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There is a wicked bug that tends to bite curious minds. A single bite, in fact, is so strong that it can transform the victim’s mind – and life – forever.
That (in)famous “travel bug” – so widely talked about for generations – can do strange things to one who cares to ask. It will particularly cause the victim to feel an obsessive need to travel the world. The fever the bug causes is commonly called “Wanderlust”.
I have been, firmly and irrevocably, bitten by the travel bug.
Here are the signs which can help you tell if you’ve suffered the same fate!
1) You refrain from taking a leave from work even when you’re sick. Your hard earned leaves are for travelling, not for being sick!
2) You calculate things on the basis of trips. Should you buy those boots? No wait, you can book your next tickets for that price!
3) Your Facebook friend list is full of people from different countries that you met while travelling. You have friends in almost every timezone!
4) You firmly believe travel is the BEST test for any relationship.
5) Forget movies – in your spare time, you enjoy reading travel blogs or making rough itineraries.
6) You can’t ever imagine yourself settling down with anyone who doesn’t share the same passion for travelling.
7) You check flight prices on a regular basis, just in case you get lucky and find a lucrative deal.
8) You start showing some serious withdrawal symptoms if you haven’t travelled anywhere for a few weeks.
9) Your room has plenty of knick-knacks from different places that you have visited – UV lamps from Goa, Tibetan prayer flags from the Himalayas, mirror-work goodies from Jaipur, tacky souvenirs from Bangkok’s Khao San Road, shot glasses or magnets from your Euro trip (well, because everything else was too expensive there).
10) You have your next five destinations roughly planned out in your head. No wait, 10! Uff, 50!
11) When not travelling, your eyes light up when you randomly meet a fellow travel addict at a party. You end up speaking for hours! And unlike what people think – no, you’re not flirting but just sharing travel stories.
12) You don’t want a birthday party in your hometown, you want a birthday trip! A birthday party while travelling is an added bonus.
13) Your advice to your younger sibling/cousin/niece is to travel as much as possible before they start working.
14) In your eyes, the most magical love stories are the ones where people meet each other while travelling, no matter how the end is.
15) You know how to say “hello” and “thank you” in five different languages apart from your mother tongue.
16) You may not have the best phone but you definitely have a killer backpack.
17) Let’s face it – you have shared inspirational travel images and quotes on your Facebook timeline a few times.
18) Your skin usually has a tan for most months of the year.
19) Even though it’s old, you’ve watched The Beach over and over. That shit never gets boring! Same with Into The Wild.
20) Your inbox is full of travel deals and travel blog subscription emails. Airline deals, hotel deals, itineraries – you have them all!
21) If you could turn back time, that one thing that you’d do differently is to travel more.
Did you nod to most of the above points? Congratulations – you’ve definitely been bitten by the travel bug! There is absolutely no cure for this and you must keep travelling to satiate your appetite. It’s time to book your tickets for your next destination!
(A hippie travel writer with flowers in her hair, Sonal Kwatra Paladini should have been born in the 1960s! Bitten by the famous travel bug, she has an itch to explore resort-free destinations, offbeat islands and small villages. She blogs about the madness of her journey on her website, DrifterPlanet.com, with her husband who she met at a music festival in Thailand.)
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