An era ending?

I’m so done with traveling. I’ve been in Manila for a few days now, and I don’t think I’ve gone further than 5 miles away from the place that I’m staying. It’s not just the heat – 35 degrees Celcius and like 90% humidity – it is my energy level. Under normal circumstances, with ten days to kill in a city I’ve already visited and with some of the best beaches in the world just a few hours away, I would have already struck out on my own with my backpack and a loose plan of where to go. Now though, after five long months on the road, I just don’t have the desire anymore.

I have always been astonished when meeting people who stay out on the road for years at a time, but now, more than ever. Truth be told, five months of traveling is really not much in the world of backpacking, but for me, at this age, with my expectations and need for comfortable living, it has seemed like an arduous eternity. I cannot wait to get on my flight back to LA on the 28th, and have been so eager to get back that I’ve called Cathay Pacific every couple days to see if I can move my flight up at all.

It would however, be incorrect to attribute all of my lack of motivation to mere travel exhaustion. Manila is really quite a comfortable city for me, one in which I am content to be a lazy ass. In so many ways, it is an ideal place for me to re-charge; it’s not terribly expensive, food can be good, creature comforts are everywhere, the people are nice, and so many other people are lounging about that I can fit right in. More than this though, as I mentioned the last time I am here, I think the travel bug that has been present in my system for almost a decade now is finally working its way out. There are still places that I want to go (South America in 2011 anyone?) but for the most part, the prospect of another huge and tiring backpacking trip is so much less attractive now than it once was.

Instead, I see my travels around the world taking on a different characteristic. Rather than huge backpacking trips to a dozen countries at once, I see smaller, shorter trips – to destinations, to visit friends, to see specific things. The part of me that’s concerned with efficiency and value will find this harder (so much money and so many resources to get me half-way around the world for just a few days seems such a waste!) but I envision circumstances in my future being different.

Hopefully, I’ll be a little more settled, with a permanent place to stay, a steady job, and maybe a family. With these things in place, the chances to take big backpacking trips will become less and less. Given how tired I am of lugging 30kg around on my back, I think I’d actually welcome this. Plus, I find myself much more inclined to whittle away an afternoon at a friend’s house in a far-flung corner of the world with them and their family these days than to rush around climbing old monuments or staring at paintings in a museum. I imagine I’d still go visit the Taj Mahal or similar types of tourist sights, but I’d certainly not run around the city to all of the more minor places just because I have some sort of checklist. This is in fact, what I’m often doing even now. However, whether or not Backpacking in a Suit marks the real end of my backpacking life remains to be seen. Can I really pull myself away from what I’ve been doing for the better part of a decade?