What Next? The Restless Return Home

As any of the riders’ friends or family patiently waiting back home will know, the TDA 2017 Bamboo Road tour has reached the finish line in Singapore, marking the end of a 3-month journey through southeast Asia.

While some of the riders stuck around for a few days to enjoy the sights and no doubt enjoy a few Singapore Slings up at Marina Bay Sands overlooking the city’s impressive harbour, most people involved in the tour are back home now, just in the nick of time to spend the Christmas and New Year’s holidays with their loved ones.

This is the nice part everyone tends to look forward to in those last couple of weeks of any long-distance tour when the finish line is within reach and the excitement of going home and seeing everyone soon kicks in.

However, I guarantee that every rider who came with us all the way to Singapore will soon experience another sensation – reverse culture shock. It’s fantastic returning home, getting those Western comforts back, sleeping in your very own bedroom and receiving a warm welcome from the staff behind the counter of your local café or bar.

But once the novelty wears off and people stop asking about your adventure, it’s remarkable how quickly you find yourself bored at home and daydreaming about what crazy expedition you can embark on next. Because after successfully completing something this big, it’s extremely difficult to resist the urge to follow it up with something even bigger.

Perhaps that’s why everyone always does.

I’ve mentioned in previous blogs that TDA has a very large alumni group of returning clients who apparently just can’t enough. What I haven’t mentioned before, probably because I never noticed it before, is that most first-timers I’ve come across seem to end up signing up for another tour. Either that, or they go hike to Everest Base Camp… or do the Kokoda Trail, or some other physical test of one’s ability across the world.

It seems that a luxurious holiday lazing about in the sun on a beach in Hawaii is no longer as appealing as something with a little more adrenaline involved. West Africa was a hot topic throughout this entire trip, and I’m sure that’s probably been the case for the South American Epic as well, which just wrapped up in Ushuaia the other day.

Anyway, to summarize these last eight paragraphs of thinking out loud, my point is that while I’m sure everyone is enjoying some well-deserved downtime at the moment and not thinking about much other than being home with their friends and family, I’m also sure of something else… in a few weeks, those same people will start casually flicking through travel magazines, browsing the internet for articles about strange and off-the-beaten-track places, and gradually start piecing together an itinerary for their next adventure.