Sleeping When There Is Nowhere To Sleep

If it’s one month or a year of traveling there will always be times when you will be sleeping in places you would never expect. Most of the time you will be spending your nights in a hostel, but there will be times where you’ll find yourself sleeping in a train station, airport, park bench or even outside of the hostel doorsteps. Yes, I have done it all. For the most part sleeping in airports were the most common sleeping arrangements I have experienced.

Some people don’t understand how one finds him/herself in a situation like that. Well for the most part when you are backpacking and just winging it, yes it can happen. What I mean by winging it, with no complete travel plans. For example, if you reach a destination and find out all the hostels are booked for the night, what do you do? As a backpacker you want to save money and keep everything on a tight budget, so the next option is the airport or train/station. It also depends where you are located too. If you are in the middle of the city and the airport is to far, well looks like the train station is the best option. You maybe thinking, wow that is crazy I would never do that. The funny part is most backpackers actually do. You probably will find a few of your follow backpackers doing just the same thing that night too.

Yet, there could be times where you are in a city where the train station at night locks up and so does the airport. As a result, this happened to me a few times and a park bench was the next option. Yes, maybe I could have done a hotel, but traveling for a year I wanted to save money. Now mind you, I was usually with someone, even though I was traveling solo, so it didn’t feel as scary. These circumstances will happen and you need to figure your next place quickly too. Once you start backpacking it may seems strange to you at first, but once you get in the routine of it all, well let’s just say it becomes second nature.

Backpacking is all about the experiences you encounter and how you make of them. Yet try to always arrange a hostel during peak season or know where your hostel is located, but also have another plan in case all fails.