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Just hit 30 countries on a shoestring budget and it weirdly didn't feel like a big deal until later
I was sitting in a bus station in Medellin last month and realized that trip to Colombia was my 30th country. I've been traveling for about 8 years mostly on the cheap, staying in hostels, eating street food, and using budget airlines. What surprised me was that I didn't feel any kind of rush or accomplishment in the moment. It was just another Tuesday waiting for a bus that was 20 minutes late. But then I looked back at my photos and all the random people I met, like that guy in Budapest who showed me how to cook goulash over a camp stove. The milestone mattered because it proved you don't need a lot of money to see the world, just time and a willingness to eat questionable road food. Has anyone else hit a surprise travel number and felt kind of numb about it at first, then later realized it was something cool?
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bell.jessica5mo ago
...and the weird thing is, I hit 25 countries without even noticing because I was so focused on trying to find a decent burrito in Barcelona that wasn't tourist trap garbage lol. Like I literally pulled out my passport to check how many stamps I had after a guy at a hostel mentioned he was on number 15. I think being broke and traveling forces you to just live in the moment more, you're too busy figuring out if that 3 euro pasta dinner is worth the food poisoning risk to sit back and count milestones. Then months later you're scrolling through your camera roll and see a blurry photo of you and some random person from a different country eating street corn and it hits you that you've seen way more than most people ever will.
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nora_webb515mo ago
You ever look back at something and think "damn, I was too busy living it to feel it"? I used to roll my eyes at counting countries, thought it was tourist bragging. But @shane_carter's journal idea makes sense. I kept a toolbox full of ticket stubs and random receipts from roof jobs I did on the road. Dumped them out last winter and realized I'd been to 14 countries without ever putting a name to the number. That pile of crumpled paper hit different than a passport stamp ever could.
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shane_carter5mo ago
Getting a beat up journal and writing down one thing from each place helped me see the progress later. Didn't track countries on purpose, just jotted down what I ate or who I talked to that day. After about two years I flipped back through it and counted the locations mentioned. Came out to 18 countries and I was honestly surprised because I never stopped to add them up while I was on the road. That physical record made the number feel real even though I wasn't thinking about it at the time. Kinda like how you don't notice a plant growing until you look at a photo from a year ago.
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