A guide to post-travel recovery: Coming home after the adventure

For those who are fluent in travel and have been trotting from one place to another, have you ever noticed the difference between travelling in your younger years and travelling now? If the answer is yes, then it is safe to presume that you might have felt like taking some time off between your travel and getting back to your daily routine.

Millennials called it post-travel depression; the younger crowd of today rebranded it as post-travel recovery. While it is true that we millennials only gave a term to the problem without seeking an answer for it, the new-age travellers had the bluntness to actually address the issue. Unbeknownst to me, I had already gone through the process of travel recovery after my last adventure.

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First, let’s zero in on the symptoms of post-travel depression you face after a trip. Right after you land or reach the bus station back home, a wave of anxiety sprinkled with a pinch of emptiness falls on you. The idea of going back to work and facing your boss is nothing less than hearing fingernails scratching the blackboard. During every tea or smoke break, you question your life decisions while reminiscing about your fond experiences.

If you are resonating with the paragraphs above, then the following suggestions are for you!

Planning the timeline of your trips is the first mountain you must climb. Most people usually plan their trips according to the number of leave days they can manage. If you somehow get four days off, you travel for four days. If it is five, you try to squeeze every bit of travelling out of those five days. I used to do the same.

The problem starts when your bus reaches Dhaka at 6 in the morning, and you have office at 9.

At that point, whatever peace you managed to collect from the mountains, sea or wherever you travelled to disappears somewhere between Gabtoli and Karwan Bazar.

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So, if possible, keep one day empty after coming back. I know that sounds almost criminal when you have limited annual leave, especially in Bangladesh, where getting a decent stretch of leave itself can sometimes feel like negotiating a peace treaty. But that one day makes a massive difference.

Do not make plans for it either.

Come home. Take a shower. Sleep. Unpack whenever you feel like it. Eat normal home food. Lie around. Go through the pictures. Maybe meet no one. Basically, allow yourself to become boring again.

This was something I did after my last trip without even realising that people now have a term for it.

Another thing that helps is fixing your sleep before going back to work. Trips have a way of destroying whatever sleep cycle you had. You stay awake talking until 3 AM, wake up at 6 AM to catch a sunrise, spend eight hours on a bus and somehow convince yourself that this is fun. It is fun, of course. Until Monday arrives.

If you are coming back from somewhere far, particularly after a long overnight bus journey, do not underestimate how physically tired you actually are. Sometimes what feels like sadness is simply exhaustion mixed with the sudden realisation that tomorrow you have countless unread emails.

There is another trick I have started appreciating. Do not immediately start hating your regular life.

This sounds obvious, but after a good trip, everything at home suddenly feels dull. The road you were travelling through two days ago had mountains on both sides. Now you are staring at the same traffic signal in Mohakhali for 25 minutes. It is not exactly a fair comparison.

Instead, bring something back with you from the trip. And I do not mean a fridge magnet.

Maybe start walking more because you enjoyed walking there. Maybe keep your phone away for an hour in the evening because you realised how little you needed it during the trip. Cook something you ate there. Call the people you travelled with. Go through the photos together and laugh at the ones that will never make it to Instagram.

Most importantly, give the trip an ending.

For me, that is probably what post-travel recovery really is. It is not about getting over a place or forcing yourself to be happy about returning to work. It is simply giving your mind enough time to understand that the trip is over and normal life has started again.

And normal life is not necessarily the enemy.

It is also the thing that eventually pays for the next trip.