Backpack Digital

Travel changes a person. Adapting to an entirely new culture and people not only alters the traveler while they live in that culture, but also changes them irrevocably when they return home. Getting used to the world around you is an important travel step, and one Amanda Kendle is intimately familiar with. Amanda lived in three foreign countries during her twenties, and is the master of slow travel. During her lifetime, she’s developed a travel mentality that can be summed up in one word: “thoughtful.” She fosters the more cerebral aspect of travel, using her thoughts to rationalize and relate to her experience.

Host of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast, Amanda shares her thoughts on reverse culture shock, cultural adaptation, and returning home. Lessons from Japanese Vegetables Amanda once lived in the Kansai region of Japan, and, one day, was given an opportunity to visit this old home again. The only downside, though, was that she was sent with a guide who was to accompany her all week, and she was not the kind of person who liked to travel with others, preferring to do her own thing. As it turned out, her guide was a 68-year-old woman named Mariko who had spent thirty-odd years guiding foreigners around Japan. As such, she had amazing stories to tell, and words of wisdom for everyone. When Mariko and Amanda experienced an earthquake together, and visited the earthquake memorial in Kobe, Amanda learned that Mariko was a survivor.

She remembers well what she learned from Mariko and her Rincon vegetables that day: “You have to look through to the future, because that’s the only way to get through life.” Slow Travel: Experiencing a New Culture Abroad There is no one utopia in this world; there are good things and bad things about every place you can travel to. Hayden and Amanda talk about the pockets of the world they enjoy traveling to, and how they prefer to look for the reality of a place, beyond the plastic. Hayden enjoys going over to “the other side” for a day. Amanda discusses adapting your travel style to your life, and Hayden shares a well-executed metaphor comparing travel to experiencing a play on stage with the actors. The two of them explore the main differences between passing through somewhere, and living in the place.

Amanda discusses the reactions of people around her. The longer she lives in a place, the better she understands it, and she believes that spending a longer time in one space lets you better understand the nuances and quirks of a culture. Truly, travel wouldn’t be the same without the trial and error of learning new cultural experiences - learning what’s rude, what’s not, what’s the correct way to act. Getting over those cultural speed bumps is the best way to adapt to the realities of different places, and immerse yourself in a new culture.

Get in Touch with Hayden on Instagram: @backpackdigital

Can a person sustain their life on their passions? Can you do what you love and live off of it, too? It’s the perfect road to go down, and one that travelers often find themselves seeking. Juliana Dever has found the path. A travel blogger and an actress from the television series Castle , Juliana has thrown herself into world traveling and drawing experiences from her fears. When she’s not acting, she’s traveling, testing her limits. A self-proclaimed Russophile, Juliana Dever has had a fascination with Russia since childhood. She wants to act and travel, and has found a way to maintain this lifestyle, doing what she truly loves. Keeping that life of travel up is possible, and Juliana can prove it. “If you never meet a stranger,” Juliana says, “then that’s all they’ll ever be to you.” The world is your oyster (and to Juliana, Russia is the pearl).

The second time Juliana Dever went to Russia, it was as part of a language class. She was given the option to stay with a Russian family, which she took, it being a great opportunity and all. She had visions of laughing around a dinner table, speaking Russian; her reality, though, was a young man who spoke absolutely no English, herself, who spoke very little Russian, and nobody else. Already in a confusing situation, she was with this young man who was very much immersed in that bachelor lifestyle: keeping to himself, leaving out pasta and ketchup for dinner, which was a rocky start to Juliana’s stay. However, the chaos of the experience culminated in her getting locked in her bedroom one day with no way to contact her host. A bit of WiFi, a well-timed email to her friend Rachel, and some frantic Googling helped her survive.

Why Should I Travel to Russia? Juliana Dever is a self-proclaimed Russophile, and it shows in how she talks about Russia and her time there. Juliana is lived in Russia twice, the first time being for a couple of months in the winter, training with the Moscow Art Theatre. Growing up, Juliana was incredibly and inexplicably attracted to Russia, which didn’t make a ton of sense for her as a little girl growing up in rural Missouri. She considered the idea that she might be a reincarnated member of the Romanov family; after she went to Russia, made peace with it, and released it, she felt as though she was able to move on. For Juliana, Russia was like a painting in her head before she actually went. When she got there, though, all of a sudden, it crystallized into a glowing, beautiful, mythical place that hardly seemed real to her. Russia was what dreams were made of, for her. The smells, the sights, the sounds, the tastes - all are so hard to put into words, but they make up what Juliana loves most about Russia and about travel. How Do You Make a Living Doing What You Love? Juliana Dever believes that travel is about being in the moment.

Get in Touch with Hayden on Instagram: @backpackdigital

Kristin Addis trusts the world, and she trusts her truest self, the one who hides inside and waits until she is alone to reveal herself. She knows a great deal about solo female travel, having adventured around the world since 2012, and she believes wholeheartedly in talking to strangers and in taking leaps. She offers support to anyone who will listen: if you don’t feel as though you’re understood, or if you don’t know where to look, there are people all around the world who will offer you opportunities to learn who you really are. Solo travel is the purest opportunity to discover yourself.

In March 2014, Kristin Addis found herself in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China. The snow was blasting her, filling up the grounds surrounding her with white, and Kristin herself was low on money. She had to hitchhike her way eight or nine hours back to her site, and she was in a small town, so not a lot of people were presenting her with travel opportunities. Being a foreign girl in China, though, does have its advantages, and one particular group pulled over their nice car and buckled her in for a white-knuckled ride. An hour outside the city, they stopped to eat with her, which is typically a normal experience, but this was not the case on that day. Instead, she selected a large, living fish to eat, and experienced an incredibly uncommon waitress. Her dinner was ridiculous, and her leftovers were maybe even a little dangerous. In the end, she was just this random girl from California, hitchhiking in a remote part of the world, who ended up with an unexpected gift or two at the end of the day.

Kristin Addis Advises: How Do I Know If I'm Ready to Travel? Kristin Addis is currently staying in Berlin before she goes to Africa, as she knew upon setting foot in Berlin that it would be the perfect environment for her new home base. She utilized a freelance visa, one of the many ways that a lot of the world is opening up when it comes to things like travel. The world, Kristin believes, is opening up travel and accessibility and opportunities to a large chunk of the world, which is better than the past circumstances. Kristin’s grandmother, like her, was a traveler, who shared her photo albums with Kristin. She was Kristin’s only traveling family member, and, in being so, she unconsciously inspired Kristin. After she passed away, Kristin and her mother found her journal and embraced her legacy, exploring the world as she saw it, and imparting their own experiences, as well. Any place exists how you experience it, how you document it, and what you get out of it.

Kristin firmly embraced her travel bug, spending summers abroad, saving her money, burning her bridges and returning to Asia where she felt she belonged. She wanted to learn about different cultures in depth; she moved without support and immersed herself. She stuck it out, and was amazing by her own ability to embrace different experiences and a new way of life.

Get in Touch with Hayden on Instagram: @backpackdigital

How do you become the traveler you know you can be? What is the first step on the road to travel? Rolf Potts has the answers to these questions in his back pocket, and he’s more than willing to share; in fact, he’s been giving people this advice for years. Rolf is also one of the reasons Hayden himself got into travel, as Rolf and his book, Vagabonding , crystallized what Hayden had been thinking about travel for his whole life until that point. It gave him the push to become the traveler he knew that he could be all along.

Rolf Potts - travel writer, adventurer, teacher, vagabonder, and legend - is the one you want to be at your side when you need that push into travel. He knows that vital first step to becoming the traveler.

Rolf Potts revisits us to tell a story about the people you meet when you travel - both those you want to meet, and those you dread meeting. Rolf traveled to Namibia, which he had heard was quite isolated and severe. What was most famous was the sand dunes, of course, but Rolf was intrigued by the Skeleton Coast, also commonly referred to as the Gates of Hell or the Land God Made in Anger. The road basically disappears, so it is pretty much impossible to drive the entire way along the Skeleton Coast to the border, and, as such, Rolf didn’t expect to see many people in this place. The coast is lined with shipwrecks, each of which has its own turnout off the highway. Ruin after ruin, all the way up the coast, giving a haunted, romantic feel to those who view the rotted ships and those very human feelings. Rolf visited one of these particular ships and encountered Namibian guys who wanted to sell him souvenirs, tribesmen who sell polished rocks to tourists to make a living.

He had a great conversation with a group of them that granted him an even deeper human feeling than the ships had, through the grace of human connection. He had never dreamed of this part of Namibia, this very real village life, until he turned away from the shipwreck and started talking to people. Rolf Potts, Vagabonding, and Saying Yes to Adventures Rolf Potts, author of Vagabonding , the book that helps you along your path, doesn’t want to tell you who to be. Like travel, he doesn’t try to change you; he just wants to help you be a more authentic you. When you’re around people, you’re not your authentic self. If you go somewhere you’ve never been before, however, without anybody you’ve ever met before, you can get out of your comfortable and protective patterns and help reveal your true self as you change over time. Breaking out of typical patterns and thinking about the important parts of who you really are are inevitable results of travel. Saying yes to things can help contribute to this, as well, but you should analyze the reasons you might say no, and use those reasons to see whether yes would be a good idea first.

Get in Touch with Hayden on Instagram: @backpackdigital

What's it like to run 20 Iron Man competitions? What about living in and traveling to different countries around the world? Can you remember the last time someone was truly selfless, with nothing in it for them? We know that people like this exist, people that do things out of the kindness of their heart for their fellow man, but how often do we meet them? They often seem to arise in times of need. Those times when we're down to our last dollar, our last meal, our last step, and they swoop in and show their genuine generosity.

Our guest for this episode is Deepak Shukla, a podcasting buddy of mine and host of the Life, Love and Entrepreneurship podcast. This was one of those episodes where everything he said was pure gold, so nothing got cut and we're running a little longer than usual. In this episode, we talk about: - Running ultra-marathons, iron man competitions and being a badass. - Living in a different country as opposed to traveling through it. - What it's really like to live in Rio De Janeiro. - Relationships, both during travel and in general- is intensity worth more than duration? - Deepak's podcast: Life, Love and Entrepreneurship - Taking necessary irrational leaps to start you on your journey, travel or otherwise. - ... And much more.

As always, he is accompanied by original music that really allows the story to come to life and take us along the journey with Deepak.

DEEPAK ON TWITTER: @deepakpshukla1

Get in Touch with Hayden on Instagram: @backpackdigital