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One of the best and most rewarding things you can do for yourself as a lifetime traveler, is build a travelers network. A travelers network is nothing more than a network of traveling friends around the world that you have met during your own travels, during their travels, in the supermarket, anywhere! People that you get along with well, and that have similar travel interests and goals as you.

Why Build a Network?

To be honest, you will probably never see the majority of the people in your travelers network ever again. Of the dozens of friends I have met on the road and still keep in touch with today, I have probably only seen about 15 of them again. However, it has proved quite valuable having so many friends and contacts around the world. As a world traveler you never know where you might be 10, 20, 50 years down the road. If I decide to retire in Fiji 50 years from today, it’s nice to know that a good friend I met in the Caribbean 5 years ago lives on Fiji. Assuming he’s still around 50 years from now, I’ll already have at least one friend to show me around, help me get settled in, and have a drink with. Some other benefits of maintaining a strong network of travel buddies around the world are:

• A place to stay: Having a place to stay all around the world is truly invaluable. It saves you money, it’s more fun, it gets you away from tourist traps, and gives you a head start on understanding what it’s like to live as a local.
• “Insider” tips on what to do: Nobody knows a travel destination better than someone that actually lives there. What sites are actually worth seeing, what’s the best time to go, where can you find the most authentic food, the best bars/clubs, the cutest girls or guys, etc. Guidebooks are okay, but locals are great!
• A guarantee: Having a friend that you know you get along with in a new travel destination, is like having a guarantee for a good time. You never know what’s going to happen when you arrive in a new travel destination, but with a good friend waiting for you, at least you know you’ll have fun with them!
• An “in” to making new friends: Each traveling buddy in your network is also a key into their whole lifestyle. You become accepted into their group of friends, and have the opportunity to experience life as a local.
• Safety and security: As a traveler it is always important to be mindful of safety. However, this can be quite difficult in a new city or town, where you don’t know the layout, and can easily find yourself in a dangerous situation. In this case a local friend can be extremely valuable by just watching out for you, and making sure you don’t do anything stupid or dangerous because you don’t know any better.

Building a Travelers Network:

Building a travelers network does take time, but just take it slow and remember that every new traveler you meet can be a friend for life.

There are basically two different ways to meet fellow travelers.

1. While you’re on the road:

• Spend time in bars, cafes, hostels, sites, etc. that are popular with travelers: Meeting fellow travelers on the road is not a difficult task by any means. Just spend some time where fellow travelers hang out, and make friends. In general, travelers are a very open and friendly bunch that will befriend virtually anyone with a pulse. So take advantage, find some people with similar interests, and have fun!
• Contact information: Making friends is the easy part. The hard part (which is not all that hard) is to remember to get contact information for people you enjoy hanging out and traveling with. Just an email address and city are plenty, but you have to remember to ask, write it down, and don’t lose it!

2. Back home:

• Stay in touch: This is probably the point people have the hardest time with. For some reason most of us are pretty bad at staying in touch, especially with someone that lives halfway around the world. My recommendation is to just do the best you can, and don’t try to over do it. While I have a few friends I keep in touch with on a weekly basis, the majority of the travelers in my travelers network only hear from me a couple times/year. Most of the time that’s enough to remember one another, and get caught up on each other’s lives. We’re all busy and nobody has time to write daily emails to every person they’ve ever met on the road. Just making the effort is enough, and when one of you is in town you can take the time to really catch up again.
• Host travelers: Between trips, a fantastic way to meet new travels is by hosting them in your home. There are a number of online hospitality networks available that connect travelers with locals willing to host them in their spare bedrooms, couches, floor, whatever! Click here for more information on hospitality networks and how to get involved as either a host, traveler, or both.
• Be mindful of foreigners: As locals we’re often perfectly happy ignoring tourists and travelers passing through our hometowns. However, as a fellow traveler, it’s often worth making a small effort to get to know a few tourists passing through your neck of the woods. They may be completely obnoxious, in which case you can just end the conversation with an excuse and continue on your way. But you may also find that many others are quite interesting and fun to spend time with.

The other day I read a post on Traveling Stories Magazine entitled “Things my Father Told me to Never Tell my Mother”. The article is about the unique, and strong bond that was formed by a young boy and his father during their trouble-making travels around the United States.

This article got me thinking about the benefits of traveling with a partner as opposed to independent travel. Usually when you hear people talk about world travel, and budget travel, they discuss the huge opportunities for personal growth and individual development. However, something that is often overlooked, is that travel is also an extremely powerful tool for developing bonds among travel partners.

The idea itself is as old as time, used by the military, sports teams, fraternities, outward bound, even corporations:

People stuck in strange, new, and/or difficult circumstances will grow closer together

The concept has been a part of military training for thousands of years, and simply involves putting training units through “virtual hell” as an effective strategy to developing incredibly strong bonds between people of all backgrounds, and to teach them to trust one another with their lives.

Obviously, most of us don’t travel as a means to put ourselves through “virtual hell”, but we do get out of our personal comfort zones. We face a number of challenges, and often find ourselves in many difficult or uncomfortable situations. This is where the die-hard independent traveler says the most personal development and learning occurs, however for travelers who prefer to travel with partners, this is where those traveling bonds are formed.

In my personal experience through travel, and work in sometimes dangerous developing world conditions, it is the times of shit that you really get to know a person, and when they make that magical transformation from somebody you’ve only known for a couple months to a lifelong friend. It’s a kind of friendship that usually takes years to form under normal, comfortable circumstances, and unfortunately, is the type of friendship that the die-hard independent traveler must learn to live without.

Related Posts:

• How to Find a Travel Partner

A lot of people are a little anxious about hitting the road on their own. Understandably, they are worried about safety, loneliness, extra costs, or would just like someone to share their traveling experience with. It isn’t always possible to travel with friends from home, as everyone has their own obligations, schedules, interests, and budgets. So, what can you do if you really want to travel, but don’t want to embark on the journey alone, and don’t have any friends to travel with?

Find a “travel buddy”! Luckily, the traveling community, in general, is an extremely open crowd, always looking to make new friends! You can very easily take advantage of this openness, to find new people with similar travel plans and interests to travel with. The following are the 3 best ways to find a travel buddy, once you’ve exhausted all of your options at home (friends, networking, etc.)

1. Find Someone Online: Like pretty much everything else these days, the internet holds solutions to this problem. They are in the form of online travel communities. There are a number of forums online where you can post and browse listings for travel partners, and it is relatively easy to find people interested in traveling to popular destinations like Europe, Japan, SE Asia, and the United States.

Pros:

• You can start your search from home, meaning you don’t waste travel time looking for a travel buddy.
• Usually have a high number of people to consider

Cons:

• Harder to actually get to know someone over the internet.
• Can be difficult finding responses for less mainstream travel destinations

Recommendations:

1. Post your own listings as opposed to only browsing listings made by others. Other users often open their travels up to anyone interested. With your own posting YOU can control exactly how many people you travel with, and who you travel with.
2. Give yourself plenty of time to find a travel partner online. Do NOT wait until the week before your trip to start looking. You do not want to be desperate, accepting any wacko that writes back as your new travel partner. It will take time to find someone who is a good fit.

Websites and Online Forums for finding a Travel Partner

• Thorntree - Travel Companions
• Gumtree - Travel Partners
• Rough Guides - Travel Partners
• BootsnAll - Travel Buddies
• Soul Escape
• Travel Chums

*The above links will take you to the actual “travel partner” forum in each online community. However, I would also advise posting your search in the appropriate destination(s) specific forum(s) as well.

2. Meet People on the Road: The next option is the old-fashioned method of just meeting people along the way. If you have the time, I would say this is the best way to find a travel buddy that you really enjoy being with. As far as finding someone, the idea is simple. Spend a lot of time where other travelers tend to hang out. This means backpacker hostels, internet cafes, British Pubs, traveler clubhouses, etc. Research ahead of time to find out if your travel destination has any kind of Travelers Club or Organization, as they usually post listings of fellow journey men and women looking for traveling partners.

Pros:

• Have the opportunity to get to know your potential travel buddies in person
• Forces you to meet new people, and be proactive about your search

Cons:

• Requires using your travel time to search for a travel buddy
• There’s no guarantee you will actually find someone to travel with

Recommendations

• Be flexible in your travel plans. Don’t try to make your new friends conform to one specific travel itinerary. If they already have a travel plan, go along with them (you can always split off at a later date), and if they don’t, work together to come up with something you are both interested in.

3. Couchsurf: The last option is a kind of mix between solo travel, and travel with a partner, and involves utilizing Hospitality Exchanges (click here if for more information about hospitality exchanges). By using hospitality exchanges, you can hop from place to place on your own, but will have a local buddy (and place to stay) in each new city/town you visit. This option is fundamentally different from the previous two, as it doesn’t involve one full-time travel partner, but rather a different partner in each new place that you visit.

Pros:

• Allows time for solo travel as well as travel with a partner
• Accommodation is provided by your buddy in each new town
• Meet lots of new people
• Usually your hospitality exchange is with a local, which means insider tips and advice
• Can be organized weeks or months before your visit

Cons:

• Don’t have one full time travel partner that you can really get to know, and share all aspects of your travel experience with
• Hospitality exchange partners don’t always have the time or interest to spend all day with travelers
• Locals aren’t always interested in doing the types of things first-timers are interested in.
• Still have to make it from A to B on your own

Recommendations:

• This option is best used by a traveler who enjoys and is comfortable with solo travel, but just wants the safety net of a friend in each new area that can provide advise, an insider’s look, and company on occasion (not to mention a free place to stay).