ExecutiveChronicles | Traveling Full-Time in a Friendship: How to Travel With Your Best Friend | Are you thinking of traveling full-time with your best friend? Traveling with friends is a super fun way to get out into the world and experience things with someone you love immensely. You could even travel together while studying! However, traveling with friends can also come with some challenges.
Here are a few tips for traveling with your best friend, so you can both get the most out of the experience.
1. Come Up With a List of Boundaries ASAP
You may think that you and your best friend are the closest people on Earth and that you’d never have an argument. However, if you’re living in a small vehicle for months on end, you might find that minor conflicts come up that you’d never expected before.
Since you and your friend are both adults, you both have boundaries that are important to you. Perhaps you need alone time and complete silence when you want to read at night, but your friend likes to chat by a campfire or watch TV to get to sleep. These two things aren’t negative behaviors, but they are not compatible.
Before you embark on your trip, talk to each other about your expectations. You’ll want to come up with outlines on your boundaries and desires for each of the following categories:
- Sleeping (where, how, when)
- Driving (who will drive)
- Eating (who will cook)
- Mechanical problems (what do you do?)
- Traditions
- Locations (where do you want to go)
- Fears
- Desires
There are so many things on a trip that could cause conflict. That’s why it’s essential to make sure you understand each other from the get-go.
2. Determine Where You Will Live
Make sure you have somewhat of a plan of where you will both stay. Are you going to live in a van? Do you have a school bus conversion with plenty of space for you both? Are you planning to stay in hotels? Will you camp out at a campsite? Are you taking a long road trip to one final destination? Is this a short-term trip?
Don’t assume that you’ll “figure everything out” on the go. You might find that your friend has different ideas than you about where you will stay. You’ll want to also make sure you both get to have input in the areas you stay, as this is a trip for you both. Perhaps your friend hates camping in a tent and prefers to sleep in the car. Ask them. Also, be sure to research the entry requirements and any necessary travel documents for your destination. For example, if you’re planning a trip to Egypt with your friend, check the entry requirements and get more information from iVisa to ensure that you have all the necessary documentation. It’s important to plan ahead and communicate with your friend to avoid any potential issues during your trip.
3. Share the Experience
Traveling with a friend is fun, simply because you get to spend so much time experiencing the world with someone you care about. Make sure you are genuinely sharing and that things don’t turn into a battle of control.
For example, you could cook every Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and they could cook the other days. Or you could use the tent every other night while they sleep in the van’s bed.
Travel is all about making compromises to see the big wide world. That’s why you’ll need to be a little bit flexible and make sure both of you are enjoying the trip. It needs to be fair.
Conclusion
Now get out there and enjoy your travels! If you’d like to learn a little more about friendship before you embark, check out BetterHelp’s advice column here- https://www.betterhelp.com/advice/friendship/.
Photo by YURI MANEI from Pexels
