Between Roots and Wings

The two sides of travel and home

Many years ago, I was having a conversation with a friend about travel plans for the year ahead. She was on a gap year and planning to return home to work at a big tech firm. I, on my extended gap year, told her I didn’t think I was ready to stop travelling.

So I continued to live abroad, teaching, exploring, and moving between places that drew me in. Life on the road felt alive and boundless. That, I believed, was where life really happened: in exciting adventures, fascinating conversations, and endless possibilities. Why would anyone choose to be home, where routine slowly drains your spirit?

I loved the freedom of it all. I was certain I would never tire of that life, especially with the generous school holidays in Thailand, where long weekends and public holidays made escape easy. I was happy in a small apartment, ready to pack up my life into one or two suitcases at any moment.

But the person who said she would never stop travelling, that person changed about two years ago.

Teaching lost its appeal. Paradise began to feel a little jaded around the edges. I found myself craving braais, family dinners, and the sight of Table Mountain rising solid and familiar against the sky. For the first time, I started imagining a different kind of life, maybe one with a garden, a small cottage, something rooted.

So I set my mind on returning to South Africa. I wanted to see if this could be home again.

As they say, tell God your plans and He laughs.

Here I am, six months later, and I can’t stop thinking about travel. It has become such a part of me that I’ve had to accept something uncomfortable: I may always live between two worlds. When I travel, I long for home. When I’m home, I long for the road.

I used to think this tension meant I hadn’t decided who I was. Now I see it differently.

Travel teaches you how to navigate the unfamiliar, new languages, new systems, and new people. It teaches you to pack your bags quickly and say goodbye, sometimes to someone you met only yesterday. Long-term travel isn’t a holiday; there is no real break. It can exhaust you.

But home has its own weight. Routine can comfort you, or quietly confine you. Your own bed feels better than a hard mattress in a budget hotel. Yet nothing quite replaces a cold beer and a pad thai at a roadside café, surrounded by the chaos of a place that is not yours.

Over the past few weeks, I felt that familiar restlessness stirring again. At first, I tried to ignore it. But it didn’t fade. Slowly, I began to see that both things could be true. I could belong here, and still long for elsewhere.

I’ve come to realise that travel and home are not opposites. They are two sides of the same coin. One gives me roots; the other gives me perspective. One restores me; the other stretches me.

Maybe in a few months I’ll be on the road again. But for now, I am someone who needs the comfort of home and the discomfort of elsewhere.

And perhaps that isn’t restlessness at all.

Perhaps it’s just who I am.

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