Saturday, January 3, 2015

Travel Woes

Traveling in general is an exciting, exploring new places, meeting new people, learning new languages, but traveling can also be stressful and scary, especially if things don't go your way. Flight delays and canceled flights can be a stressful way to start off a trip. Sickness, bad weather and canceled tours are unfortunate but often inevitable circumstances that come with traveling. Lost baggage and identification can be terrifying. Making the most out of your trip even if it doesn't go as planned is sometimes the best you can do. Accepting that things might not goes as planned, can help you come to terms with a flat tires on the way to Cuzco or a canceled flight due to weather changes. 





The best way to deal with unexpected changes is flexibility, but often that is not an option on short trips. Sometimes when all seems lost you get lucky, maybe the airline will be nice and comp you a ticket. Maybe the tour will give you free money to use for another tour while your waiting. Maybe you will have a new experience that you might not have had, had your train not broken down. 

When I first began to travel I booked a cheap flight to Lima, Peru through Spirit airlines. If you don't know Spirit Airlines yet, keep it that way. They are fairly inflexible and charge you for almost everything. After waiting almost 8 hours for a delayed flight they finally cancelled it stating that the next departure was not for a week. It was a great way to start off my first solo international trip. Fortunately a couple hours on the phone got me a refund and a new ticket through a different airline for almost the same price. With enough talking airline companies usually give in to your request.



On the way home from India my bag with all my gifts was lost, I was devastated that I had lost hours of bazaar shopping finds and souvenirs. Within days my luggage was returned to me. I was so happy to see my luggage that I had forgotten how sad I was. 

Today I jumped on a flight to Tel Aviv with a short layover in Moscow. When my flight was delayed it was hard not to be nervous about missing my connecting flight. When I arrived in Moscow only 15 minutes before my flight was to leave I high tailed it toward my gate, inevitably having to wait in a security line and then have a scary Russian lady yell at me in a language I did not understand after I lost the stub of my ticket. As she turned the light off in her little glass cube and shut the metal gate I was resolved that I would miss my flight, and I might be stuck in Russia forever. Luckily all her yelling probably consisted of "don't worry we will go look for it" she took me back down and we found my stub laying on the floor near security. I am currently writing this from the plane ... So that means although it's going to be late, I am on it. 



In the end stress and fear is a part of traveling, it makes traveling interesting and exciting. It takes courage to travel, especially alone and relaxation techniques to dissolve stress from bad luck experiences. The most important thing to remember is your still alive and things will always work out as long as your patient and kind to the people trying to help you. 


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