Travel Tips | Finding The Perfect Travel Companion

“And it came to me then. That we were wonderful traveling companions but in the end no more than lonely lumps of metal in their own separate orbits. From far off they look like beautiful shooting stars, but in reality they’re nothing more than prisons, where each of us is locked up alone, going nowhere.

When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happened to cross paths, we could be together. Maybe even open our hearts to each other. But that was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant we’d be in absolute solitude. Until we burned up and became nothing.”

– Haruki Murakami –

There is a reason why people choose to travel alone and there is also a reason why some people need a travel partner. Sometimes it is about security when someone need a partner to look after them and some people who like to travel alone wanted a total freedom, be able to make a decision without discussing with anyone.

But sometimes having a good travel buddy can make us travel far and wide especially if we choose to do some trekking in some remote place on earth where someone can watch your back in case you are injured or need some help. Having a travel buddy also can cut out budget quite considerably especially for some transportation and hotel.

But then a bad travel buddy can make both of your trips an absolute nightmare. It was so true that you need to choose your travel companion wisely, they can make or break your trips. I like to share some tips that I’ve learned from my previous traveling.

1: Have Something in Common

You must have something in common, if you choose to do some trekking, make sure that your partner also have similar interest as you, if they like visiting museum, shopping malls and one place of interest after another, then maybe you need to look elsewhere. Before you go, it is good to discuss with potential buddy about your interest.

If you loves photography, than, it is better to travel with someone who share the same interest also. This is very important, someone who like photography like myself can spent an hour or more at a certain location just to get the right photograph. During my trips in Istanbul, me and my friends spent more than four hours inside Hagia Sophia just to get the right picture. Some people might get bored spending more than one hour at a certain location.

2: Agree on a Similar Budget

You need to agree beforehand about how you would like spending your money, I think the best way is sharing, especially for a hotel room but sometimes you can going dutch especially during lunch or dinner when some of you wanted a special meals which have a considerable different price. Otherwise it is good to split the bill and pay 50/50. You can also split the cost for transportation like taking a taxi ride or Auto-Rickshaw.

3: Road Test Your Travel Companion

Before you commit to a long or expensive trip, try to arrange a weekend or overnight excursion to someplace near home. I think it is a good idea that you tray traveling with your potential buddy close at home, maybe for a few days and look for some flexibility. What you like or dislike about your buddy and vice versa. You can never know someone until you travel with them together. So before you travel to the end of the earth for more than one week or even a month, you better get to know your travel companion first. Do not regret later.

4: Make Sure You Can Talk

Before you get down to any detailed planning of a trip, make sure you have “the conversation” about dealing with problems on the road. Talk to your prospective travel buddy about how you imagine the trip working out: for example, would you prefer to spend half the time doing things on your own, or do you envisage spending most of the trip together, visiting the same places? Some people like visiting museum, while others like visiting shopping malls. If both place are at the same town, I think there is no harm on why you cannot go on your separate ways for one days (if you stay for a few days at one location).

5: Flexibility

Plans will change on the fly or new ideas will be discovered. A good travel buddy have all the flexibility. My experience in Sarangkot has taught me. I’m very lucky to have great travel companion with me. During our visit to Sarangkot at Mustard Field, the Annapurna Range were covered with a blanket of clouds, the foreground is great, what’s missing is the mountain.

So we decided to have a quick discussion about returning back to the same place the very next day before we head to Kathmandu from Pokhara. The problem is, we have to get up very early. By 6AM we should leave the hotel and check out. The normal check out time is at 12 PM but the reason why we need to get up early is to chase the golden light during sunrise and we were very lucky when all of us agreed about the ideas.

If you take a look at the photograph above, the previous day, the mountain were hidden under thick blanket of clouds, so we decided to came back again the next day, we think that early morning will gives a clear view of the mountain and we were so lucky that luck was on our side.

Some people might think that it is a waste of times visiting the same place twice and not many people can woke up around 5 am getting ready to hit the road at 6 am without ever taking any breakfast.

Travel with someone who can have some flexibility is great, sometimes thing just doesn’t go right as what we have already planned, sometimes we can’t visit all of the places that was on our itinerary. Sometimes we enjoy certain places more than the other and we tend to spent more time on that particular location and have less time to visit some other place. It is very hard to travel with someone who insist on visiting each and every place mention on the itinerary.

Sometimes the weather wasn’t so good. When I was in Istanbul in 2012, actually our plan is to visit Bursa, Cappadocia and Ankara but the weather in Istanbul is unpredictable, it was raining for a few days, we have yet to explore Istanbul fully, so we decided to spend the whole trip in Istanbul alone, visiting every corner of Istanbul and we had a great day. We think that it is not worth to visit other places when we didn’t get a chance to photograph Istanbul beautifully due to bad weather. So we stick.

The other thing that makes having a great travel companion is that, they can take a better photograph of you than what you can get from a stranger. Yes, you can use a tripod if you choose to travel alone but it is quite cumbersome in some place and sometimes you can’t bring tripod on a certain location or inside building. Nowadays a lot of people use a Selfie method with a small camera or smartphone attached to a mini monopod, but personally I still prefer an old school way. I just don’t like a monopod pole to distract my photograph. Maybe it was just me, but I just don’t like the idea.

Whether you choose to travel solo or with a companion, both have advantage and disadvantage but if you wanted to have a great memorable trips, choose your traveling companion wisely. One of you must have some flexibility and one of you must have some kind of tolerance and understanding upon each other. If both of you are stubborn kind of a person, it is very hard to travel far. Sometimes it is better to travel alone then.