Instagram sure makes full time travel look a lot more glamorous than it often is but hey that’s the case with everything these days isn’t it. Don’t get me wrong we get to spend our days exploring some of the countries most beautiful destinations and often wake up to the sound of waves crashing or birds whistling. But what most of us full time travellers don’t show you is the shitty back streets or car parks we also sleep in or the hours of planning and research that goes into mapping out our travels. Like anything in life there are good times and not so good times.
Let me tell you how exhausting it can be always searching for clean water or a safe place to sleep at night. Throw a kid in the mix and life on the road can be really tough. With more and more people packing up and hitting the road I think it’s important for us to be real about what life is really like on the road.
I don’t think anything can fully prepare you for how intense every emotion becomes when living on the road. The highs are high, like when you get to tick something off your bucket list or you spend a week on the most beautiful beach and the lows are low, like when your clutch blows or your tire explodes. It’s the same for your relationship. You literally spend every minute or every day together in each other’s space so you know that picture perfect happy relationship you thought you had, well you can kiss that goodbye. You will spend a lot of days pissing each other off and that’s just all part of the ride. The positive is that you will learn so much about yourself and each other during this adventure and your relationship will be so much stronger for it. Whilst you’ll bicker a lot more there is no room for real fights. You’ll have to communicate better and kiss and make up faster, I mean after all your whole house in probably smaller than your old bedroom and there is nowhere to hide.
As for the planning typically one person kinda takes on this role and it’s a beast of a role. So much time goes into researching a place, finding out what there is to do there, where to stay, how long to stay and then finally hoping they have the dates available. Some people are really organised and pre book places to ensure they get the dates they want but there is a lot that can go wrong with that. Firstly you no longer have the freedom to change your plans, for example if you love a place you might want to extend and stay longer or likewise if you don’t like a town you may want to cut your time there shorter. Secondly, you can’t customise your trip around the weather. I know that the weather can’t always be amazing but if you don’t pre book too much you will have the ability to optimise your time on certain destinations based on the weather. This can be really helpful when planing a beach destination, after all there is no point booking into a beach front site for a week when it’s going to be gale force winds and pouring rain right?
As for the realities of travelling full time with kids. Honestly I think raising a kid on the road, for us anyway is easier than being in a stationary home. Our daughter Nyah thrives in social settings and being outdoors so as long as we ensure that we are camped near or are travelling with other children she is happy. This isn’t always the case as many of the places we travel are quite remote and she definitely struggles if we aren’t around other children for more than a few days. I always joke that we are in fact doing a lap of Australia’s playgrounds and that we should have started a blog rating them all from the beginning. My biggest advice for those wanting to travel that have young children is to be prepared for the teething stage. It takes a while for the kids to settle into this lifestyle and find their groove so just be patient. There is also a serious lack of routine especially at bedtime so this can effect their behaviour so as long as you relax your expectations and are understanding of how much is changing for them everyday you’ll be fine. We know hundreds of families travelling with all different aged children and the one common is that the children are all thriving. Their social skills are so far advanced and they are as happy as can be.
With all that said we are so in love with life on the road. We take the good with the bad and have really settled into a nice routine where we balance slow days with adventure days and are now traveling at a much slower pace.
If you’re thinking of packing it all up and hitting the road we say go for it. Life is too short to wait for the right time.
If you have any questions about the real side of life on the road please pop them below in the comments and we would be happy to answer them.
Be sure to follow our daily adventures over on instagram @life.in.olli
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