This is the life

Every so often it strikes me just how strange the travelling lifestyle is. How it’s a perfectly acceptable course of action to decide, weeks before your 25th birthday, that you're going to up-sticks and relocate to the other side of the world. Not to work, not to pursue a career, not to see long lost family; just to lie on various beaches, see beautiful things and live in places where a party can be found every night of the week.

For most people, I’ve just described a week long summer holiday; something special, something days and money are saved up all year in order to afford. But this is my life at the moment. To make it socially acceptable, we call it Travelling. Seeing The World. But really, it’s an eight month holiday to avoid buckling down, finding a career, or moving out of home. I had my gap year travel before university, so what’s my excuse now? Sometimes it just hits me that London, a nine-to-five, CVs, friendship dramas and daily routine are so far away that I can barely remember what it was like to have them on my mind.

This morning, Miss Nashville (27, Tennessee) and I bid farewell to the two Canadian Sisters we’ve been travelling with, leaving behind two weeks of partying, surfing, laughing and all the girly chit-chat you can stomach. Our destination was the Tongariro National Park; a place which, for the rest of our bus, meant the start of a 17km traverse across snow capped volcanoes: the NZ-famous Tongariro Crossing.

But today, after checking into our rustic alpine Lodge, we did none of this. We did...nothing.

When was the last time you slept all day just because you wanted to, and not because you were ill, or tired after a night out? When was the last time you spent a cold, beautiful morning and afternoon wrapped up in bed, drifting in and out of sleep, mind wondering, vaguely listening to outside sounds before shutting your eyes and sleeping again? When was the last time you did this without feeling the least bit guilty? Without worrying that you won't be able to sleep that night, because it actually doesn't matter?

I might be living on a budget, but sometimes it just hits me: this lifestyle is about as luxury as it comes.