How to Manage your Travel Downtime

All my days aren’t spent travelling. In fact, I think I spend more time at home than anywhere else in the world. Often, I get these long dry spells where I don’t really go anywhere (far from home) and I usually try to fill my days with activities that are just as interesting as travelling. So here’s a list of some ways I manage this travel downtime.

Finding new hobbies

In between sharpening my photography and French-speaking skills by taking short online/offline courses and multiple tutorials on YouTube, I am also learning to swim and do Yoga. In order to balance out these activities, I allocate different slots of time to them. For example, I listen to my French audio tutorials on my commute to work and I do yoga/go swimming on some weekends. I’m also looking to take sewing and cooking classes in the coming months.

Finding other activities you love and focusing on them gives you some level of satisfaction and also improves the quality of your life.

Exploring more places around me

This is definitely something I encourage everyone to do. Sometimes, because of certain constraints (which could be time or money related or just the hassles that come with applying for visas as a Nigerian citizen, it gets pretty difficult to explore places far away. And what do you do when life hands you pepper? You make pepper-soup!

And when life hands you pepper, make pepper-soup! Share on X

Exploring new places around me and revisiting old ones has definitely been a highlight of this travel year. And it also brought with it some opportunities. For example, earlier this year, I teamed up with Unravelling Nigeria, Folaswaka and Naija Nomads on a project for Travelstart Nigeria. We visited Abuja, Nigeria’s capital city and while we were there, we took a detour to Kaduna, where we visited the very beautiful Kajuru castle.

Vising the Abuja National Mosque certainly gave me Abu Dhabi vibes and Kajuru Castle made me feel like I was in Germany! haha!

Reading new books

Ah yes, new books! When this year began, I decided I was going to read 100 new books. And I actually started but I’m only about 25 books in, so it’s safe to say that that’s a failed goal! Lol. But you know what’s worse than reading 25 out of 100 books? Yes, reading 0 books.

I think I might get to 30 before the year runs out and the kindle I received from Mark is certainly encouraging me towards achieving that new goal. (Maybe I should stop calling it ‘a goal’ before I jinx it again!). Anyway, the first book I got was Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. I loved reading it and I loved it even more because I have been to Cape Coast and I could literally paint out the words in my head.

That's the thing about books, they let you travel without moving your feet! Share on X

I’m reading ‘The Alchemist’ again and keeping my fingers crossed for a trip to Egypt soon! 🙂

Spending more time with friends and family

And finally, more time at home means more time with my friends and family, which I am ever so grateful for.

So that’s it! Ways I manage my travel downtime. What about you? What are some of the thing you do when you’re not travelling?