Post-travel blues is knocking on the door again – after some loaded with travels past few months. We’ve reached the moment when we adapted to the cold weather and busy Sofia city. Now what? Plan next trips, become locals again, start a new project, or what? Post-travel depression might seem a bit overestimated as a term, but such a thing truly exists and we feel it. Or suffer from it. That’s why we asked avid travelers to help us with ideas on how to deal with post-travel blues.

Be active and keep a list

One of the best tips to overcome post-travel depression is to make a list. Make a list, when you’re traveling, of all the things you miss about home. About all of the things, you want to do when you’re back home. Maybe you want to go to your favorite restaurant, or to the local theatre and see a play, or even go for a hike. Usually, when you’ve arrived home, you forget about the things that make it special to you. So, write them down when you think about it and start doing those things once your home.

One thing that you can combine with this list is being active. When you’re traveling you’re usually very active, but once you’re settled in your home again this often changes. Explore your own hometown and area with the help of your list you created on your travels and you will notice that it will certainly help to turn your mood around.

You can get in touch with Manon on her blog and on Pinterest.

Re-focus on the world you’ve returned to

Telling and retelling your travel experiences can be exhausting for everyone! How do you verbally process all those great experiences into stories your friends will appreciate? Trying to adequately describe the phenomenal taste of Malaysia’s Sarawakian laksa or the agonizing thrill of yurt camping near Kyrgyzstan’s Ala-Kul mountainous lake, while not making the whole table roll their eyes at yet another travel tale is a skill that takes time to master.

Being unable to squish everything into the perfect conversation can be frustrating and make you feel that no one will understand where you’ve just been. Rather than re-hashing your trip, keep the conversation on your friends until you’re ready to share. What’s new with them? How have things changed? Intentionally re-focusing on the world to which you’ve returned will help you be present in the moment…and less blue about coming back to reality.

You can find Caitlin on her blog Back Again Cait and follow her on Instagram.

Keep the holiday vibe going in your daily life

In my opinion, the best way to bust the post-travel blues is to keep the holiday vibe going into your daily life. When I am traveling, I always try to pick up a new skill, whether it is taking a cooking class, a new exercise regime, or learning a new art style. When I get home, I try to keep my new habits going, integrating new dishes into my cooking schedule, and keeping up with good exercise habits I formed while I was away.

One example from my own travels is taking up scuba diving. I first learned to dive in South Africa, and on my latest holiday in Bali, I did my next course. It has become something that I look for both at home and on holiday so that it almost feels like bringing my travels home with me. Now, while I’m saving up for the next big adventure, I make sure to get out into the water as regularly as possible, and it keeps me feeling energized and excited for the next trip.

You can find Monique and Chris on their blog and follow her on Twitter.

Keep yourself busy

One of the best ways to beat those post-travel blues is to keep yourself busy! It’s easy to sit and daydream about ‘what you were doing last week’ and wish you were still there. There’s nothing wrong with reminiscing but if it’s making you feel sad and depressed then I recommend starting a new project. It’s a great time to re-decorate your house, enroll for a course on a subject you want to learn more about, volunteer for a good cause, refurbish an old table or whatever keeps you focused on the present! Keeping active will help beat those negative vibes and starting a new project (or finishing an old one) will help you do that.

Interact with travelers visiting your own town

There’s nothing like plopping down your bags after a long trip to make your heart sink. It can feel like a real low point after all those long holiday days.
So what can you do to get out of your rut? I think there’s no better way to than to transform your own town into a tourist spot – even if it isn’t traditionally considered one – and see it through someone else’s eyes.
That’s what I do in my own neck of the woods, Brighton and Hove. I love showing couchsurfers around my town and watching how they react to things.Have you tried your local library to see if they are hiring volunteer guides? Are there summer students in your town who’d like to explore with you or do you have friends keen to come to visit? You’ll forget all about feeling bored at home.
You can find more about Danni’s hometown on her blog and follow her on Twitter.

Be a tourist in your own home

While traveling you get exposed to new sights, food, people, languages, experiences, and so much more. Part of what makes traveling so addictive is that you get pushed out of your comfort zone and try so many new things. Often when you come back from a trip life just doesn’t feel as exciting, which can contribute to post-travel blues. One way to beat these blues is to continue to be a tourist in your own home. Just because you aren’t in a new place doesn’t mean you have to stop exploring and growing as a person. As an example, if you found a new type of cuisine you loved while abroad, go find the place that does it best in your city. Fell in love with salsa while in Latin America? Continue that passion and take a dance class at home. Discovered an interest in photography? Start taking photography classes or just keep practicing taking photos in your own city. Whatever is it you found abroad that you loved, try to find a way to continue at home. This will keep you busy and help combat post-travel depression.

You can find Lora on her blog and follow her on Instagram.

Start planning your next trip immediately

Following amazing holidays in the past, I always used to experience post-travel blues after arriving home to my everyday life and routine again.

From past experience I’ve found the best way of dealing with these post-travel blues and minimizing their effect on me is to immediately start planning my next holiday, even if it won’t actually happen for a while. The planning and anticipation of my next holiday build up my excitement levels and my post-travel blues just disappear! It’s such an effective strategy for me! You can find Ingrid at her blog and follow her on Instagram.

Planning the blog posts right ahead

When I get back from my travels, I like to plan a few blog posts about it. I do it because of two things:

1. I want to have a recording with photos from my own travels so that I can relive them later and remember the thrill of traveling;
2. I want to share my experience, tips, and suggestions so that my mistakes or wins could be useful to the other people traveling to the same destination.

For example, one of the trips I made last summer was to Crete, Greece. On one of the days during the trip, I had a chance to visit two amazing beaches with blue water, pinkish sand, and breathtaking views all around. Elafonissi and Balos are truly among the most beautiful beaches in the world.

So when I felt a bit down, I wrote a post about that day, went through all of the pictures and memories, and relived the experience. I hope this helped not just to me, but for other travelers to Crete as well. You can get in touch with Una at her Twitter.

Make your trip memories valuable to others

I can say that I don’t have a post-travel depression after my trips. Not because I do something special after back home, but because of the type of trips that I do. When I back from a trip, I have really a lot to share. And I prepare for it during the trip itself. I make a lot of photos, a lot of video clips, and I try to get as more as possible information. I want to make my trip meaningful, not just to disappear in the past, in few photos, few memories and spent money. Only by this way my trip is actually still real and alive, even I am already at home. In fact, during this conclusion process, I still learn more facts about the destinations I’ve just visited. Actually, my after-trip sharing is not to promote myself – “see where I have been”! But I try to make it useful, valuable for others (and the best way is to be a travel blogger, as I am). Doing this makes me really exciting, part of the trip, sometimes even 2-3 months after back home. And only after that, I can say that the trip is over. Then I start preparing for a next, new trip, with the same goal, and the same way. You can find Krasen and Ying Ying at their blog and follow them on Facebook.

Support others in their experiences

When travel blues kick in, it’s time to head online and relive those memories. How? By helping others who are now journeying around the world! Facebook is a wonderful tool to connect you with fellow travelers from all walks of life. I’m now a member of about 10 different groups. Each one focused on a different part of the world. Such as Europe, Canada, and Sri Lanka, to name just a few.

Every day, these groups are filled with new posts from people in these countries looking for advice and recommendations on what to do and where to stay. By offering your advice, you get to help a traveler in need and relive some of your own memories. I find it to be a great way to deal with post-travel blues. To get started, simply search something like “backpackers {your country}” in order to find related groups.

You can find Cazzy and Bradley at their blog and on Instagram.

FaceTime and how it revolutionized friendships

It’s amazing that we live in a time where we can trek across the globe, make new friends and companions. Now when we’re back home we can connect with them in seconds, and no, we are not talking the typical back and forth texting, we are talking face to face. Like they say it’s not where you travel, it’s who you meet. Not only can you grow the friendships you made on the road, but also communicate like you are still near each other.

The perfect example is our travel couple – Jim and Inna. We met on the road, fell in love with each other but we had to go back to our own countries. It was FaceTime that allowed us to keep that message going forward and our relationship alive as well as overcome our post-travel depression. It really kept us stable and optimistic while we were working towards our goal to be together 24/7 which now is accomplished.

You can find Jim and Inna on their blog and follow them on Facebook.

Watch travel movies and documentaries

If there is something we know works perfectly against post-holiday depression after spending weeks or months traveling, it is watching films and travel documentaries that let us continue dreaming from the sofa of our home with lands, people and distant cultures. Although there are many to choose from, we leave you with a selection of our favorites: Tracks, Wild, Lost In Translation, Babel, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Run Lola Run, Seven Years In Tibet, The Motorcycle Diaries, Into The Wild, Up In The Air, Carol, Everest, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Slumdog Millionaire, Baraka, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, and Catch Me If You Can.

You can get in touch with Inma and Jose at their blog and on Instagram.

Cook your favorite foods from your travels

When we’re yearning for the places we’ve traveled to in the past, we recreate our favorite food experiences from our travels. Eating our feelings, if you will. Food is a main focal point for us when we travel. Every country has its own unique cuisine and we enjoy seeking out the local delicacies.

Food is also one of the best tools for bringing people together. To combat post-travel blues, try cooking your favorite new foods for friends and family. Cooking stimulates your senses and can trigger fond memories of times spent exploring different cultures, while also creating new ones.

It may not be possible to replicate everything (I’ve never seen an iguana farm at home as we did in Roatán, Honduras 😉), but you can look for a specialty grocery in your area or get creative with ingredient substitutes!

You can find JT and Julien on their blog and follow them on Instagram.

Having themed occasions using souvenirs such as table settings

To keep the coming home ‘blues’ at bay we gather family and friends at our home to share our travel experiences.

Imagine our family spending time together tasting peppery oil, twelve-year-old balsamic vinegar, truffle honey with camembert cheese bruschetta, enjoying a glass of Prosecco all while our photos are showing on a large screen with Italian music playing. Italy is my favorite travel destination and I love to create an Italian table design with linen and lace in shades of grey from the Island of Burano.

Inspired by our travels to New Orleans and Venice we celebrate Mardi Gras, Thanksgiving after traveling to USA and Easter after celebrating a Greek Orthodox Easter with a family on the Island of Poros. My favorite traditions are the decorating of candles, wrapping Easter eggs in tulle, lamb cooked on a rotisserie and a long lunch on Easter Sunday.

During our travels through Spain in September, we collected ideas for a Spanish-themed Christmas. We chose the colors of red, black and white decorating our home with linen and lace from Spain. We bought twenty handmade fans and flamenco dresses for the youngest girls. A Spanish inspired menu kept our memories of travel alive and our hearts full of gratitude.

You can find more ideas by Cathy and her team here and follow them on Facebook.

Create a hard copy photobook of your travels

If you are anything like me, the let down after a vacation can be brutal. The fun is over. The sun is gone. The last slope has been skied. 

And on top of it in this modern day of digital photography, we end up with all of our photos just hanging there in technology limbo. We took the photos to remind ourselves of the places we have been and the fun had, yet they remain tucked away on our computers and smartphones where very few, if anyone, see them. Loads of photos on my computer and phone, but rarely do any of them actually make it to the outside world.

I take a lot of photos and I like to be reminded of my adventures and the soul-satisfying feeling that I enjoyed while exploring, thus, one thing that I like to do once the vacay is over is to make a hard copy photo book of the best vacation photos using one of the many services out there like Snapfish.com or Shutterfly.com. 

These services make it quite easy to create lasting photo books. You can edit your photos, choose themes and colors, place quotes around the snaps and add descriptions. Shutterfly then binds them and sends them directly to your doorstep. It couldn’t be easier. And because the photos are printed onto the book itself, you will never have loose photos falling out of the photo album.
Photos books also make great gifts. Shutterfly has so many photo gift options that it is mind reeling – personalized calendars, canvas prints, and wall art, mugs, bags, tiles, wine glasses. There is literally a gift idea for everyone on your list on their site.

Finally, another fun way to memorialize your vacation is to upload your favorite snaps to a digital photo frame. A digital frame allows you to enjoy your most recent vacation photos in real time.  Once you go on your next vacation, simply upload the new photos and update your frame.

You can check the Niche Travel Design blog and follow them on Facebook.

So are you ready to beat the post-travel depression? We feel so ready to handle any kind of post-travel blues with so many amazing ideas on how to beat it! Thank you, travelers, for sharing your invaluable ideas!

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