Traveling with friends can be awesome and an incredibly bonding experience. It can be fun and fulfilling.
Someone once told us – “You’ll really know who your friends are after you go traveling with them”. Hmm. Great advice, but perhaps we’d rather know them ahead of time?
If you’re thinking about going on a journey with a friend or friends, you’ll want to consider the journey and how that will work between you. Please note that most of the time, each party will most likely be making some sort of sacrifice to allow a better experience for their journey partner(s). This will ultimately build better friendships as you experience life together. If you think it won’t work out, it may be best not to journey with that person in order to preserve the friendship.
Some folks think the more the merrier. Admittedly there can be some cost savings by having a full group receiving a discount, but there are different dynamics of larger travel groups. For instance, someone has to be the “teacher” and perform the head count to make sure everyone “is on the bus”. In this realm, discuss ahead about everyone needing to be hypersensitive (in a positive way) towards the others in the group, that way hopefully everyone’s personalities are accommodated.
We’ve heard numerous stories where friends have traveled together and it didn’t work out so well (in some unfortunate cases, it regrettably precipitated the end of the friendship). We’ve discovered a few nuggets that are helpful in avoiding journey stress. There may be other things you will see as important as well, but below are several things to keep in mind that can be used as protocols:
- Know how to travel well – if you’re a novice at traveling, any glitches in the travel may solidify your relationship with your fellow journeyers, but could also be a huge burden to work through while you’re on unfamiliar turf. From what we’ve heard from others, more often the later occurs and it has created issues in some cases having remained unresolved for decades.
- Be aware of your fellow journeyman’s wants and needs – like you, they have certain goals, desires and accomplishments they may want to achieve while on their journey with you, so you want to make sure you don’t mess that up. To the greatest extent possible, do what you can to enhance their journey. For this journey, it’s essentially a partnership.
- Select your traveling partners carefully – not everyone travels well or the same as you. It’s neither good nor bad, just different, but important. Some folks like every little detail planned out to a “T”, and if it doesn’t go well, they become unraveled. Others like to “fly by the seat of their pants” and not plan anything. If you’re with someone who has an opposite style to you, or you sense that there could be issues, it’s best to work things out ahead of time or not go with them to avoid potential issues (or even meltdowns – worst case scenario, your own) while traveling. It’s easy to meet/talk with your journey partners ahead of time to discuss possible journeys and most of the time it’ll become obvious as to whether it’s a good idea to travel with them.
- Let someone take the lead – to avoid potential conflict and to ensure that all aspects of the journey are being planned adequately, it is good to have at least one person take the lead for the planning and the implementation. If you have all Type A personalities, all but one should defer. Likewise if there are no Type A personalities, someone should step up. Work what’s best for those traveling and the journey itself. Which could end up where different people take different segments of the journey. The key with different leads is tons of communication and coordination so that everything is covered.
- Budget – plan your budget wisely, no one in the group should be forced to spend beyond their budget. And no one wants to be the stressed out person who’s budget is blown to smithereens, and they spend the whole trip worrying about money. It’s best to determine the budget up front, and if you know your travel buddy has less money…well, be polite and honor that. This means plan the entire trip according to the lowest spend rate. It doesn’t mean sacrifice. One can always buy something a little extra on the side, it means don’t plan on spending $150/day on custom tours for 6 days when the tour budget may be $300 total.
- Food – invariably almost always becomes an issue. Some folks love to eat fast food (because obviously it can be fast, cheap, and easy), while others like to hang out at the outdoor café eating the most eclectic food available on earth. Neither approach is wrong, but there has to be an understanding and acknowledgment of each other’s food preferences. Sometimes planning to eat lunch independently every so often can be good as well, see below…
- Medical considerations – we need to be more than just sensitive to our fellow traveler’s needs, we need to also adjust our journey to help accommodate any special conditions that are required. Check in with those you travel ahead of time and the journey is not only guaranteed to go smoother, and your traveling partner will be deeply appreciative.
- Plan some separation or downtime between entities – on longer trips (for us it’s more than 4-5 days), it’s good to break up the time together every so often. That allows for a) any issues a chance to resolve themselves, b) an opportunity for the parties to resolve them, or c) a little time for tensions to possibly resolve.
The key is, talk about things ahead of time and agree between everyone, ensuring sensitivity to everyone else, taking into account their wants and needs. Also check in – talk as you are on the journey to make sure the others you are traveling with are ok.
As for us, we’ve both been asked and asked others to travel together, we feel each time we’ve successfully enjoying our friends company. Along the way we’ve made mistakes, but the point is to learn and not repeat the mistakes, isn’t it? That said, even though we like to plan things out, we’re pretty adaptable and follow the protocol closely.