It becomes very easy to meet other people who are just as open and excited about the world as you are. This openness easily facilitates very genuine, romantic relationships to form between travelers.

I began my year of traveling just out of a three-year relationship, not looking for love by any means. As it always seems to happen, love finds you, no matter the corner of the earth you fly to. Love for this American girl came in a 6′4″ Australian-accented package. I came into the relationship with no expectations or judgments (the best way to look at life, if I may say so).

This hostel fling actually turned into a series of ‘convenient’ meetings for about eight months, and across two continents. Elizabeth Gilbert, eat your heart out.

Dating while traveling should be a prerequisite for marriage. Close connections are created more quickly and it’s easier to become quite intimate when you spend 24/7 with someone.

You learn about a person in a different style than when dating. In two weeks, you have most likely seen this person naked, and how they brush their teeth, cry, fart, argue, and (in my experience, I mean we’re talking India here) converse about bowel movements. And most likely they have seen the same of you.

Yet loneliness often comes hand in hand with the title ‘traveler.’

Love and Loss?

As anticipated, we went our separate ways. Though we were good at keeping in touch, and lucky to be in similar countries/regions so we could meet up and share more travels with one another, after a while I realized how impossible it is to convey genuine feelings through email. Besides the digital facts, love has a hard time with distance.

Distance: perhaps something we travelers have a love affair with in itself. But what to do with these love affairs we have on the road, out there?

To return from whence we came is usually unavoidable. Being passionate people, just because we have experiences away from our ‘real home,’ it doesn’t make them any less real. Just like the souvenirs for our little brothers and CD-R’s full of digital photographs, we want to bring what we can back with us.

It’s an avoidance of a certain post-partum depression.

If you can get beyond the sheer romantic implications of love on the road and perhaps convince some best friends or family members of it’s genuine-ness, is it possible to incorporate this person into your life at home?

While out there, sometimes it’s hard to imagine you are on the same earth that you left behind. Upon returning, there is an even stronger desire to connect with where you have released so much energy in the past few months; to share everything about your home with this other person.

Sending emails every few days, pictures of your home and friends, isn’t the same as cuddling in a beach shack in Goa. To keep the flame alive you have to continually live inside memories. When this happens, your energy is not centered, and reality can become confusing when there is too much attachment.

Learning to Let Go

The experiences you take from your on-the-road love affairs can help you take yourself a bit less seriously. Openness and detachment is always the best recipe.

Once you start denying yourself experiences at home, that’s when it’s time to realize maybe expending that energy isn’t worth it. Most likely, the other person wouldn’t want you to hindering yourself either, because that’s just not a traveling personality.

Perhaps we really need to learn the lesson that life is situational. By no means do I belittle these kind of relationships; I think they are some of the best ways to learn about yourself, and the nature of humans and love.

And truthfully, who knows? If I’ve learned anything from our unpredictable world, it’s to never count out any possibility. We are only in control of so much, like how many plane tickets we can purchase, and how many emotional emails we can send.

The only solution is to stop worrying and truly leave some decisions in the hands of the fates. I met my lover in Darjeeling, Goa, Italy and London…there’s always Bali.

Adena Harford is a freelance writer currently living in Brooklyn, NY. She spent the last year traveling throughout India and Europe, so she has acquired a deep well of stories. During her free time she practices yoga, writes poetry, and dreams about being on the road again.

Whether it’s sleeping on the street with your family, saying ‘no’ to beggars, fasting for days, functioning with dysentery, or even something so simple as casting off one’s attachment to toilet paper.

The most important lesson I learned in India is that (for better or worse) human beings can adapt to anything.

Many travelers visit places where they need weeks to completely adapt to their new surroundings (and many eventually become partial to them).

Inevitably, the time comes to change again and re-adapt to the society you left.

The new challenge is to incorporate the knowledge you gained on the other side of the world; all without being pompous or preachy about your travels.

Lessons on adaptation

After leaving a country like India, guilt is often associated with coming back and rejoining the monster of a western consumer-driven society.

Though I find similarities between India and Brooklyn (my new home) all the time (the bombardment with advertisements is similar, surprisingly), the things I ‘need’ to fit into my daily life have done a complete 360.

For example, it took me only 30 minutes to move my belongings into my new space, and that first night, I sat and stared at my white walls and found myself desiring…things.

A new apartment or living space is a hard thing to accept at first. It’s a very different feeling to be sleeping in the same bed every night when you’re used no knowing where your head may hit its next pillow.

This can feel like a physical tie down that chokes off that feeling of freedom. A new apartment is also very expensive. (I don’t even want to think about how many nights I could have paid for in India with a month’s rent in Brooklyn).

While traveling, many a conversation is had about clean sheets and queen-size mattresses. A lease can bring up commitment issues you never knew you had.

An uphill battle

Challenges like these are constant for travelers.

Perhaps that is why we become addicted to relentless movement and change. We are in continual need to test ourselves.

Often, returning home is usually not the deep sigh of relief hoped for after months on the road. One of the most difficult reasons is that our western lifestyles project opposing values to those found in India and other countries where capitalist society is less developed.

Feeling guilty for over-consumption is often one of the first steps in this adaptation process. While traveling through impoverished countries, the guilt of your ‘wealthy’ western-world status can weigh heavy upon you.

The only way to pass this milestone is to simply accept it, and enjoy what opportunities are given to you to the fullest, most humble way possible.

When returning home, this guilt takes on a different light; a traveler should strive to make sure he or she doesn’t forget the lessons about life that were learnt on the road.

To forget the people we met and experiences we endured is the greatest of failures.

It’s an internal battle, and a constant one.

Remember that traveling has already shown us the answers. Whether out of necessity or intelligence, situations will arrive, and solutions will come for better or worse.

As long as decisions are made in light of the awareness and perspective gained from these experiences, you should not feel guilty.

You are doing your best, and that’s all that matters.