Travelling after 55: From “Can I still do that?” to “I can’t believe I did that!”
There I was, halfway up a muddy hill in the jungles of northern Thailand. Twenty-something backpackers were darting past me left and right while I stood there, catching my breath and pretending to admire the view. To be fair, the view was gorgeous – but I couldn’t help thinking it would have been nice if someone had warned me about the humidity, the heat, the slippery paths and the ridiculously steep climbs. Would I have skipped this trip to the (ethical, of course…) elephant sanctuary if I’d known? Absolutely not – I really wanted to go. But I would definitely not have done it in sandals and I might have brought hiking poles – or a small oxygen tank.
Now before you get the wrong idea, I’m not completely out of shape. I can walk quite a few miles at a steady pace, I’m a decent swimmer (except for that one incident in the River Kwai), I fit into one airline seat and I haven’t been airlifted off a mountain yet. But still – I’m 57, and the last time I weighed in under 70 kilograms was sometime back in the 20th century.
Fast forward six months since we got back from Thailand, and we’ve already booked our next adventure – a month in Indonesia, hopping between Sumatra, Java and Bali. Flights and hotels? Sorted. But now comes the big question: what are we actually going to do there? Every time I find something exciting, I end up frantically googling things like “How hard is it to hike up …..?” or “How fit do I have to be to …?” And of course, everything I find is written by twenty-something backpackers who think an “easy walk” is scaling a volcano before breakfast.
So where are the stories from people like me – people who still love a good adventure but have a little more mileage on the clock and could stand to lose a few pounds? People who still love a good challenge, just with better beds and less sleeping on night buses? I couldn’t find them. So I figured, why not write them myself?
So here’s some honest stories, a few practical tips and real answers to the question “That looks amazing – but can I do it?”