Your travelling methods may have been weaned on must-read travel guide bibles, plus endless hours of deliberation in your own mind, or consultation with a better half over where to go and what to do. You would have annoyed a travel agent ad nauseam with all of your worries, from contracting Zika virus staying in the tropics to eating meat and getting mad cow disease to the risks of indulging in street food.
Visa dramas will do your head in, and you will stress out about whether there is enough layover time between connecting flights. Budget travel is probably long forgotten, and relatives offer a safe haven of accommodation.
Your baby boomer habits of valuing material objects over personal experiences need to change so that you come home with a host of exciting memories, rather than luggage full of ad hoc souvenirs. It's the millennials that are shaping the travel trends, so it's time to get onto their wavelength of lustful personal discovery.
- Firstly, learn how to interact on "social" media—many of you may be quite adept at technology in your work environment, but when it comes to playtime, you belong in grade one of the school ground.
- Secondly, take a lesson in how to use all of those fantastic travel apps that are available
, from currency conversion to translation, and of course, maps for when you are traipsing around a strange city, such as Google maps. - Do get a check-up at our local doctor to ensure that you are indeed fit to travel. None of your family wants an impromptu trip to an overseas hospital to rescue you.
- Don't listen to your friends telling you to go and sit on a cruise ship, especially if it's floating around your own country's coastline. Think big, think excitement and think about exotic locations that you have never been to before. That same quaint village in the South of France that you go to every year will still be there next year.
- Forego the dusty travel guides you have accumulated over the years and surf the Internet for inspiration, cheap flights and quirky accommodation.
- Don't plan your itinerary like it's a work meeting with every minute of every hour devoted to a particular activity. Learn to go with the flow and be spontaneous.
- Budget travel is probably not high on your list, but sometimes staying at a glamour hostel in your own room or glamping in a tent gives you a chance to mix with spirited souls that you would otherwise not meet.
- Paying for travel should be a relative breeze. You are either at the top of your work game, finished paying the exorbitant mortgage off or have no kids left at private school to suck your bank balance dry. If none of this is applicable, you could always re-mortgage the house and tell the kids that you are spending their inheritance.
- Remember that you don't have to be at the airport four hours in advance. For international flights, two hours is usually sufficient, unless you like to sit in airport lounges twiddling your thumbs, or the airline/airport has stipulated differently.
- Regain your sense of adventure and get involved with the people and the culture around you. Try a local cooking class, hike a mountain or kayak
that creek. Go on that African safari you have always promised your self, or dance the tango in the streets of Buenos Aires. Pig out on buffalo meat in Laos and crunch on a cooked locust in Cambodia. Or, you could give something back to the global tribe by volunteering in an underprivileged country such as Kenya, Nepal or Peru. - Pack whatever pills you need, plus the prescription, just in case airport customs in some far-flung country looks at you as a drug smuggler.
- Plaster those incredible pictures of what you are doing and seeing all over the social media you have joined to let your kids and grandkids know that you aren't just sitting in a stuffy hotel playing chess.
- Make sure you sign up for an international no-fee bankcard; even if you have to be what you consider disloyal to your own bank to get one. Please do not wear a money belt!
- Learn how to use Wi-Fi wherever you are. You can call home to assure your family that you haven't fallen off a cliff on WhatsApp or one of the other free conversational apps, rather than running up a massive roaming mobile phone account.
The fact that 43 per cent of millennials do not take out travel insurance is the one thing that you don't want to consider. At your stage in life, you know that shit does happen!
Gail Palethorpe, a self proclaimed Australian gypsy, is a freelance writer, photographer and eternal traveller. Check out her website Gail Palethorpe Photography and her Shutterstock profile.
