Creating a ‘home’ away

Reminders of home are important to people no matter where they are, no more so than when they're 'away'. But they become especially precious to long term travellers like us who live out of their suitcases. When I was backpacking on my own in South America when I was younger, I carried a wooden incense holder and incense with me that I’d brought from Australia, and I’d light it wherever I stayed. The scent of sandalwood would take me back to our flat in Sydney where Terry was still living and working, and remind me of him and our home. But it also made a characterless hotel room cosy. Terry and I do the same thing now when we travel, light incense in hotel rooms wherever we go. Only now the scent reminds us of the frankincense we’d use in the apartment we packed up over two years ago in Dubai. This is the start of our 29th month on the road writing, and we're starting to miss having a home. Months at a time have been spent researching countries, regions, islands, and cities where we’ve had to move hotels every day or two to test them out for the guidebooks we're writing, and simply to cover the territory we needed to. We spent January, February and part of March researching books in the UAE, Cyprus and Crete, so we were relieved to stay at a friend’s villa for a month in Turkey. We bought a tonne of groceries and the first thing we did when we arrived was unpack and put everything away and set the kitchen up the way we like it. We planned to do a lot of cooking and we did. We shifted furniture around, lit our incense, scattered travel magazines about, put novels on our bedside tables, and picked flowers from the garden. Do you like them? I delighted in doing little things that I used to do at home. Like being able to arrange my toiletries in the bathroom. Don't laugh. We even adopted some neighbourhood cats, bought them food, and fed them daily. But just because we’re missing having a ‘home’ doesn’t mean we want to stop travelling. On the contrary, we’re currently planning our next research trip to Italy and we're already getting excited at the prospect of being on the road again. It’s just that we appreciate being able to create a 'home' whenever we can. For the first time in my life, I can understand why some people get homesick when they travel. Although for me any feelings of melancholia or nostalgia I might have occasionally aren't strong enough to give up travelling. After all, giving up travelling is unnecessary when we can create a 'home' – however temporary – wherever we are.