On choosing the road less comfortable, finding pieces of yourself in unfamiliar places, and missing the freedom to wander.
If you ever ask me, “Can I join you on one of your travels?”
I will always have one question for you.
Are you prepared to abandon comfort?
HAHAHAHA.
Because if you’re coming with me, you need to understand something. I am not the kind of traveller who wakes up at noon, orders room service, and spends the afternoon deciding which famous attraction deserves a visit. I don’t travel to stay comfortable. I travel because somewhere beyond the familiar streets, beyond the routines that hold my days together, there is a world I have yet to experience.
And I want to experience as much of it as I can.
I want to wake up while the rest of the city is still asleep. I want to walk through streets that haven’t yet filled with tourists, find little eateries tucked between old buildings, and order food whose name I can barely pronounce. I want to sit beside strangers, listen to stories I have never heard, and discover what ordinary life looks like in a place so different from my own.
I want to wander without always knowing what I will find.
Sometimes, the best discoveries aren’t on the itinerary. They’re down a narrow alley you almost ignored, inside a little shop you entered out of curiosity, or across a table where a local shares a meal and a story with you.
These are the things I travel for.
Not just the photographs. Not just the landmarks. Not just the satisfaction of saying I have been somewhere.
I want to know a place beyond what it shows the world.
I want to taste its food, understand its culture, observe its people, and walk its streets long enough to feel, even briefly, that I am part of its everyday life.
I am not merely interested in where people go.
I am interested in how people live.
And if you’re travelling with me, you should probably prepare yourself for a few things.
We will get up early. We will walk a lot. We might take the longer route because something interesting caught my attention. We will probably get home with aching feet, tired legs, and photographs of places we never planned to visit.
There may be moments when you wonder why we couldn’t have taken a taxi, why we couldn’t have stayed a little longer at the hotel, or why I insisted on exploring one more street when our feet were practically begging for mercy.
And I will probably laugh.
Because somewhere along that exhausting day, we will have found something worth remembering.
A meal that surprised us. A street that made us pause. A conversation with someone whose life is nothing like ours. A view we stumbled upon when we took the wrong turn.
We may forget the name of the street. We may never remember how many steps we walked. But we will remember how it felt to be there.
We will come home with tired soles but fed souls.
And that, to me, is one of the most beautiful things about travelling.
It reminds me that the world is bigger than my responsibilities, my worries, my work, and the little corner of life I occupy every day. It reminds me that there are people living entire lives in places I have never seen, preparing meals I have never tasted, celebrating traditions I have yet to understand, and telling stories that may never reach me unless I make the effort to go looking for them.
There is something humbling about that.
You begin to understand how much exists beyond your own experience. How many ways there are to live. How much beauty can be found in things that are ordinary to someone else but extraordinary to you.
Perhaps that is why I have always felt more like a traveller than a tourist.
A tourist may arrive with a list of places to see. A traveller arrives with a willingness to discover what lies between them.
I don’t mean that one is better than the other. We all travel differently, and there is nothing wrong with wanting a comfortable holiday. But for me, the joy has always been in the wandering itself.
The long walks. The unfamiliar streets. The local food. The unexpected discoveries. The feeling of being somewhere new and allowing the place to surprise me.
I have been fortunate enough to experience places that have stayed with me long after I returned home. Batanes is one of them.
I still remember how much I wanted to reach Itbayat after visiting the main island and Sabtang. But the sea was unpredictable, the waves were dangerous, and the boat schedules depended on conditions that could not be guaranteed. With a flight back to Manila to consider, pushing through could have meant risking our journey home.
So I left without reaching the island.
And somehow, a part of me stayed behind.
Perhaps that is another thing travelling teaches you: not every journey ends where you hoped it would. Sometimes, you have to leave a place unseen. Sometimes, circumstances decide for you. And sometimes, the places you never reached become the ones you dream about returning to.
Itbayat is still waiting somewhere in my imagination, a reminder that there are journeys I have yet to finish.
And there are so many other places I still want to see.
Prague, with its old streets and centuries of stories. Japan, with its quiet neighborhoods, little eateries, and the beauty of everyday rituals. Switzerland, with its mountains and landscapes that seem almost impossible to believe. And places closer to home, scattered across the Philippines, where communities and cultures hold stories that deserve to be heard.
If money were never a concern, you probably wouldn’t find me at home.
I’d be somewhere with a backpack, a comfortable pair of walking shoes, and a rough idea of where I wanted to go. I’d be taking the early train, following a road that looked interesting, or sitting in a little restaurant trying something unfamiliar.
I’d be out there, wandering.
But life does not always give us the freedom we want when we want it.
There are seasons when responsibilities take precedence. Seasons when finances become difficult, when you have to put dreams aside and concentrate on making it through the present. There are years when simply keeping everything together takes so much energy that even the things you love have to wait.
And sometimes, that waiting hurts.
Because when travelling is more than a hobby, when it is one of the ways you reconnect with yourself, staying home for reasons beyond your control can feel like a small part of you has gone quiet.
I miss it.
I miss the anticipation of going somewhere new. I miss waking up knowing that the day will take me somewhere unfamiliar. I miss the freedom of walking without needing to be anywhere in particular. I miss discovering places that never made it onto a list of recommendations.
I miss the feeling of being a stranger in a place that has so much to teach me.
I miss coming home exhausted, looking through my photographs, and realizing that the day gave me more than I expected.
And perhaps what I miss most is the version of myself who exists out there in the world: curious, unhurried in spirit, open to discovery, and willing to take the longer road simply because it might lead somewhere beautiful.
I know that version of me is still here.
She is just waiting for the right time to wander again.
Until then, I will hold on to the places I have seen, the memories I have collected, and the destinations that continue to call me. I will let myself dream about the journeys ahead without demanding that they happen immediately.
Because I have learned that putting a dream on hold is not the same as giving it up.
Someday, I hope to return to Batanes and finally reach Itbayat. Someday, I hope to walk through the streets of Prague, discover the quieter corners of Japan, and stand among the mountains of Switzerland. Someday, I hope to take my mother to places she has never seen and give her the chance to experience more of the world.
For now, I am learning to be patient with the life I have while making room for the life I still want.
And if you ever ask me again whether you can join me on one of my travels, I will probably give you the same warning.
Get enough sleep. Wear comfortable shoes. Bring only what you need. Be ready to wake up early, walk until your feet hurt, eat somewhere unfamiliar, and return to our accommodation with tired legs and a thousand stories.
Because I cannot promise you luxury.
I cannot promise you a perfectly planned day.
I cannot promise that we will always know where we are going.
But I can promise that I will want us to experience the place beyond its photographs, to look beyond its famous landmarks, and to leave with something more meaningful than a collection of souvenirs.
I want us to meet the world with curiosity.
I want us to come home with memories that stay long after the journey ends.
And I want us to remember that sometimes, the best parts of travelling are the moments we could never have planned.
So, are you still coming?
I hope you are.
Just remember the rule.
We may return with tired soles, but we will always travel for a fed soul.
And when I finally find myself back on the road, I hope the world will find me exactly as it always has: wandering, wondering, and grateful for every place that lets me discover a little more of it.
Until then, I’ll keep dreaming of the road.
Because somewhere out there, there are still streets I haven’t walked, meals I haven’t tasted, people I haven’t met, and stories I haven’t heard.
And I am not done discovering them.
Not even close.
