How Travelling In Your 30s Is Different Than In Your 20s.

o many people still see a gap year as a once-in-a-lifetime thing. A single, glorious year out when you are young, free and reckless enough to have the adventure of a lifetime before the world expects you to grow up, settle down and quietly step back onto the conveyor belt of normal life.

They are wrong.

Travel does not come with an expiry date, and a gap year is not something you have to get out of your system before adulthood catches up with you. Grown-up gap years, career breaks, snap years, sabbaticals and long-term travel without any fixed end point are no longer fringe ideas. More and more people are realising that travelling in your thirties is not a lesser version of travelling in your twenties. In many ways, it can be even better.

I have spent the last fifteen years travelling the world through a mixture of gap years, snap years, shorter adventures and periods of long-term travel without any real plan to come home. That is a hell of a long time, and of course I have changed along the way. Some of that is simply growing up. Some of it is the inevitable result of time, experience and the occasional hard lesson. But a lot of it is because travel itself has changed me.

And because I have changed, the way I travel has changed too.

But is that just me?

A Different World

When I first started backpacking, travel felt like a very different world. Taking a gap year was not as widespread or as widely accepted as it is now. Mobile phones were only just starting to become popular and certainly were not the norm. The internet was still in its relative infancy, and if you wanted to use it, you had to search out one of those ubiquitous internet cafés. Lonely Planet was still considered the bible, The Beach was not yet nostalgic and everyone certainly did not have one of those damn selfie sticks.

A lot has changed.

Technology has transformed travel in ways that would have seemed almost ridiculous when I first started. Maps, instant booking sites, translation tools, ride-hailing apps and last-minute accommodation are now all available at the touch of a smartphone. That has made travel easier, safer and more accessible in many ways, and there is no point pretending otherwise.

But it has also changed the feel of independent travel. The sense of adventure is slowly disappearing as people pre book more and more. Guidebooks like Lonely Planet are no longer the battered, dog-eared bibles they once were, passed between backpackers in hostels and used until the pages fell out. In many ways they have become shells of what they used to be, absorbed into a much larger travel industry of tours, booking platforms and packaged “experiences”. Independent travel, or at least the idea of it, has been polished, commodified and sold back to travellers at a markup.

Of course, backpackers still need advice. They still need guidance, reassurance, inspiration and the occasional kick up the arse to realise they can actually do this. They just do not get all of that from one blue-spined book anymore. Now they turn to independent travel websites, blogs, creators and communities instead, which is not exactly terrible news for me.

But even that will change again sooner rather than later, I suspect.

A Sense Of Real Travel

I am genuinely glad I got to experience world travel in my twenties, before smartphones became ubiquitous and before the gap year industry really took hold.

Back then, there was no endless scroll of travel blogs, videos, itineraries and reviews to research every destination before you arrived. Turning up somewhere new carried a genuine sense of adventure. You stepped off the plane armed with a well-thumbed copy of Lonely Planet, a few scraps of information picked up from other travellers along the way and not much else. It was big, it was scary, I made a ton of mistakes and, hell, I even very nearly met my maker once or twice. But I had a hell of a time doing it.

Backpacking around the world is easier now than it has ever been, and in many ways that is a good thing. But I do think some of that raw, independent sense of adventure has been softened around the edges.

That is not necessarily a criticism, just an acknowledgement that travel changes as the world changes, and every generation of travellers experiences it differently. Mine just happened to come at a time when backpacking still felt a little rougher, a little less polished and a lot less certain, and if I’m honest, I loved that. I loved the unknowns, the mistakes, the moments where I had no real choice but to figure things out for myself. I loved the fact that travel forced me to be adaptable, to talk to people, to trust my instincts, to listen more carefully and to realise very quickly that the world was far bigger, stranger, kinder and more complicated than I had ever imagined from home.

Backpacking then was messy in the best possible way. It was cheap hostels with sagging bunks and questionable bathrooms, overnight buses booked on a whim, all-night parties that somehow ended with sunrise breakfasts, temporary friendships that felt intensely important for the few days they existed and stupid decisions that, looking back, probably should have ended much worse than they did. Sometimes they very nearly did. There were moments when I pushed my luck too far, trusted the wrong instinct, said yes when I probably should have said no and ended up far closer to disaster than any sensible adult would now be comfortable admitting.

But that was part of it too. Not the recklessness for its own sake, but the process of learning where the edges were. I was still figuring out who I was, and travel gave me the space to do that badly, brilliantly and honestly all at once. Those hostels, parties, mistakes, friendships, near misses and ridiculous adventures were not separate from the person I became. They helped shape him.

That sense of adventure did not just give me better stories. It changed me. It made me more resilient because I had to deal with things going wrong. It made me more open-minded because I was constantly being confronted with different ways of living, thinking and seeing the world. It made me more worldly because I was not just reading about other cultures, I was standing in the middle of them, confused, excited, humbled and occasionally completely lost.

The thing is, now I am in my thirties, travel is still just as much of a blast.

Just not in the same way.

Travel Shaped Me, Now I Shape The Way I Travel

In my twenties, travel helped shape who I was. It threw me into the world at a point when I was still working myself out, still forming opinions, still testing boundaries and still trying to understand what kind of person I wanted to become. Every journey felt formative because, in many ways, it was. Every new country, every mistake, every friendship, every culture shock and every ridiculous adventure became another small piece of the puzzle. Looking back now, I can trace parts of the person I am today to countless moments scattered across the world.

Travel gave me confidence before I truly believed I had any. It forced me to solve problems when there was nobody else to solve them for me. It taught me to navigate unfamiliar cities, communicate when I didn’t share a language, trust my instincts when something didn’t feel right and more importantly, trust complete strangers when kindness was offered freely. Every challenge overcome quietly reinforced the idea that I was far more capable than I had ever given myself credit for. That confidence didn’t appear overnight, it was earned one uncomfortable situation at a time.

More importantly, travel challenged almost everything I thought I knew. It dismantled assumptions I didn’t even realise I was carrying and replaced them with questions instead of certainties. Living alongside different cultures, beliefs and ways of life taught me that there are very few universal truths beyond our shared humanity. The world became infinitely more complicated than I had imagined, but also infinitely more interesting too. That curiosity has never left me, and still keeps shaping me to this day, but during my formative years it had a truly profound effect.

Travel also gave me something that is difficult to find anywhere else: perspective. When you spend enough time stepping into other people’s lives, however briefly, your own life begins to look different too. The things that once felt important become less so. Problems that seemed enormous suddenly find their proper scale. Ambitions change. Priorities shift. You begin to realise that there are countless different ways to build a meaningful life, and none of them are inherently more valid than another.

That is why I have always smiled when people say travel helps you ‘find yourself’. I don’t think it works quite like that. I don’t believe there is some fully formed version of yourself waiting to be discovered on a beach in Thailand or a mountain in Peru. What travel does is give you the experiences that slowly shape the person you become. It strips away assumptions, tests your character, exposes your weaknesses, rewards your curiosity and, if you let it, leaves you just a little wiser than when you first zipped up your backpack.

Now, in my thirties, that relationship has changed. I am not travelling to find myself in the same way anymore because, for the most part, I already know who I am. I know what I value, what excites me, what frustrates me and what kind of life I want to build. I am comfortable with that, and that confidence has fundamentally changed the way I move through the world.

Travel no longer has to define me. Instead, I get to define how I travel.

That is a subtle shift, but it changes everything. I no longer feel the same need to prove anything, to chase every party, tick every box or squeeze every last drop out of every destination simply because I might never return. I no longer confuse being busy with experiencing a place. I have learned that slowing down often reveals far more than speeding up ever could.

Travelling in my thirties, now that I know who I am, has allowed me to travel much more deeply than before.

That doesn’t mean travel has stopped changing me. Far from it. Every journey still teaches me something new, still challenges my assumptions and still leaves me with fresh perspectives I carry home. The difference is that those experiences are no longer building the foundations of who I am. They are adding depth to a foundation that already exists. I am no longer asking travel to tell me who I should become. Instead, I bring a more settled version of myself into every new country I visit, and that allows me to engage with the world in a quieter, deeper and, I think, ultimately more rewarding way.

Slowing Down And Needing More Comfort

One of the biggest ways travel has changed for me in my thirties is that I no longer feel the need to punish myself to prove I am travelling properly.

When I was younger, discomfort almost felt like part of the badge of honour. The cheapest dorm, the longest overnight bus, the roughest route, the most chaotic border crossing, the least sleep and the most ridiculous story afterwards. There was a strange kind of pride in surviving it all, and to be fair, a lot of those experiences became some of the best memories I have. They were part of the adventure. They were part of the education. They taught me resilience, patience, adaptability and the very useful ability to fall asleep almost anywhere.

But I do not need every trip to feel like an endurance test anymore.

That does not mean I have stopped backpacking. Far from it. I still love budget travel, independent travel, hostels, street food, public transport and the freedom of travelling light with everything I need on my back. That has not changed. What has changed is that I no longer see comfort as some kind of betrayal of the backpacker spirit. I can still be an independent traveller and occasionally want a private room, a proper mattress, a hot shower with actual water pressure and a door that locks without needing a chair wedged against it.

There is a real freedom in that.

In my twenties, budget often dictated almost everything. If the cheapest option meant a packed dorm, a grim bathroom, a twelve-hour bus with no legroom or sleeping in an airport to save the cost of a hostel, then that was what I did. Sometimes it was fun. Sometimes it was character-building. Sometimes it was just bloody awful. But when you are twenty, skint and determined to stretch every penny as far as it will go, you accept a lot in the name of staying on the road.

Now, I am much more comfortable switching between backpacking and flashpacking as needed. I can still stay in budget accommodation when it makes sense, but I can also splash out when I know it will make the journey better. A private room after a brutal travel day is not weakness. It is wisdom. Paying a little more for a better location, a safer arrival, a decent night’s sleep or a bit of breathing space is not selling out. It is understanding that value and cheap are not always the same thing.

That has been one of the biggest lessons of getting older as a traveller. I care far less about doing things the cheapest way possible and far more about doing them in a way that actually works for me. Sometimes that still means the cheapest option. Sometimes it means paying more because the experience, comfort, safety or sanity is worth it.

The same is true of how I spend my time. I am far less likely now to chase every all-night beach party just because it is there. I have done plenty of that. I have had the nights that turned into mornings, the hostel drinking sessions, the questionable decisions, even more questionable nights with people you have just met and the sunrise walks back wondering how the hell I ended up there. I am glad I had them. I would not erase them for anything.

But these days, I am just as happy with a quiet bar, a good meal, a long walk through a city or an evening with a book and the knowledge that I will actually be able to enjoy the next day. That is not becoming boring. That is knowing what I want from travel now.

And that confidence has changed the pace of my travel too.

Back on my first gap year, I made the same mistake almost every first-time backpacker makes. I tried to see everything. I crammed too much in, rushed from place to place and treated travel as if it was a checklist I had to complete before time ran out. It was exciting, of course, but it was also exhausting, and looking back I know I passed through far too many places without really giving them the time they deserved.

Now, I travel much more slowly. I stay longer. I give places time to unfold. I am far more interested in settling into the rhythm of somewhere than racing through it just to say I have been. That might mean I see fewer destinations on any given trip, but I see far more of the places I do visit.

Slow travel is not just about moving less. It is about noticing more. It is about finding the same little café every morning, learning the streets around where you are staying, recognising faces, understanding routines and letting a destination become more than a collection of sights. It gives you space to breathe, to think, to connect and to experience a place beyond the surface level.

In my twenties, I wanted travel to be intense. I wanted movement, excitement, novelty and the constant hit of the next place. In my thirties, I still want adventure, but I no longer think adventure has to mean speed. Sometimes the richer experience comes from staying still long enough for a place to reveal itself properly.

That, more than anything, is what slowing down has given me. Not less travel, but better travel. Not fewer experiences, but deeper ones. Not a retreat from adventure, but a more considered way of choosing it.

Refusing The Life I Was Supposed To Want

One of the strangest parts of continuing to travel into my thirties was realising how uncomfortable it made some people.

When I was younger, long-term travel was often dismissed as a phase. A gap year. A bit of fun. Something I would eventually get out of my system before coming home, settling down and joining the real world like everyone else. There was always an assumption that travel was temporary, that sooner or later adulthood would arrive, tap me firmly on the shoulder and tell me it was time to stop messing about.

Except that never really happened.

Every time I came home from another trip, I seemed to return to the same questions. When was I going to settle down? When was I going to buy a house? When was I going to get married? When was I going to have children? When was I going to finally stop disappearing around the world and start living a normal life?

The problem was that I had never been entirely convinced that normal life was something I wanted.

That does not mean there is anything wrong with wanting those things. There is not. A home, a family, a career, stability, routine and roots can be wonderful things for the people who genuinely want them. The issue was never that other people had chosen a different life. The issue was the assumption that their life was the only acceptable template for mine.

I did not reject adulthood. I rejected the idea that adulthood had to look exactly the same for everyone.

And for a while, that made me feel like the odd one out. Many of my friends were buying homes, getting married, having children and moving through the expected milestones of adult life while I was still packing a battered backpack, chasing flights, taking career breaks and working out how long I could make the next adventure last. At weddings, family gatherings and funerals, I was often the strange one. The one who had not quite followed the script. The one people were not entirely sure what to do with.

There is a quiet pressure in that. Nobody has to say it outright all the time, although they often do. It is there in the raised eyebrows, the jokes, the concerned questions and the subtle implication that you are somehow falling behind. As if life is a race with fixed checkpoints, and if you do not reach them at the expected time, you have failed.

But travel had already taught me something important by then. There is more than one way to live a meaningful life.

My path was not straight. It was broken, undulating, halting and occasionally completely ridiculous. I went to university twice. I built two careers. I travelled for long periods whenever I could and whenever I damn well wanted to. I stepped in and out of the so-called real world so often that eventually I stopped seeing travel and life as separate things at all.

Travel was not an escape from my life. It was part of my life.

That distinction matters. For too long, people have treated travel as something that happens outside of adulthood, as if it belongs only to youth, irresponsibility or temporary freedom before the serious business of living begins. But my experience has been the opposite. Travel did not prevent me from building a life. It helped me build one that actually felt like mine.

And yes, that came with sacrifices. I did not always have the same things my peers had at the same time they had them. I did not follow the neat timeline. I did not collect the expected milestones in the expected order. But I gained something else: a profound sense of freedom from the idea that my life had to be measured against anyone else’s.

That freedom has only become more valuable as I have got older.

In my twenties, bucking the trend sometimes made me feel like an outsider. In my thirties, it made me realise I had been right to question the trend in the first place. Not because my choices were better than anyone else’s, but because they were mine. I had built a life that allowed space for work, travel, independence, ambition, rest, adventure and meaning. It may not have looked conventional, but it worked.

That is one of the biggest differences between travelling in my twenties and travelling in my thirties. In my twenties, in many ways, I was still trying to justify my choices to other people. In my thirties, I stopped asking for permission.

Travel Strengthened My Career, Not Held It Back

One of the biggest myths surrounding long-term travel is that it somehow puts your life on hold. That taking months away from work, taking a career break or disappearing around the world is something you have to recover from when you get home.

My experience has been exactly the opposite.

Travel has never held my career back. If anything, it has strengthened it.

By the time I reached my thirties, I had achieved the career I had worked hard for, but I had also found a way to keep travel at the centre of my life. That balance became one of the greatest gifts travel ever gave me.

The reality is that I no longer disappear for years at a time as I occasionally did in my twenties, but that was never because I let responsibility dictate the shape of my life. It was because I became more careful about how much the priority of career was allowed to consume it.

I wanted a career, but I did not want a career that swallowed me whole. I wanted meaningful work, but not at the cost of everything else. I wanted the satisfaction of building something, developing professionally and doing work that mattered, but I also wanted the freedom, space and perspective that travel had always given me.

So instead of choosing between career and travel, I learned to keep both in their proper place.

As a nurse, travelling allowed me to volunteer as an expedition medic, experience healthcare in different parts of the world, develop professionally and return to work with fresh perspectives I simply could not have gained by staying in one place. Equally, having an established career gave me the financial security and flexibility to continue travelling in a way that suited the life I wanted to build.

The relationship became mutually beneficial. Travel made me better at my job, and my job allowed me to keep travelling.

Perhaps even more importantly, travel protected something many people lose as their careers progress: perspective.

Working in emergency nursing is immensely rewarding, but it can also be exhausting. Burnout is real, and I have watched far too many talented colleagues become consumed by careers that slowly left no room for anything else, eventually to the detriment of everything around them. It is very telling that almost none of the people I did my training with are still working in healthcare at all.

Travel became my reset button. It reminded me that there was a world beyond work, that my identity was about far more than my job title and that success meant very little if I never had time to actually enjoy my life.

But over the last few years, travel has become something more than that. It has become a whole new career for me in its own right.

That changes the balance completely. Travel is no longer simply something I use to recover from work. It is becoming the foundation of the work I actually want to do. The writing, the campaigns, the advice, the industry work and the community that has grown around the site give me a new sense of purpose, one that is still rooted in experience and service, but is no longer tied solely to the exhausting demands of healthcare.

I never wanted a career that became my entire identity.

I wanted a life that had room for both purpose and adventure.

Fortunately, travel is helping me build one.

Solo Travel Became Even More Rewarding

A big part of travelling in my thirties is knowing that I am my own man.

That sounds simple, but it changes everything. There is a real danger, of course, of sliding slowly and inevitably into the grumpy old man persona, muttering about “kids these days” and getting far too excited about a quiet room and a decent cup of coffee, but for now at least, it means something far more useful. It means I am immensely comfortable in my own company.

That was not always the case in the same way.

When I travelled in my twenties, solo travel was still incredible, but there was often a stronger pull toward company. Hostel groups, temporary friendships, shared adventures, chaotic nights out and the constant social energy of the backpacker trail were a huge part of the experience. I loved that, and I still do. Some of the best memories I have came from people I met for a few days and never saw again.

But as I have got older, I have become much less dependent on that social side to validate the journey.

I do not need company to make an experience feel worthwhile. I do not need a group to give me permission to enjoy a place. I do not need every moment to become a shared story. I am just as happy wandering through a city alone, sitting in a café watching the world go by, spending a day exploring at my own pace or simply deciding, with absolutely no committee meeting required, that I am going to change my plans entirely because something more interesting has appeared.

That is one of the great gifts of solo travel at any age, but I appreciate it far more now.

In my twenties, solo travel helped me build confidence. In my thirties, it reflects the confidence I already have. I know what I enjoy. I know when I want company and when I want solitude. I know that being alone is not the same as being lonely, and I know that some of the richest travel experiences happen precisely because there is no one else there shaping the moment for you.

There is a quiet freedom in that.

Travelling alone now feels less like proving I can do it and more like giving myself permission to experience the world on my own terms. I can still meet people, still join conversations, still share adventures and still be part of that wonderful, temporary travel community when I want to be. But I can also step away from it without feeling as if I am missing out.

That balance is something I value much more now than I did when I was younger.

Solo travel has not become smaller with age. It has become deeper. It is less about escape, independence or bravado, and more about self-knowledge. It is about knowing that I am enough company for myself, that I can trust my own judgement and that the world does not need to be experienced through anyone else’s expectations but my own.

Experience Changes The Way You See The World

Perhaps the biggest difference between travelling in my twenties and travelling in my thirties has nothing to do with hostels, budgets or comfort at all.

It is perspective.

When I first started travelling, the world was almost overwhelming. Everything was new. Every country, every culture, every conversation and every experience challenged the way I thought about the world. I was constantly absorbing new information, asking questions and trying to make sense of it all. Travel was expanding my horizons at such a rapid pace that I often did not even realise how much it was changing me until years later.

That curiosity has never disappeared.

If anything, it has grown stronger.

The difference is that I now have years of experience to place those new experiences into context. I still ask questions, because I sincerely believe the moment you think you have all the answers is the moment you stop learning. But my questions are different now. Instead of simply asking, “What am I looking at?” I find myself asking, “Why is it like this?” “Who benefits from this?” “What happens because of this?” and “What can I learn from it?”

Travel has taught me that almost everything has another layer beneath the surface if you are willing to look for it.

A bustling market is no longer just a colourful place to wander around with a camera. It is a reflection of local culture, economics, history and daily life. A famous attraction is no longer simply something to tick off a list. I want to understand how it fits into the lives of the people who actually live there. Even the smallest interactions—a conversation over coffee, watching people gather in a public square, sitting on a local bus or returning to the same café every morning—often teach me far more than the headline attractions ever could.

I have also become much more conscious of the impact I have as a traveller.

When I was younger, I often accepted experiences at face value because I simply did not know any better. I assumed that if something was popular, widely advertised or recommended in a guidebook, it must be fine.

Travel taught me that this is not always true.

One experience in particular has stayed with me for decades. During my very first visit to Thailand, I rode an elephant. At the time I thought I was doing something magical. Then I watched a mahout strike that elephant with a spiked bullhook. Afterwards, as I reached out to stroke its ear, I realised there was blood on my hand.

That moment changed me.

It forced me to question something I had accepted without thinking, and that question eventually led me down a path of learning about elephant tourism, wildlife exploitation and responsible travel that continues to this day. It is one of the reasons I have spent so much of my life advocating for better wildlife tourism and encouraging travellers to look beyond the marketing before booking an experience.

That lesson extends far beyond elephants.

These days, I think much more carefully about where my money goes, who benefits from my visit, what kind of tourism I am supporting and what effect my choices have on the people, places and wildlife I have travelled so far to experience. Not because I want to be the perfect traveller—there is no such thing—but because experience has taught me that every travel decision is also an ethical one.

Travel still changes me.

It still challenges my assumptions.

It still leaves me with more questions than answers.

The difference is that, in my thirties, those questions have become less about discovering the world and more about understanding my place within it.

For me, that has made travel richer than ever.

I am a different man in my thirties than I was in my twenties, and the experiences and the way I see travel is different now. But one thing that has never changed is my absolute love for travel.

Despite getting older I still love the feel of pulling my aging, worn backpack onto my probably even more aging and worn back, and arriving at the airport ready and willing for a brand new adventure.

Who says a gap year is only a one time thing? Who says you can only backpack when you are young? Hell, backpacking has only gotten more awesome with time and I say bring on backpacking in my forties, fifties and even beyond that!

Backpacking is the experience of a lifetime, and it should be for a lifetime too!