Writing Vagabond

Some people leave footprints on your life. Others leave entire landscapes.

A road in Vietnam. A hostel rooftop in Mexico. A volcano hike in Ecuador. A ferry somewhere between islands you can barely pronounce anymore.

And somehow, years later, certain people still exist in those places.

This post is about the people who briefly become home while we are far away from everything familiar.

The kind shaped by movement, distance, timing, airports, visas, and the temporary versions of ourselves we become along the way.

Some lasted days. Some lasted years.

Most of them changed me anyway.

I also look back sometimes at the relationships I had before I started travelling. But they feel strangely distant now, almost as if they belonged to another life.

I guess no matter how much you grow through travelling, or through life itself, something essential always stays the same.

In this post, I want to reflect on love on the road. Long-distance relationships, wrong timing, intense connections, and a few stories I lived along the way.

And, most importantly, explore one question I’ve been asking myself for years: can travel love stories really last? And can long-distance romantic relationships really work out?

Why Does Falling in Love While Travelling Feel So Intense?

Let’s be honest. Travelling itself is life-changing.

Whether it’s a week-long all-inclusive vacation, a month exploring abroad, a student exchange, or years on the road; stepping outside your comfort zone, geographically and/or mentally, it changes you.

When you move, you open yourself to the world. In fact, you almost want the world to change you.

You welcome everything in. New places, new people, new possibilities. And I think that state of mind shapes the way you connect with others.

You feel different. Lighter.

Especially if you are travelling without strict responsibilities like work or studies. You suddenly have something that everyday life rarely gives you: time.

And time is fucking precious.

Time to explore.
Time to wander.
Time to connect with yourself.

And with the people who cross your path.

And most importantly, time to feel.

When you’re travelling, whether it’s van life road trips, solo backpacking across countries, or bike packing through new landscapes, your routine disappears.

You’re no longer surrounded by your usual circle of friends, coworkers, or family.

You’re alone, or you’re surrounded by strangers.

And, inevitably, starving for connection.

The people you meet often have nothing to do with the life you left behind. They might speak another language, come from another culture, and have completely different dreams or pasts.

But somehow, that’s exactly what makes it exciting. You owe nothing to each other. At least at first.

There are no expectations, no shared history, no pressure. You’re simply there, experiencing the moment together.

And if you face the truth, you already know it won’t last forever.

Maybe that’s why it feels so intense. Because you’re fully present in a moment that you know is temporary. You’re conscious for the first time.

It’s a bit like someone telling you that you only have two weeks left to live. You would probably try to experience everything more deeply. Take risks. Live fully. For once.

That’s what travelling does.

It pushes you to live the moment, right here, right now.

And you crave more.

More conversations.
More memories.

Evidently, more time.

And that’s when the intensity grows.

Because you’re feeling everything more strongly with an end date.

Before Travel Love

I grew up around Montréal in Québec. Just another ’92 cool kid. I guess no matter where you come from or your generation, it’s about the same thing.

Kindergarten first kisses. Online breakups. Fighting with your parents about whether your boyfriend/girlfriend could sleep over.

School love.
Work love.
Moving-in-together love.
Paying-bills-and-arguing-about-chores love.

You know… the “normal” kinds of love.

Then one day something changed. For me, I needed to leave. Experience something new. So I did. I left everything behind to travel the world. To discover more of our mysterious planet. To “find myself” and what type of love would suit me best.

Such a funny expression, right? Finding yourself.

As if you’re going to find yourself somewhere on the side of the road and suddenly say:

“Hey, you! Nice to meet you. I’ve been searching for you forever. Come with me and explain my entire personality.”

Or get all the answers laying around ready to be picked up.

Sadly, it doesn’t work like that. I can tell you now.

You are who you are. You have always been. And you always will be.

Leaving to travel the world isn’t about finding yourself. It’s about allowing yourself to change. To evolve. To discover new versions of who you already are.

And then, of course, comes love. In so, so many different kinds of forms and shapes.

Because, really, what would life be without it?

Some Love Stories Only Exist On The Road

If we’re all just souls drifting through life, occasionally colliding with each other, then some encounters are never meant to last. They’re meant to shift something.

And travel amplifies that.

On the road, everything moves faster. You feel more, trust quicker, dive deeper. Two strangers can cross paths and create something that feels enormous, because it is, in that moment.

It’s built in motion.

And things built in motion don’t always survive stillness.

So the connection hits hard.
And the ending hits just as hard.
Because you’re not just leaving a person, you’re leaving a version of yourself that only existed there.

Maybe that’s why some travel love stories stay with us forever. Not because the person was necessarily our forever person, but because they were part of a version of ourselves we can never completely return to.

Travel Love

I think the first travel love is so much more intense and as important as your first ”normal” love. Because it’s kind of your first love in the new you you are becoming.

What eight years of travelling and falling in love with different people of different nationalities and backgrounds taught me?

it’s easy to fantasize and idealize someone or a relationship when you have no plan and no knowledge of them.

No routine.
No fights.
No background or bad sides revealed.

No matter what happened, or never happens, this feeling will always somehow manage to stay.

And it’s beautiful in the end. The hurtful goodbyes should be forgotten, but not the glimpse of time when a heart allows itself to wake up.

The ”come back to reality” phase

I think, anyway, when you come ”home” after some time away, everything feels so different. Your family and your friends. The food even. So, imagine potential romantic relationships with people from back home.

Or when you were attached to someone who has to go home. The surroundings can feel somehow empty after they’re gone.

But when the world is still calling your name, you cannot ignore it. You still have lessons to learn.

But either you’re home or not one thing always comes back.

Reality. The yearly visit is over. The holiday ends. One person has to go “back”.

At the beginning, of course, you try to keep in touch. You try to make plans.

“When you come back, you can visit me.”
“Yeah, and when I’ll be travelling again, I’ll come see you.”

But then life happens. Work. Distance. Original plans. New relationships.

We say in French: Loin des yeux, loin du cœur. Which literally means “far from the eyes, far from the heart.” I guess in English, the closest would be “out of sight, out of mind”.

There’s some truth to this, but maybe sometimes the heart wants to go blind. Or maybe sight simply can’t control the mind.

True Unconditional Love

Talking about different kinds of love. Sometimes it doesn’t have to be a friend or a family or a lover.

I met a soulmate of a different kind in Bolivia.

My dog, Karma.

That’s another kind of love story entirely.

The unconditional kind.

You can read our story here.

Why Most Travel Romances, or Long-Distance Relationships Don’t Last

Visa. Language. Reality. Plans. Fear. Culture. Expectations. Timing.

Those are just some of the realities travel love relationships eventually have to face.

Because love can feel limitless when you’re under the stars somewhere far away from home. But eventually, real life asks practical questions.

Where will we live?
Who will move?
How do we do this or that?

Even with a lot of love, it’s hard.

Choosing each other again and again. Adapting to someone else’s world while still holding onto your own.

Not impossible.

But one thing is almost always true:

At some point, someone has to move toward the other person.

Or both people have to create a completely new life somewhere in between.

And that is an interesting dream.

But it is also a complicated one.

But Maybe They Were Never Meant to Last

…Sounds cheesy, I know.

But maybe some love is just a spark, not a fire.
Travel love, normal love, any love — it shines, it teaches, and then it goes away.

Because that’s the point — to feel, to learn, and to grow.

And make room for the right one when you are ready for it. If there even is such a thing.

How should I know?

Do Long Distance Relationships Work?

Maybe that’s the contradiction at the center of long-distance love.

In some ways, distance can make a relationship feel even more intense. You miss each other more. Romanticize each other more. Every reunion feels cinematic. Every goodbye feels tragic enough to deserve its own indie soundtrack and rainy airport window scene.

Not just adventures.
Not just countdowns.
Not just reunions carefully framed between flights and vacation days.

Real love, long-term love, even travel love, needs presence. It needs raw human colours.

It needs grocery stores. Shared routines. Bad moods. Laundry. Fights. Silence. Building something slowly over time while life keeps happening around you.

And I think that’s what makes long-distance relationships so difficult in the long run.

You can deeply love someone and still only know fragments of each other. Beautiful fragments, sometimes. But fragments nonetheless.

Because real compatibility often reveals itself in the in-between moments:
the exhausted days,
the stressful periods,
the boring Tuesdays,
the routines that travel usually protect us from.

That doesn’t mean long-distance love is less real.

Some of the strongest feelings I’ve ever experienced were born through distance.

But from my experience, distance works best when it is temporary. When both people are moving toward the same reality eventually, rather fast.

Because love may survive through calls, messages, and memories for a while…
but a life together can only really grow through shared time and physical presence.

At least I’ve come to believe so.

What Travel Love Stories Teach You About Yourself

Some travel love stories are a shooting star. Others stretch a galaxy longer than you ever expected.

In any way, all relationships clarify a bit more what you want and what you don’t want. And this teaches you more about yourself.

When you are alone, it’s easy. When you are two, you both reflect on each other. And it creates a mirror effect where you learn, reflect, and grow. And maybe that’s the goal in the end.

When Travel Love Becomes Real Life

The one who slowly becomes part of your real life. The one who meets your family, learns your routines, and starts existing beyond the travel bubble.

What that kind of love taught me is something I hadn’t fully understood before: the longer a relationship lasts, the more it becomes part of your reality, not just your dreams.

And that hits differently than something that only existed for days or weeks, where the “what ifs” can keep running wild.

With longer relationships comes heavier luggage. Shared routines, shared plans, shared versions of the future that vanish.

And even when you decide to leave your life behind to start something new, sometimes the universe seems to have a different plan.

When those relationships end, you don’t just lose the person. In a strange way, you find yourself again, too.

You return home to yourself.

And maybe that is true for every relationship: loving someone deeply should never mean disappearing completely inside their story. Or the couple’s story. It should always be your story, that you decide to share with someone.

And when it ends, that’s not really an ending, but a continued cycle of a self renewal.

What Ifs?

Most long-term relationships last because of a series of decisions. Two people choosing each other again and again. Making it work. Finding solutions.

Travel love stories often feel different. Sometimes you never even reach the hardest parts. The relationship ends because of a plane ticket, a job waiting, family matters, a life already built somewhere else.

Many endings aren’t really decisions.

I call them circumstances.

And maybe that’s why they stay with us.

Because you’re left wondering why two people crossed paths at the exact right place, at the exact right time.

Could something have been different?

Could it have worked?

Those questions become part of the story.

Because you never truly get to see the whole picture. You only experience a reflection of who two people were at that exact moment in their lives.

Sometimes, you fall in love with a person.

Sometimes, you fall in love with the story you created.

And sometimes, that brief reflection shines brighter than relationships that lasted for years. Because imagination can feel safer than reality.

No matter how a relationship ends, I think we have to be grateful.

For the memories. For the lessons. For the creativity that can come from pain.

For the new version of ourselves that emerges when we learn how to be alone again.

For letting it be, letting it come back if it does, and letting go if it might.

Travel Love Stories and Letting Go

We fall in love again and again and again. No matter how hard the breakups we go through.
With new people, with previous people we met before, with other versions of them, or especially, with new versions of ourselves.

The big lesson on travel love stories is really simple.
Most of the time, we have to let it go.

I know, I know… it’s so easy to say.

All the books I’ve written so far probably say it at least once in different ways, and yet here I am, writing about it again. In a different way.

So that was the big moral from this post, I guess.

Enjoy things, moments, and people as they pass through your life. And then, just let them go.

Anything meant for you won’t let you go for too long anyway, so why bother trying to control the outcome?

Let it go and let it come back. Or not. More surprises always await along our paths anyway, previously known or not.

Can A Travel Love Story Really Last?

Travel love taught me so much about myself. But most of all, it gave me unforgettable memories. Probably one of the most beautiful and courageous things I did in my life was for love. Friend love. Romantic love. Dog Love. And especially self-love.

How many times can one fall in love under a palm tree looking at the stars, or on a boat wishing this moment never ends? Those settings help a lot. It’s easy to wish. Not to act.

I think, like everything in life, it can last only if both parties continue to choose one another. If they chose to face the challenges that an international relationship brings together. Not because it feels like work or they need to, but because hearts are calling and nothing can break the connection.

Which is no more different from regular love. Is it?

Just love under coconuts.

Is There Anything Better Than A Travel Love Story?

Some people sometimes definitely stood out more than the romantic one I think we should talk about briefly. Travel friends. Or just friends for that matter.

Most of the time they know all your travel love stories and help you de-dramatize them. How lucky are we to have each other?

All my friends, from home or from travel, stick through my life. Unfortunately, the romantic ones tend to move out. What an amazing thing, though, to have people sticking years with you, through good and bad. Always.

Travel friends are gold. If you find some, man, hold on to it. Nurture the hell out of it. And they definitely deserve their own post about it : Travel Friendships: When Strangers Become Family

Conclusion

Maybe that’s the real nature of travel love or long-distance relationships.

Not permanence.
Not ownership.
Not even necessarily compatibility.

Just two people meeting at exactly the right moment in their lives.

Maybe the most beautiful part of a travel love story is not whether you end up together. Maybe it’s knowing that, for a little while, two lives crossed paths and made each other feel a little less alone in this huge world.

And maybe that has to be enough sometimes.

Even if part of you still wishes the plane had never left.

We should never regret loving or stop ourselves from doing so. It’s one of the most human things we’ll ever do.

Oh, and if you’re ever in doubt… just adopt a cute Bolivian dog.

It worked for me!