When I began to share my world adventures with friends and cubicle dwelling ex-coworkers, I either received blank stares of bewilderment or cold, hard looks of envy.

Like most things, a life of travel has been romanticized into something that unwitting people dream about whenever the going gets rough at home.

The word “backpacking” seems to conjure up images of sexy, adventurous people spending hours doing nothing in sunny and exotic places as they clink .25 cent beers together.

I was no different. I clocked hundreds of hours surfing travel blogs and sites to help keep myself sane while listening to people drone on about “cost initiatives” during corporate conference calls.

Friends still chuckle when I tell them that traveling is not all it is cracked up to be.

A Short History Of Travel

Our ancestors knew the real deal. The word “travel” comes from the old French word “travail” which means to work.

That word, is thought to have come from “tripullare”, which is the three sectioned whip that Roman soldiers used to strongly encourage productivity out of the laborers in their expanding empire. They associated the act of moving from one place to another with hellish torture.

Ask any backpacker what they thought of country X, and they will usually answer “amazing”. What they will not tell you is that behind every story of cultural survival and every picture of themselves with the locals, there is another story of darker roots.

There is an ominous background noise of tumultuous and painful truths that build the foundation for every happy travel story shared with ex-coworkers and family.

I have decided that it is my responsibility to shed some light on the myths of backpacking travel and hit other potential budget travelers on the head with the mallet of truth.

Don’t show your boss some universal sign language just yet, the cubicle might not be so bad after all!

Here were the five most frequent responses I receive when I ask people why they want to travel.

1. You can learn exciting new cultures

The universal cop-out for my question. I can confirm that after spending an entire afternoon on the phone with a support person from Mumbai just to recover my long lost E-ticket, that new cultures CAN be pretty exciting.

Especially when you sit on hold for 45 minutes and get to listen to dueling sitars while furiously pumping your complimentary stress ball.

2. It’s cheap

No it isn’t. Sure, food and rooms in developing countries don’t cost much, but let’s not forget the addictive nature of travel. More than once I have scoured my house looking for items to sell to fund a ticket somewhere.

I have even been eyeballing my truck in the driveway. Forget everyday things like movies and eating out, you will be converting everything that your date orders into Baht, Kip, or Riels and thinking, “Wow – that’s a lot of noodles I could have saved!”

3. Try exotic foods

Exotic foods come with exotic bacterias which, in turn, produce exotic intestinal experiences while you stand in a Shaolin monk kung fu stance over a squat toilet for hours.

4. You can see new things

Exactly. Like mosquitoes with disease filled abdomens that are so aggressive they fly in formations and use covert actions to find the holes in your mosquito net.

Or better yet, foot-long centipedes having an orgy under your mattress while you try to sleep. I even had the privilege of witnessing a standoff between my moving train and a water buffalo that chose to stand on the tracks. The train won.

I have to admit, I would have probably never been treated to that sight in the city.

5. It makes you a better person

This one is true. After crossing the street in Cairo a couple of times, I no longer fear death, and feel that I could make deadly bullets fall harmlessly to the ground like Neo.

Also, I no longer paint a tapestry of obscenities when the train I am traveling on breaks down. At least it was climate controlled, didn’t smell like 10,000 unwashed feet, and I was never once asked to ride on top due to overbooking.

The bottom line is that no matter how much negativity you hear from people still sitting in cubicles, most backpackers have been in situations when they would have closed their eyes, tapped their flip-flops together three times, and chanted “there’s no place like the cubicle…there’s no place like the cubicle….”

Now time for my disclaimer:

In case your brain has been numbed by too many Thai buckets or the infection oozing from your native bamboo tattoos, this article was only a fabrication.

The author firmly believes you should travel (but make sure you ask him before a long trip, not after).

This article was originally published on Start Backpacking. Reprinted with permission.

Gregory Rodgers is a cubicle dweller turned vagabonding travel writer and is a self-proclaimed travel addict. He is editor of Start Backpacking and has been spotted on rare occasion in his hometown of Lexington, Kentucky – USA.

There is no feeling that quite describes being stuck in a corporate office, worse yet, in a cubicle, when the sun is burning through a cloudless blue sky.

For 7 years, I miraculously managed not to throw a phone, flog away an intruder, or hang myself in the corner of my office with Ethernet cabling. Like everyone else, I knew there was more to life than waking up at the last minute and jockeying through traffic to make a bunch of old men richer.

However, a strange and powerful force kept me glued to my seat, sorting through corporate memos, reminding me to file my TPS reports properly.

Bills. Lots of them. Always creeping into my mailbox when I least expected it. There were the usual suspects like electric, water, and a mortgage on a place so over-sized for me that I hadn’t even opened some of the rooms yet.

Then there were the bothersome credit card statements that included all my internet purchases. Among the damages, there were expenses for high tech toys I thought would make work more bearable.

My cell phone could play MP3s, games, movies, and open random gateways to alternate dimensions with the tap of a stylus. Also included were new clothes that were sure to impress my dates and restaurant tabs in overpriced places that make you feel important.

A Revelation

Being a well trained IT geek, I decided to do an analysis of where my money was going and constructed a simple spreadsheet where I recorded purchases for 1 month. Unfortunately, I have the attention span of a bored cat, so a couple of months passed before I found the spreadsheet again hiding in a dusty corner of my hard drive.

“Oh yeah…I remember this,” I said and opened it with a snappy mouse click. I nearly swallowed my tongue at the results inside.

Things needed for daily life, like groceries and Redbull, made up the lowest expenses. Not just a few, but a majority of my purchases were unnecessary and compulsive moves to keep me distracted. I was putting at least one kid through college with my cable bill alone – all so that I could catch hot dog eating contests on ESPN 13 at 4:00 in the morning.

I went into work slightly more enlightened than I was the day before, but I wanted to be sure. Was I just being too negative about my job? Was I beginning some sort of just-turned-30 midlife/depression/crisis? Was I about to run out and purchase a red convertible and pierce my tongue in a desperate cry for attention from women almost half my age?

As an experiment, I decided to count the number of smiles I received around the office and cafeteria for one day. Other than one nearly mad and shaking engineer that was watching the coffee machine fill his 1 liter mug for the third time, the only smiling faces I saw on this beautiful June afternoon were the ones walking at a quickstep toward the door at closing time.

Things were quickly beginning to make sense.

Planning The Escape

Like a twitchy convict that just discovered a tunnel under his bunk, I kept my findings to myself and starting building a plan. I made a conscious effort to slow the bleeding of money from my account on useless toys. When I was in private, I started researching exotic destinations on the internet.

Soon, I was quickly consumed by my escape plans. For 7 years I had been a rat in a never ending race, and had finally discovered that someone had left the door open on my cage. Quickly, my happiness and my bank account began to build — and on one bold evening I set a date.

My date was Jan 1, 2006. What better way to start a new year than to start a new life altogether?

In the 6 months between my enlightenment and the start of my new less paying yet more satisfying career as a backpacker, I managed to save money and sell my house myself. I picked up a copy of Rolf Pott’s book “Vagabonding” and realized that I was not alone.

Many have made this walk before me. During my meetings, I had visions of living on an organic farm, picking fruit in the sunshine, and meeting hippy girls to go surfing with. Was I heading for sure financial doom? The thought did cross my mind, especially when I started trickling news of my plan to friends and family.

Vagabonding and even gap years are not really popular concepts in America, so my announcements were usually responded to with less-than-positive enthusiasm. I did not care. I was determined not to spend the best years of my life (while I was healthy) saving money to retire when I was too old to enjoy it.

In December, I gave myself the ultimate Christmas gift, I bought a one way ticket to Bangkok and turned in my letter of resignation.

The Journey Begins

When the wheels of my plane left the ground and pointed its nose East toward the Pacific, I breathed an enormous sigh of relief. Luckily, the 23 hour flight provided lots of time for decompression and contemplation, which I took full advantage of.

I still had no idea where I was going or what I was getting myself into, but it had to be more interesting than learning new acronyms at a company whose name was an acronym.

As I sit here and write this, exactly one year has passed since I left the US for the first time. I grin when I read back through my early journal entries and blush slightly — thinking of what an inexperienced newbie I was.

I still do not consider myself a hardened traveler, but I do want to share my beginnings with others and inspire them to chew their way out of the maze as well. Anyone can do this. I never met a single person out of hundreds of backpackers that had regretted their decision to give up the cheese and escape the rat race.

I would not trade my adventures, experiences, and new friends for all the promotions, cable channels, or wacky tie days in the world.

This article was original published on Start Backpacking. Reprinted with permission.

Gregory Rodgers is a cubicle dweller turned vagabonding travel writer and is a self-proclaimed travel addict. He is editor of StartBackpacking.com and has been spotted on rare occasion in his hometown of Lexington, Kentucky – USA.