I remember sitting on my bed at the end of last year, itemizing a list of travel plans for myself throughout the coming year, and was generally full of beans about things I was about to achieve. Looking back at my current progression, I solemnly declare that I’ve not carried out any single one of them. Thanks to Covid-19, I ended up spending most of my time staying at home.
While I’m taking this new norm as a blessing in disguise to focus on myself, being a shut-in homeboy doesn’t fit a zippy outdoorsy person like me. Imagine having no chance to travel and still being coerced to abide by the social distancing restrictions for almost one whole year, I fell into the deep pit of depression as a result. Morosely, I believe the same thing happens to many people out there as well, and none of us know how long this will last. If you are reading this and can relate to me, my heart goes out to you.
Despite the challenges, I took the advice from my peers to pick up new hobbies as a replacement for my initial travel plans, and it turned out well. Travelling without stress will be a popular practice again after the pandemic, but there are also a few things we could pick up at the moment to make our travel experience later more enjoyable.
We may be in the dilemma of holding back our plan for 2021. It’s still possible to come out with a workable travel resolution even during an epidemic. With that, here are the four ideas to keep you motivated.
(Photo by Hannah Wright on Unsplash)
Study About The Local Culture and Language
One fine way to feel like you have just been to a place without even being physical there is by the old research binges. Regardless of the choice of media to learn new things, staying at home gives us more time and access to these contents (with some help from the technology of course).
When researching a place, we come across details such as their background stories, local languages and dialects, and the unique customs among the natives. By doing so, we aren’t only acquiring the knowledge, but our visualization of these insights would satisfy the partial portion of our wanderlust desire as well.
Certainly, it takes a long time to master the language and a complete understanding of the local culture, still, this initiative would make your travel in the later date more enticing than expected.
(Photo by Jayden Sim on Unsplash)
Discover Culinary Arts of Different Countries
Commonly, we are bound to entwine food and travel together. Thus, putting food into your resolution list and learning to pick up some cookery skills from home would be fun too.
As it’s difficult to estimate the removal of lockdown policy in some countries, that includes our own with the rising diagnosed cases, taking a trip overseas for food is not going to happen anytime soon, unfortunately! Nonetheless, that doesn’t stop us from being self-sufficient. By getting the correct ingredients from the stores and following the guidelines from recipe books or online content, you would be able to come out with something similar.
(Photo by Mahdiar Mahmoodi on Unsplash)
Support Local Small Businesses
While travelling is tabooed at the moment, with an additional impact of the people in curtailing their outdoor activities, many local businesses such as supermarkets, shops, and stalls struggle to survive the downfall of the economy. As these places play essential roles in tourism, I highly recommend you all, especially the locals, to drop by and buy goods from them instead of going online where many things are imported from other countries.
By doing so, you are not just contributing to the local labours, but their families and communities at the same time.
(Photo by Michael Longmire on Unsplash)
Scrimp and Save!
When considering your travel plans, lining out budget estimation is always unavoidable. Most of the time, we still find ourselves going through the frugal approach when visiting a strange place to accommodate our financial ability. Since Covid-19 has restrained us from spending much cash outside, it allows us to channel the remaining funds into our travel resolution so that by the time we travel, we can let loose ourselves and expand our exploration prospects as much as we could go.
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It’s very easy to get discouraged when your exciting aspirations are being affected by external circumstances. As long as you are resourceful and willing to play with your creativity, these unfavourable conditions shouldn’t be hindrances from your itinerary.
The pandemic is indeed a concern that has affected our life in 2020, and it’s going to do the same to the upcoming year, but it doesn’t have to be. Laying out travel outlines for next year in this unprecedented time is still a possible step. By engaging with the proposals outlined above, I hope they would help you to live your life in 2021 in a more cheerful manner than this year.
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