You Know You Travel a Lot When..

Travelling and exploring the world can be a passion and/or desire for many of us. While some people may set out on a year-long trip, others may be working as digital nomads, or juggling work and travel to get the most out of their holidays.Irrespective of how you travel, as a travel lover, you may have noticed that a few changes have creeped into your life, or that you have picked up some new habits after travelling for a while.Based on a fun discussion started in a travel group, here are 30 signs you travel a lot, all based on traveller’s personal experiences. Thanks to James Coleman for bringing up this topic. Do comment below and add on to this list, and share the post with all your traveller friends!

Here we go:

Thirty-One Ways to Spot a Serious Traveller

Travelling gets into your habits long before it gets into your bank balance. Some people take a year off, some work from wherever the wifi is decent, and some simply squeeze every holiday for all it is worth. The route matters less than the result: after a while, the way you live starts to bend around departures.

This list began as a thread in a travel group, with people throwing in their own tells until it ran well past thirty. Thanks to James Coleman for starting it. Read it as a checklist, or as a diagnosis.

Thirty-one ways to recognise yourself

1. Flight alerts pile up in your inbox and on your phone, and checking fares has stopped being a chore and become a way to unwind. “When I’m stressed, I look up different prices to cities on my bucket list. Booking flights calm me down.” — Renee Evans
2. Exchange rates become entertainment. You check the euro against the pound the way other people check football scores. — Renee Evans
3. Coins from three different currencies roll around your coat pockets, your bag and the bottom of your wallet. — Shepthorn Herdton
4. The staff at your airport, and on your usual route, greet you like a regular at a local pub. — Foster Voyages and James Coleman
5. A four-year-old in your house has twenty stamps in a passport and elite status with an airline. — James Coleman
6. Google Maps has quietly decided that the airport is where you work. — James Coleman
7. You have to consult your phone to work out when you last slept in your own bed. — James Coleman
8. You surface in a hotel bed and spend a second working out which city this is. — Nicole Brewer
9. The people you love tell you, regularly and with feeling, that they miss you. — Chuck Patton
10. There is nothing put aside for retirement, but your passport has run out of pages and needs more. — Jonathan Martindale
11. More of your friends live abroad than at home, and invitations dry up because you are never around to accept them. — Darrel Forbes
12. A drawer at home holds a small museum of SIM cards and leftover notes from a dozen countries.
13. Losing a job sends you to the airport rather than to a job board. — James Coleman
14. Asked for identification at home, you hand over a passport instead of a driving licence. — Robyn Mitchell
15. The first question when you meet an old friend is “Where are you off to next?” — Roxy Marcellino
16. You try to feed a foreign coin into a vending machine and are briefly surprised when it refuses. — Lah Calvin
17. A toothbrush, a charger and clean socks live permanently in your bag, ready for a trip nobody has booked yet.
18. People you have not spoken to in years message out of the blue for itinerary advice.
19. Your Uber driver in the States mentions where he is from, you say you have been there, and the conversation lifts. — James Coleman
20. Crew on your local budget airline do a double take, certain they have seen your face before. — Jenn Gunter
21. A partner without a passport, or one who is frightened of flying, is a deal-breaker before the first date is over. — Kelli Brooks
22. “Where do you live?” gets a pause while you decide which answer will confuse people least. — Cachet Lacy
23. Flight deals reach your timeline before news from anyone you actually know. — James Coleman
24. You open credit cards for the sign-up perks, close them, and open them again when the offer comes back. — James Coleman
25. Friends check whether you are in the country before they set a date for anything. — Bola Olayinka
26. Flight attendants greet you by name. — James Coleman
27. A milestone birthday produces one question from everyone: “Where are we going?” — DM Lewis
28. Your bank statement reads like a departures board, with travel far ahead of every other category. Way ahead. — Kelli Brooks
29. A packed backpack sits under your desk with two changes of clothes and a wash bag, in case a cheap fare appears at short notice. It has happened before. — De Shyone
30. The only numbers saved in your phone belong to airlines, hotels and Uber. — Yavonda Mosley
31. Friends assume you work in the travel industry, and you have given up correcting them.

What the list actually says

Look down the numbers and a pattern appears. The first group is about logistics: alerts, fares, lounges, the airport as a second address. The middle is about money, which behaves oddly when your savings are measured in stamps rather than statements. Then comes the part people rarely say out loud, about homes that are hard to describe and friendships kept alive by messages from departure gates.

The last few are the funniest because they are the most recognisable. Anyone who has stood at a vending machine in the wrong currency, or paused before answering where they live, knows the feeling. None of it is a complaint. It is simply what a life on the move does to the small machinery of an ordinary day.

Add your own

Every traveller has one that is missing. Mine is the drawer of adapters for countries I have not visited in years, kept because throwing them away would feel like closing a door. If yours is different, put it in the comments; the list has grown every time it has been shared.