{"id":25383,"date":"2019-01-28T00:00:20","date_gmt":"2019-01-28T00:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flashpacknew.wpengine.com\/?p=25383"},"modified":"2023-09-25T13:16:42","modified_gmt":"2023-09-25T12:16:42","slug":"gap-year-lessons-live-for-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.flashpack.com\/us\/solo\/travel\/gap-year-lessons-live-for-now\/","title":{"rendered":"What I learnt from my mum’s gap year: live for today"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Forget influencers – my mum is my gap year hero, says writer Jenny Novitsky<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

People say I take after my mum. When I used to walk around the Manc neighbourhood where she grew up, I\u2019d get stopped in the street by 90-year-old women calling me by her name. With our \u2018petite\u2019 height (thanks for the five foot nothing genes, mama), penchant for wearing berets and crippling levels of social anxiety, I could see why.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As well as being my older doppelg\u00e4nger, my mum is my travel hero (she\u2019s my general life hero, too, but that\u2019s a different article). Travel heroes can too often be #influencer types, swanning about on a yacht with a glass of champagne, forcing their other halves to snap infinite photos of them in swimwear. But my travel hero is a 63-year-old woman with arthritis who always takes a hard-boiled egg wrapped in tin foil for the plane \u2018just in case\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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My mum, the wanderluster<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

 <\/h3>\n\n\n\n

To hell with the consequences<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

My mum announced a few years ago that she wanted to retire early because, “I want to see the world, and work is stressful and gives me the sh*ts.” And so, she did. She set off on a gap year, 45 years older than the acne-ridden backpacker next to her and, let\u2019s face it, 45 years more grateful to be getting away from it all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It would have been easy for my mum to make excuses and put off her dreams of travelling: she had a mortgage to pay, a flourishing career, plants that needed watering, dance classes that wouldn\u2019t tango themselves. But I guess she always knew, somewhere tucked away, that life isn\u2019t infinite. If you really want to do something, you need to do it sooner rather than later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Milford<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

My mum ended up on all kinds of adventures. Like all good gap year-ers, she started by fruit picking \u2013albeit, for pleasure rather than a visa, on her friend\u2019s olive grove in Greece. She went sailing in New Zealand, holding onto her bright orange sun hat as the wind whipped through her grey hairs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She went on safari<\/a> in Kenya, elephants rumbling past the tent at 2am, in an ever-so-slightly too immersive version of The Lion King<\/i>. She saw actual orang-utans, her favourite animal, in Borneo. And she tangoed in Argentina<\/a>, bringing a little of her Sheffield dance class along with her to South America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Don’t hang about<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

I was jealous as hell, of course. I\u2019d had my own \u2018gap year\u2019 between school and university. A gap year that I spent, for the most part, serving roast chicken and Malbec at the restaurant at the end of my road to people I\u2019d known for 18 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An exotic adventure it was not. I used to envy people who\u2019d made better use of that year of freedom, gallivanting off to Thailand for neon-paint-soaked raves and collecting anecdotes to impress boys at uni parties. But seeing my mum have the time of her life taught me that it\u2019s silly to be jealous of other people. That it\u2019s pointless to regret not having travelled more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At any moment, you can choose to fill your life with the things you wish you were doing. Of course, in life, there are commitments and some have more than others. But a week exploring the jungles of Borneo, ten days trekking the Sahara desert, learning to scuba dive in the Maldives. Fit these things into your life while you can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If my mum\u2019s gap year has taught me anything, it\u2019s to seize life. If you want to travel, travel. There\u2019s never a right or wrong time to have a \u2018gap year\u2019 or to take off on an adventure. Throw some pants in a backpack, whack a beret on, boil an egg and hop on a plane. The time is always now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Three gap year-boosting trips, whatever your age<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Jungle camping in Borneo<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage in Borneo was set up in 1975 to care for injured, lost or abandoned Asian elephants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Born-where-oh? Yeah, we get it. Borneo isn\u2019t exactly a tourist hot spot, and it\u2019s all the better for it. Secluded jungle exploring, kayaking down wild rivers and actual orangutans. This is for the real explorers. Live for today!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sri Lanka, it\u2019s got it all<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Do you like golden beaches, misty green valleys and ALL the animals? Sri Lanka\u2019s got you. Hop aboard one of the world\u2019s most beautiful train rides from Nuwara Eliya to Haputale, hike through the cloud forest and hang with elephants, leopards and baby turtles. Bliss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes please<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A modern gap year in Laos and Thailand<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Kuang<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019ll be #grateful you missed Thailand for your first gap year. With remote eco-lodges, secret waterfalls, sleeper trains and ancient temples, there\u2019s so much more to Thailand and Laos than neon raves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Images: Jenny Novitzky, Shutterstock, Unsplash<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Forget influencers – my mum is my gap year hero, says writer Jenny Novitsky People…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":83177,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9033,9029],"tags":[107,464,433,443,891,362,457,3884,543,339,384],"class_list":["post-25383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-solo-travel-tips","category-travel","tag-adventure","tag-discover","tag-escape","tag-explore","tag-family","tag-group-adventure","tag-relationships","tag-seize-the-moment","tag-solo-adventure","tag-solo-travel","tag-travelling-alone"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flashpack.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flashpack.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flashpack.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flashpack.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/63"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flashpack.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.flashpack.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flashpack.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flashpack.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flashpack.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flashpack.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}