all night to a stranger on a rusty bus through Bolivia.

To some people, these friendships might seem superficial. To those of us who have woven relationships with people far from home and said goodbye again and again, the sadness is undoubtedly more than a feeling of inconvenience. Because most travellers, corny as it may sound, have something inside them that other travellers recognise and connect to. A restlessness, a drive to see more, learn more, journey further, and not hesitate to say 'hello', even when the goodbye is inevitable.

At least today, with our little green planet shrinking beyond the imagination of our grandparents, most goodbyes are more like a 'see you soon'. Which is comforting.

And the upside is that, the more friendships you make on the road, the more likely your are to bump into one of them again on the next bus through Bolivia.