The hardest part of traveling no one talks about.

You discover the world, meet new people, try new things, fall in love and learn about new cultures – but then suddenly everything is over. Most people always talk about leaving, but what about coming back from a trip?

You go on a journey and go through a development that only fellow travelers can understand. You develop yourself, you’re open to new things, you constantly learn and see the world different ways than you were taught. Traveling has its own rhythm. During the day you are busy with what you are doing at that moment, in the evening you look back with satisfaction on the previous day, and at the same time you look ahead to what is to come. You can compare it in some kind of way with meditation. All the worries from ‘back home disappear’ - because worrying about ‘rent’ ‘paying taxes’ ‘what other people think of you’ simply don’t exist in this life-style.

You always know that the next day you're going to do something you haven't done before. This rhythm gives travel its psychological purity. Your brain is smoother, more open and calmer.

However, there are also difficult aspects to traveling itself: looking for work, collecting money, making real friendships, staying safe, learning social norms, getting sick, etc. These are all things that you get through. All these downs are immediately forgotten by the highs you experience while traveling.

These highlights change you as a person and make you realize that the busy life at home isn't everything and that experiences are more important than stuff. It causes wonder. Not only is it wonderful to be amazed, but it also promotes psychological growth. Travel forces our minds to rearrange our frame of reference, shakes our brains and keeps our minds limber.

But then you come home, the first 2 weeks you spend with friends and family, you tell your stories, make up for lost time and show all the photos and videos. You are in the spotlight for the first few weeks and everything is exciting and new. Everyone is happy to see you and you are the tropical surprise everyone at home is interested in. You also like to see all your loved ones again and are grateful that they are there. But then at some point… this all goes away. You realise you changed. Topics you loved to talk about before are not of interest anymore. You get bored with the daily conversations. You realise you want more out of life and you see things differently than your friends. This causes feelings of loneliness, being misunderstood a lot of the times, it makes you question your lifestyle, your beliefs. Are you the weird one in the group?

Everything is exactly as you left it. You're glad everyone is happy and healthy, but part of you is screaming, "Don't you understand how much I've changed?" And I don't mean my clothes, hair, or weight. I mean what's going on in my head.

The way your dreams have changed, the way you see the world, you see people differently and your habits have changed, new things are more important to you now. You want everyone to see this, you want to share it and discuss the things you see differently now. But you find that there is no way to describe how your mind adapts when you have to leave everything you know behind and use your brain to its full capacity to survive somewhere new. You know you think differently than everyone around you because you experience it every day.

You feel misunderstood and lost. What is the solution for this side of travel? It's like learning a new language that no one around you speaks, there's no way to communicate and tell people how you feel. This is why once you start traveling you just want to leave again. They call it "the travel bug," but in reality it's coming home to a place where no one speaks the same language. Not English, Dutch or Spanish, but the language where others know what it's like to leave, change, grow, experience, learn, and then come home to a place where you feel more alienated than in most foreign places that you have visited.

This is the hardest part of travel, and it's why we all leave again.

We don't travel to go anywhere. But to leave again.