Thru Travel: A Guide For Nonstop Vagabonds
An Introduction to Thru Travel
One traveler might spend weeks or months in a single location. Meanwhile, a person dedicated to thru travel might pass through four major cities in two short weeks.
So which is better for a traveler? Is it wiser to cram as much activity into life as possible during a journey or find long moments to work, study and relax?
Truthfully, this depends on the individual, the time they have available for travel and their energy levels. Base to Base traveling involves spending longer periods of time learning about a specific area. This type of travel allows for deeper immersion of language, culture and counties.
But another type of equally enriching travel is Thru Traveling. A vagabonder rapidly hops from one place to the next, collecting experiences as they go.
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What is Thru Travel
Thru Travel is a form of travel where an individual continuously moves from location to location based on whims or a set of planned destinations. Extended road trip loops, sailing around the world, international motorcycle tours or treks are all forms of Thru Travel.
When Thru Traveling, the actual mode and experiences during the journey are equally as important as the destinations and goals. The ability to move from place to place is an enriching and freeing experience all of its own.
Why Thru Travel
Thru Travel is the purest form of exploration. Having the knowledge and capacity to continue a journey with gradually increasing skill is an incredible learning process. Thru travelers tend to be extremely accomplished in their mode of transportation.
People who sail the world have an excellent capacity for oceanic freedom. Van-Life explorers gradually pick up profound mechanical abilities. Trekkers and pilgrims are skilled at survival techniques, camping and safety strategies. When it comes to learning a skill, thru-traveling is a vivid crash course.
Thru Travelers also experience incredible, recurring accomplishments. Riding a motorcycle on the Pan-American Highway or successfully circumventing the road by hitchhiking is a profound experience. Every destination visited, experienced and passed lends itself to the journey.
Advantages of Thru Travel
Intentional Thru Travel offers unique advantages when seeing the world. A Thru Traveler is a unique type of individual who gains a capacity for constant adventure and reactions in the day to day.
See More Things
Most obviously, a thru-traveler simply gets to see more of the world. Want to experience every national park in the United States on a single massive tour? That would be an extremely unlikely proposition if a person isn’t doing a loop from zone to zone, staying just long enough to get the full natural experience.
Thru Travelers tend to find the famous and outlandish in equal measure. Because their time is at a premium when traveling from destination to destination, they often get to visit notorious landmarks one day and strange, unique hidden wonders the next.
Acquire Competency
Thru Travelers are incredibly competent at their mode of transit. They have to be, since the momentum of their journey requires it. A person trekking through mountains gradually becomes an accomplished mountaineer. Meanwhile, a person exploring the world on horseback becomes a talented rider after hours on the trail.
Aside from transit competency, Thru Travelers are reaction competent too. Since the environment and circumstances are always changing, the traveler becomes skilled at remaining calm, noticing circumstances and applying controlled, effective reactions. The longer a traveler is in motion, the more confident in a multitude of settings they become.
Extended Trips and Tours
Thru Travel is especially good for long trips and tours around the world. The world is vaster, more mysterious and varied than any human can possibly comprehend. There are distinct cultures, civilizations, traditions, ruins, wonders, natural marvels and subcultures all across the planet. A Thru Traveler can experience them individually, letting one experience lead to and influence the next.
The world is too vast to see everything in one lifetime. But by moving from place to place, many preconceptions are discarded as a planetary view develops.
Slow Down Time
The human mind is a unique puzzle, especially when it tries to track time. One of the secrets of traveling is understanding that a life’s experiences aren’t actually time based, but event based.
A person working for three years at a single, consuming job might feel like each individual day is slow. But when they glance back at the year, they might be startled at how much time has vanished.
Traveling to a new destination each day and experiencing life anew does the opposite. A traveler breezing through Lima, Ica, Nazca, Machu Picchu, Cusco, Arequipa and Lake Titicaca in Peru all in the span of a month might intellectually understand that they’ve only been on the road for thirty day. But the mind will highlight the massive number of experiences and events, making time feel slower and more profound.
The more we do, accomplish and experience, the more potent time seems and the more slowly we recall it.
Impromptu Plans
One of the best things about Thru Travel is the opportunity for new, spontaneous events. Is there a band marching down a village street? Then that patch of road in the Congo might be a good spot for the night.
Because life is already in flux, opportunities that arise tend to be easier to spot and take advantage of. When traveling full time, the mentality of new experiences is profoundly different and appears far more common.
Journey before Goals
In many forms of travel, the journey is a hindrance to the destination. A trip to the Bahamas for a vacation is profound, but the time spent at the airport beforehand is more of a hindrance than an adventure.
Thru Traveling provides the opposite experience. All of the journey becomes profound. From running out of gas to getting free fruit to hunkering down against a storm to being offered a free place to sleep for the night. The journey takes on an entirely new and potent meaning.
Freedom
Finally and most vitally, Thru Travel is one of the highest forms of freedom a person can experience. The ability and practice of moving freely throughout the world based on curiosity and desire is profound in a way that’s difficult to describe. Being able to go someplace new whenever desired and settle someplace comfortable whenever the urge strikes is a powerful feeling.
Challenges
For all the grand experiences that Thru Traveling offers, there are a few pitfalls that come with the lifestyle. These can be managed, avoided and mitigated with a bit of preparation, allowing the journey to flow onward.
High Energy Requirements
Thru Traveling takes a lot of energy. Constant stimulus, constant planning, and constant exploring all drains a person considerably. Even high-energy individuals, enamored with seeing the world, need periods of time to rest.
Whenever planning a trip, give yourself an extra three days of wiggle room for each week planned. That’s roughly the pacing ratio needed to remain level while maintaining a journey.
So if a Thru Traveler plans on going up and down the Alps over the course of a week, they should actually plan a total of ten days. This buffer time allows for mishaps, downtime, recovery periods and recreation.
More Expensive
Thru Traveling can be done very cheaply, allowing a person to explore the entire planet on less than fifty dollars a day. But despite this, Thru Traveling is usually slightly more expensive than settling down for a month or so.
Remember, when consistently moving from place to place, more energy is needed, which means food costs might be a little higher. Regular transport costs need to be balanced against nightly lodgings. Thru Traveling is also fraught with more unexpected expenses, such as broken gear, unexpected tolls or pricier areas.
When planning a Thru Trip, estimate higher than initial expectations. A bit of safety money never goes amiss.
Lighter by Necessity
Thru Traveling, by its very nature, rapidly shed unneeded gear. People actively traversing the globe understand how devastatingly hard it is to carry an extra three or five pounds per day.
While traveling lighter has its advantages (less goods to keep track of, easier mobility, lower cost of maintenance, more room for surplus supplies), lighter travel tends to be slightly more rugged. Many creature comforts are whittled down to make the actual journey from place to place easier.
Pacing
One of the absolute harshest rules a Thru Traveler needs to learn is pacing. Every traveler burns out at some point of their journey. Emotions dip into a valley, energy dissipates and the body physically rejects the idea of pushing forward.
This is fine. Every journey has moments of lower thresholds. Take a break, get some comfort food, settle down somewhere comfortable for a few days and breathe deep.
As a Thru Traveler gets more practice, they get better at pacing. They learn to recognize early warnings of burnout and plan accordingly. Pace is unique to an individual, but always try to plan a trip with more transit time than expected and more downtime than expected.
Wear and Tear
Humans aren’t the only ones who can hit limits. The gear used to travel and the methods of transit also face considerable wear and tear when traveling. Road trips tend to put strain on engines and tires. Long hikes wear down boots much faster. Journeys across the water are spent doing a fair amount of cleaning, maintenance, repairs and diagnostics to ensure everything continues functioning smoothly.
Invest heavily in both the gear which is taking the most stress and the tools used to maintain and repair it. For example, if a person is traversing the Himalayas, their ice spikes, boots and winter gear needs to be top notch. Secondary patches, sharpening tools and replacements are a necessary part of the outfit.
Picking a Time to Rest
Thru Traveling can be an unparalleled and extraordinary experience, driven by new wonders and clear goals on the horizon. But bear in mind, all journeys have a personal factor as well, the traveler themselves. Take time to assess yourself on your journey, and always keep in mind what you personally want to do. If it’s time for a break, then take one. If you find a place you’ve fallen in love with, stay for a time. The journey is yours. Enjoy it.
Best regards and excellent trails,
Old Sean