FAQ Series #3: How do you handle changed travel plans without freaking out

Sometimes things don't exactly go as planned. This concept concerns life in general, but also more specific things: like here, travelling. There where three places that I desperately wanted to see during my trip on the Australian coast: Nimbin, Fraser Island and the Whitsundays. I had to cancel Nimbin because of Cyclone Marcia back in the days and now the weather seems to wanna play crazy again, so no Whitsundays for me.

Yeah, it sucks, but I see the whole thing from another point of view: this will might be a reason to come back and I have the chance to rearrange my travels, which is one of the things I like the most: spending my time on a map and trying to figure out where to go. It's challenging, and in the whole tragedy of the situation, fun!

So dear traveller, if you may have booked some trips already, don't get pissed if there are some changes to do. If you're usually early enough, you'll be able to cancel your hotels without having to pay a fee, you'll even might find a cheaper accomodation as before, and if you're about to loose a hundred box on a coach trip or abflight you can't refund, well, that's life. It happens, it's called travelling. That's the fun part about it, you're just forced to figure things out, you're not going to die. You will see a different place you didn't even know the existence about, and it could turn out that this exact place will be the best you've seen on your whole trip. Basically, you could laugh your butt off, in the very end.

The challenge here is to stop struggling about the thought "oh, what will I be missing" - stop that, there's no place for drama here! Since I guess you're not going to die tomorrow, you'll have plenty of opportunities in the future to book yourself a flight again, and go out wandering in this world. Even if it will happen in two years: who cares!

Same for me: no Whitsundays and no stoned Hippies in Nimbin. My list could be longer: I have the sensation to have missed a bunch of cool spots in Sydney, or, poor me, I was locked three days in my apartment in Byron Bay because of heavy rain, I missed a lot. Yes I did, but this encourages me to make sure I'll be back. I didn't really see the entire continent anyway.

There's always a way to sort things out, you'll just need to be a wee bit flexible. And most important of all, you don't need to get angry about it. It's a concept you could apply to daily life as well. I started doing it, and, oh wonder, it works out with a lot of things.

It's very funny to see how this post turned out. I wanted to write about totally different stuff. Like "Yeah, but I made it to Fraser Island at least". But this will be the next story, I suppose. Changes are fine.

Peace, Love and Sandy Feet <3

Lake McKenzie on Fraser Island -
one of the things I had planned to talk about.
You'll get more in the next post ;)