Hitting the Travel Wall

Last weekend I visited Luoyang, Henan province for a two-day trip.  Now that I think about it, that trip is most likely where I picked up the swine flu.  I took a train down there and a bus back; plenty of opportunities to pick up some germs and bacteria.

While I was in Luoyang I visited three important sites: Longmen grottoes, Guanlin Temple, and White Horse Temple.  Originally I was planning on staying longer and making a day trip out to Song Shan to see Shaolin Temple.  In the end I decided to skip that part and head home early.

Why did I decide to do that?  Why did I decide that seeing the birth place of kung fu (actually, it’s gong fu, but that’s not important) just wasn’t worth the three hour round-trip travel time?  Because I’ve been hit with travel fatigue.

What is travel fatigue, exactly?  Brook Silva-Braga puts it succinctly in his backpacking documentary, A Map for Saturday:

You just get to a point where doing all those same things that have been so fun for so long aren’t fun anymore.

One of the travelers he interviews in the movie expresses exactly how I’m feeling right now:

You go off to see these waterfalls and mountain ranges and gorges and it’s just spectacular.  But when you see so many waterfalls, you just go, ‘Oh yeah, it’s another waterfall.  It’s another mountain range.  Yeah, it’s another beautiful landscape.’

Over this past year I have been traveling all over China.  I’ve seen so many incredible things and had so many new, exciting experiences.  But something hit me while I was wandering around White Horse Temple.  I am sick and tired of busting my ass running all over China to see the same thing over and over again.

Namely, the temples.  I’ve seen so many temples in China and they look almost exactly the same.  Different location, but same damn buildings.  Same damn statues.  Same funky little trees, and incense holders, and prayer halls.  The repetition and sameness is maddening.  Sometimes I look back at the pictures from these places and it’s hard for me to remember which temple they’re actually from!

White Horse Temple is the first Buddhist temple ever built in China.  I was expecting something unique and grand and mind-blowing.  I was sorely disappointed.  It looked exactly like every other temple I’ve seen in China.  And I’m fed up with it.

To give you an idea of what I’m talking about, here’s a list of all the temples (as far as I can remember) that I’ve been to in China:

• At the Summer Palace, Beijing
• Qingyang Temple, Chengdu
• In Seven Star Park, Guilin
• In Qingling Park, Guiyang
• Lingyin Temple and 2 others, Hangzhou
• White Horse Temple, Luoyang
• Guanlin Temple, Luoyang
• Confucius Temple, Nanjing
• Jade Buddha Temple, Shanghai
• Fuxi Temple, Tianshui
• Daxingshan Temple, Xi’an
• Da Ci’en Temple, Xi’an
• Temple at Heavenly Lake, Xinjiang

Fortunately there are not many more temples on my list, so it won’t be too hard to avoid them in my remaining time here.  But the feeling was such a unique experience for me.  I love traveling and couldn’t imagine doing something more fun and fulfilling.  But at that moment I was tired of it.  I wanted to go home and sit in my living room with my computer and do absolutely nothing all day.

It seems like no matter what you do, eventually travel fatigue will hit you.  So how do you deal with it?  In my case, I’m not a full-time traveler so I can easily take a break from my weekend trips to recharge my batteries.  There’s no problem there.

But what about the long-term travelers?  The ones who are out there for months, even years, at a time?  Boris Glumpler at Travel Junkie gives a few interesting suggestions on how to fight travel fatigue:

Find something to do. Get yourself a job. This will structure your life even more.

Don’t be hasty. Take as much time as you need. Only once you’re ready to head back out into the wild again, do so!

Don’t close yourself off and keep an open mind. Sometimes, even if you don’t feel like it initially, you can have a great time by just saying yes, when asked by fellow travellers [sic] to come out for a drink or two or go see a temple or something.

As my time here in China comes to an end, I look at the list of places I still want to go and it seems so long.  Part of me is not excited for that.  Part of me is not looking forward to all the traveling I plan on doing in January.  Because you know what?  Traveling is work.  Sometimes it’s really hard work.

But I’m not going to let that stop me.  I’m determined to see as much of China as possible with what little time I have left.  I do look forward to when classes end and I can travel a little bit more slowly.  Making short weekend trips, as I have done, can take its toll.  It will be nice to have a change of pace. I’ll be able to take my time and not push myself too hard.

The month of January will hopefully see me do plenty of traveling.  I just hope that I don’t burn out in the process and become travel fatigued all over again.

Related Posts:

1. Have Cool, Will Travel
2. Biking the City Wall