The Best Hobbies for People who like to Travel

Worldcitizenevan talking to a monk in Battambang Cambodia

 

I have been living out of my backpack for the past 4 years and have had to be selective about the hobbies I choose.  While I love to learn new things, my travels always come first.  So I have chosen hobbies which I am able to practice while living my lifestyle.  Some of the hobbies I will recommend can be easily practiced as a traveler, others are a bit more difficult, and many hobbies will actually encourage you to travel more.

 

Yes, you can certainly travel the world without hobbies and focus all of your energy on visiting touristic sites and getting drunk at hostels.  But, in my experience, your travels will be more rewarding if you take on a few hobbies and practice them while on the road.

 

Hiking/Mountaineering

 

I grew up in British Colombia Canada, which is world-renowned for its mountains.  While I didn’t really enjoy hiking until I was a young adult, I have been able to have some amazing experiences near my home.  Even in my hometown, Victoria, we have two small mountains in the middle of the city.  And if you want to do some hardcore hiking you only have to drive four hours up the island to Strathcona National Park.

 

If you are a traveler, and you love to hike, there are all kinds of amazing opportunities.  Most countries you go to will have some kind of mountains to climb.  And if you are into serious mountaineering, of course, you can specifically organize your travels around mountain ranges you have always dreamed of climbing.

 

I am not a hardcore mountaineer at all, in fact, I usually shy away from mountains with a lot of snow.  But, I have still had all kinds of great experiences hiking as a traveler.  Volcan Conception on Ometepe Island, Volcan San Pedro in Guatemala, Isla Del Sol in Bolivia,  Pichincha Volcano in Ecuador and much more!

 

If you choose the right countries, traveling will probably make you into a better hiker/mountaineer.  Note: climbing the largest and most technical mountains is usually expensive because it requires experienced guides and you will need to either rent/buy special gear.

 

Writing

 

Even before I started this blog, I was already into writing.  In my opinion, writing is one of the best hobbies for solo travelers.  As you move around the world you will meet a lot of interesting people, but there will also be extended periods of time where you are alone.

 

This is where the writing comes in.  Whatever you are writing, your journal, your novel etc. is in a sense, your best friend.  I believe that one of the main reasons why I have been happy traveling solo for the past 4 years is because I write so much.

 

Another reason why writing is so useful for solo travelers is that it helps organize your thoughts.  When you are alone for extended periods of time you will have all kinds of ideas, some of them are great and some of them are terrible.  When you write them down, you will be able to assess whether or not they good ideas later on in a different state of mind.

 

Writing is a hobby which is very coherent with the travel lifestyle.  You can bring a laptop with you if you prefer to type, or you can even just use a small journal.  My experience has been that my writing hobby has benefited from my travels because I have had so much inspiration.  Writers are always looking for material, when you travel a lot there is always something to write about.

 

Photography

 

Ok, this hobby is pretty popular with travelers and is obviously coherent with the travel lifestyle.  When you travel the world you will have all kinds of interesting things to take pictures of.  Landscapes, buildings, animals, people etc.  Some people use drones, underwater cameras, or GoPros.

 

I just recently started taking pictures a year and a half ago and am still a total beginner.  I want to get better and will maybe buy a high-quality camera someday.  Although I don’t ever plan on putting in the work required to become an expert photographer, I would like to improve my skills because I see so much interesting stuff traveling in exotic places.

 

Meditation

 

While I have been experimenting with meditation for my whole life, I have only been practicing every single day for the last five years.  Some people have very dogmatic beliefs surrounding meditation.  For example, you must practice for 30 minutes a day or you must practice in some particular style.

 

Meditation, just like any other hobby, can be practiced for 5 minutes or for 8 hours.  And there are numerous effective styles of meditation, like Vipassana, Moving meditation (Tai Chi), mindfulness meditation, or prayer.

 

I developed my own style of meditation through introspection.  In the beginning, I didn’t do much research and just started practicing on my own.  This worked very well for me.  I am not sure I would have gotten the same results had I used someone else’s method.  I think you could develop your own style of meditation as well, but this depends on your personality.

 

The Benefits of meditation are very broad,

  • increases in concentration
  • increases in discipline
  • increased relaxation
  • improvements in sleep quality
  • improvements in diet regulation
  • improvements in posture
  • improvements in life satisfaction
  • reductions in sensations of pain
  • increases in awareness
  • increases in creativity
  • improvements in emotional regulation
  • and much more!

 

The cool thing is that you don’t need to practice for hours every day to get these benefits.  You can just practice for 15 minutes a day and you will get amazing results.  Challenge yourself to meditate every day for 90 days and experience the benefits.  Remember, don’t ever skip meditating for even one day!

 

The other awesome thing about meditation is that it is totally free and doesn’t require any equipment.  It is the perfect hobby for travelers.  I almost always do my meditation as soon as I wake up in the morning, but if for some reason I can’t get it done first thing, I find sometime later in the day.  You will certainly find it easier to be consistent if you do it at the same time every day, whether that is after you get up or just before going to bed.

 

Drawing/Sketching

 

It is very easy to buy a sketchpad while you are traveling.  This is a pretty basic hobby which is great for travelers.   It doesn’t require a lot of equipment and can be practiced spontaneously if you carry your sketchpad and pencil around with you.

 

Language Learning

 

In my opinion, this is the ultimate hobby for travelers and one of the most rewarding experiences available for human beings.  If you have never learned a foreign language, your first conversation in a different language will completely blow your mind.  No matter how basic that conversation is.  The first time you successfully ask someone a question in a new language can actually be an intense rush.

 

Even though I love learning foreign languages, I actually hate studying the languages.  Although I use applications like Duolingo to reach a very basic level, most of my practice is done actually talking to people in foreign countries.  I think some people can learn languages at a fairly high level without traveling at all, but when I try to do it I forget almost everything.  Most people will learn more by talking to other people and reading, while occasionally studying grammatic rules on their own.

 

Note: if you want to optimize the learning process you should do a small amount of independent study every day on your own using formal learning materials, but the majority of your practice will be talking to locals.  A good learning strategy would be 30 minutes of study with a language textbook every day and then start as many conversations as you possibly can in the foreign language.

 

Of course, this is one of those hobbies which will benefit a lot from traveling to the right country.  But don’t just expect to learn languages traveling without any effort.  After meeting a lot of travelers, I was surprised to find out how many long-term travelers can only speak one language.  There are a few reasons why many travelers do not learn new languages.

 

  • They don’t spend enough time in each country.  If you are only in a country for a month you won’t learn the language unless you are on the Latin American travel circuit.
  • They don’t talk to locals.  Either they spend all of their time with other foreigners who speak English or they just hang out on their own.
  • When they talk to locals they make no effort to speak in the local language.  I am always shocked to see foreigners assuming that locals speak English.  While this may be fine in places like Kenya or the Philippines where most locals do in fact speak English, it always seemed weird to me in Indonesia when foreigners would speak English to the locals outside of Bali. After all, Indonesian is one of the most basic languages in the world, and it doesn’t take much skill to order food.

 

If you are a traveler and you are looking for a hobby, I sincerely recommend you take up learning languages.   It will make you more intelligent, more creative, and it will give you opportunities to communicate with all kinds of people you otherwise wouldn’t be able to talk to.  Don’t worry about making mistakes, just start talking and trying to communicate.  This is the fastest way to learn.

 

 

Weightlifting/Bodybuilding

 

This may be a surprising hobby for travelers, but finding gyms is actually a lot easier than it sounds.  Although weightlifting isn’t very popular among long-term travelers, there is no reason why not.  On my first trip through Central and South America, I didn’t go to the gym very often, I did a lot of exercises in my room, but on this trip, I lost much of my strength and muscle.

 

What I discovered later is that it is actually very easy to find gyms almost anywhere.  People all over the world have egos and everyone wants to look good.  Even in the poorest towns, I have visited there are usually local gyms.

 

One time in Arba Minch Ethiopia I couldn’t find a gym on google maps, so I went out on a quest to find one.  Arba Minch is an extremely poor town and most people don’t speak any English.  But, I was still pretty confident I would be able to find a gym somewhere.

 

I walked up to a group of motorcycle taxi drivers and asked them if they knew where I could find a gym.  The guys didn’t understand me.  So, I did some bicep curl motions and one of the guy’s eyes lit up.

 

He asked me to get on the back of the motorcycle and he drove me to a very basic local gym.  The equipment was all homemade, but it worked well.  The gym was around 25 square meters and there were about 20 Ethiopian teenagers inside.  Since the gym was so packed, we all had to share equipment.

 

You might think that very poor people in developing countries would have no interest in going to the gym.  This couldn’t be further from the truth.  If they can’t afford the high-quality equipment they will build some equipment for themselves.  At the very least you will find someone with a bench press and a pull-up bar.

 

If anything it is even more important to lift weights if you are in a poor and dangerous country.  The more muscular you are, the less likely you are to get robbed/assaulted.  This goes for travelers as well as locals.

 

Although gyms are usually cheap, they can sometimes be absurdly expensive by developing country standards if they import the gym equipment.  Budget travelers may need to choose another hobby.

 

Yoga

 

Yoga originated in India more than a thousand years ago.  It is a series of mental, physical and spiritual exercises with a number of different goals and benefits.  There are a lot of different styles of yoga with different kinds of poses.  Some styles demand more physical strength (Ashtanga Yoga) and other styles are geared more towards inducing altered states of consciousness (Kundalini Yoga).

 

Yoga can be practiced intensely as a stand-alone training program or it can be used as a supplement to another exercise routine.  Yoga will improve physical strength and flexibility as well as helping with relaxation and improving confidence.  A lot of people find that practicing yoga reduces aches and pains.

 

Yoga is a great hobby for travelers because it can be practiced in your room with minimal to no equipment.  Yoga is totally free, you can use online resources to learn.  Or, if you enjoy attending classes you will probably find yoga school all over the world, especially in touristic areas.  But you can also find yoga classes outside of touristic areas as well.

 

Some people actually travel to India or Bali to learn yoga from masters.   This could be an interesting experience, but it will probably be geared towards foreigners and will be commercialized unless you search carefully for a more local retreat.

 

Calisthenics

 

Calisthenics is a form of exercise which involves using your bodyweight as resistance.  Most people are aware of chin-ups and push-ups.  But calisthenics experts use dozens or even hundreds of other exercises like muscle-ups, v-ups, human flags, 1-arm chin-ups, pistol squats, etc.

 

Although technically calisthenics includes all kinds of bodyweight exercises, most calisthenics practitioners become masters at pull-up type movements.  The challenge with training calisthenics while traveling is finding somewhere to do pull-ups.  In most big cities you can find a playground.  But if you are in a smaller town or in nature, you might have to improvise.  Try using a tree or a door frame.

 

Most calisthenics practitioners are trying to get very strong without building too much muscle mass.  But, on the other hand, some people do calisthenics with the goal of getting jacked.  Although bodybuilding is certainly better for building muscle mass, some people with good genetics have used calisthenics to build an impressive physique, particularly in the arms, chest, upper back, and abs.  If you are a budget traveler calisthenics is better than bodybuilding.  Calisthenics is free and gyms can sometimes be expensive.

 

 

Chess

 

I started competing in chess tournaments when I was 8 years old.   I became obsessed with the game and ended up representing Canada at the world youth chess championships in Greece three years later.  Although I stopped competing as a teenager, I still enjoy the game a lot.  Chess is easy to learn to play, but extremely complicated to master.  In fact, no matter how good you are, there is always more to learn.

 

Chess is popular all over the world in nearly every single country.  If you go to a club you might see some players who are only 5 years old and you might see some players who are in their 90s.  The rules are the same everywhere, so even if you don’t speak the same language as your opponent, you can still play a great game of chess.  Chances are if you walk around a small town or a big city, you will see people playing in parks.  Sit down and ask to have a game, most people will be happy to play.

 

You actually don’t need to bring a chessboard around with you to play chess.  You will see people playing on the street and a lot of hostels have chessboards.  You can also play on your phone and if you are very experienced you can even play in your head.  However, there are also MagneticChess Sets available which are cheap and don’t take up much space in your bag.

 

Pool

 

Pool is popular all around the world, even some hostels have pool tables.  If you enjoy the game you should be able to find people playing anywhere that you go.  The rules may be a bit different depending on where you are.

 

Reading

 

Reading is a staple hobby for a lot of world travelers.  You can bring a few books with you and exchange your books at a hostel when you are done.  I did this on my first trip and I ended up reading a lot of books I wouldn’t have otherwise considered reading.  After reading dozens of books on my first trip I realized that I would benefit a lot from a kindle.

 

E-readers, in general, are great for world travelers who love to read.  When I tell people that I use my kindle all the time, they usually say something like “well I prefer to use a real book”.  Sure that is great if you have a huge library in your home, but I don’t want to carry books with me.

 

Even a few books are annoying to carry, and I can easily go through 4-5 books in a month.  E-books are cheaper, you get them instantly, and you get a much larger selection than you would at a hostel book exchange.

 

One of the biggest benefits of reading while you are traveling is that it will keep you off your phone.  Some travelers nowadays are obsessed with their phones and use social media compulsively.  Reading is naturally a more wholesome habit.

 

Volleyball

 

Pick-up volleyball is very popular in certain countries.    I am in Ecuador right now and I see people playing volleyball all over, even in Quito which is a surprise because the city is so cold.  If it looks like a recreational game ask to join in.  Make sure to smile and be friendly they will probably be happy to have you.

 

Soccer/Football

 

Football is the most popular game in the world.  All you need is a ball and some makeshift nets.  People seem to instinctively play football as kids, one kid will start kicking around a rock and the other kid will try to take it away.  Football is in my opinion, a very natural game.  Although I don’t know of any travelers who actually carry a ball in their backpack, it’s easy enough to find one anywhere you go.

 

Just like volleyball ask to join in, smile, and be friendly.   Football and volleyball are both great ways to make friends and get some exercise.

 

Video Editing

 

Just like photography, when you travel, you will have lots of opportunities for interesting videos.  And half of making a good video is the editing process.  Of course, this hobby requires carrying around a laptop/tablet, but having a laptop might be worth it for certain travelers.  Just like any skill, video editing requires practice to become proficient.

 

Dancing

 

As you might expect, there are thousands of different dance styles around the world.  You can learn Tango in Argentina or learn Bharatanatyam in India.  In some cultures, dancing is much more common and people don’t have the same insecurities as in the west.  In Uganda, for example, you will often see people dancing on the side of the road.  Also, in Uganda, and other African countries, people dance much more enthusiastically in nightclubs.

 

Although you don’t technically need any equipment to dance, it is often an expensive hobby.  This is because nightclubs can be very expensive, even in poorer countries.  Also, dance courses might be geared towards wealthy foreigners who have more money.  If you are planning on practicing your dance hobby in a foreign country either go to a place like Uganda where it is normal to dance in public, go to a place where the nightlife is cheap, or make sure that you can find a great dancing course.

 

Martial Arts

 

Many martial artists throughout history have traveled across the world to learn from great masters.  There is no reason why you can’t do the same as well.  Whether you want to learn Muay Thai in Thailand, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in Brazil, or Judo in Japan.  To me personally, the lifestyle of a traveling martial artist sounds exciting and rewarding.

 

If you do travel the world practicing martial arts you obviously want to spend more time in each location.  This way you can get your bearings and get comfortable in the new school.  Depending on the martial art, the school may be a bit stand-offish in the beginning.

 

While traveling could potentially improve your martial art quite a bit,  your martial art practice will probably get in the way of your traveling goals.  This is because there may only be a few countries where you can actually practice your specific martial art at a high level.

 

But if you spend your whole time in 1 or 2 cities you will understand those cities very well, you will understand the culture more deeply and you should be able to become proficient in the local language.

 

There are numerous hobbies available for long-term travelers which require minimal to no equipment.  Of course, getting good at anything requires practice and discipline.  If you want to become a martial arts master you need to be consistent in going to classes and if you want to become a great photographer you need to take a lot of photos.  Traveling doesn’t necessarily mean you have to give up on all of your hobbies.  If you have some unique interests they may work very well with your travel lifestyle.

 

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14 COMMENTS

  1. For playing chess, you can visit my country. I’m Vietnamese btw. it’s easy to find people playing chess in the street and park. You can even make some money for winning them, it is some sort of gamble. But don’t expect that you can get easy money because those opponents are pretty strong =)))

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