“So, like, you’ve had botox, right?”

Published February 24, 2012 | By solotraveler

Kendra - a sweet, positive, inquisitive energy who also knows how to handle herself as a solo traveler.

“So, like, you’ve had botox, right?

That’s what Kendra asked me a few weeks ago on our jeep safari in Rajaji National Park near Rishikesh, India.

Kendra, 25ish, Leeanne, 30ish, Penny, about to turn 40 and me, solidly in my 50s, took a short break from our Ashram to go to the park in hopes of seeing elephants. The story of the elephants (you’ll get the video of me screaming like a little girl soon enough) are for another day. Today, it’s just about four young travelers (I’m including myself) connecting.

Solo Travelers Connecting Across Generations

There is a reason that I have related this minor detail about the botox and the fact that the four of us spanning four decades enjoyed each other’s company for a day. I am responding to Kathy who is 65 and a member of the Solo Travel Society on Facebook. She tends to travel for months at a time by managing her money carefully and staying in backpacker accommodation. She recently wrote me asking about how to make substantial connections when so many travelers are so much younger than she.

My friend Noemie, one of many out to see the glacier

Noemie was about 30. We met on the Navimag ferry and hiked and camped in Torres del Paine, Patagonia together.

I have to admit that, though I am 11 years younger than Kathy, I am often the eldest when I stay in backpacker accommodation. However, I usually find that there are other travelers who live as people rather than as an ‘age’. Travelers who share my curiosity for the world. Sure, those who are primarily looking to party have no interest in me. And, truth be told, I must catch them at just the right moment to find them interesting myself. But I usually find a few people who share my interests and we make a connection.

So far, Kathy, I don’t think I’m being very helpful. You asked me for tips. At the end of this post, I’ve included links to previous articles on how to meet people but I don’t think this is what you need. You are quite capable of this. Truly, I think the answer to this issue is more philosophical than practical.

Let’s look at Kendra’s botox question. I don’t believe that she asked it because I look so young. (My hair is completely white.) I believe it was because I act young. I live young. My attitude defied my age and had Kendra puzzled.

I believe – I hope – that if we live young we will always find companions of different ages to share our travels. I just returned from India where I traveled for a couple of weeks with a woman fifteen years my junior. Last year in Chile, I traveled with Noemie who was twenty-three years younger than me. Sure, the conversations are different but they can be very rich as we learn from each other. And isn’t that what we really want?

Can one make connections as a senior traveler? I think the answer is yes. They may not be as long lasting as they were when you were connecting with people of your own age a few decades ago, but they can be substantial connections none the less.

Oh, and as for the botox? No.

I would like to share a few thoughts written by a 62 year old friend of mine.

… It is life alive in all its rigour and I would not
part from that. And by the way, the young need me, they need
the way I decorate a scene, the way I give variety to the tableau
before them, the way my 62 is somehow, even for them, certainly for myself,
25 or less, and perhaps much more profoundly as curious as ever, which as far
as I can tell, is exactly what they are.

And now for the links:

Leanne, Kendra and me. Penny was taking the picture.

Falling in Love in The Lake District

Spiced Up Jordan

The Taj Mahal - it's real.

Posted in How to Travel Alone

Bartman

I threw it all in, the job, car, rented the house… sold my junk. I’ve been travelling alone through South & Central America for 8 months now, and I’m 42. Most people think I’m about 32, and nearly all my travel companions have been in their early 20′s.

Good people are good people, and age is just a number. I’m still quite self conscious about it, so I never bring it up… but people don’t seem to care, and are quite surprised when they find out. As long as you’re social, and make an effort, anyone can travel and be happy.

You can’t like everyone, that’s just life, but I’ve been surprised at how much I do actually have in common with people 20 years my junior. I’ve made some genuine new friends with that age gap… and no one seems to give a rats. I call that a win!
http://austrianalpineholidaysblog.com Linda

I’m 100% with you on the age doesn’t matter issue. I know I’m only 18 – stuff what the birth certificate or passport says! It’s about frame of mind. The physical stuff isn’t important, unless you let it be.
http://www.theirreverenttraveller.com Bula @ The Irreverent Traveller

I think it’s wonderful to see diversity in the travelling world. I have shared dorms with everyone from eighteen-year-old British kids on their gap year to a seventy-year-old American who was inspired by his son and wife to enjoy long-term travelling in hi retirement. As a Pakistani female, even though I am very Canadian in my mentalities, attitudes, and beliefs, I find people very much in awe of my lifestyle and pumping me about questions (“What do your parents think?” “Are you married?”). Being a bit of an attention hog, don’t mind the questions at all. And my boyfriend with his green eyes and curly blondish-brown hair is quite celebrity as I travel throughout Asia and have to show his picture to interested locals.

I’m 29, eight months on the road with several more to go! There’s all kinds of people out there. And it’s great to know how little a barrier of age plays when pursuing the dream of long-term travel.
solotraveler

Oh yes. Being solo draws attention too. Interesting!
http://besttbilisihotels.com/ Mary

I also traveled with the pepple elder than me some 15 years. I really enjoyed that tour with them and learned many things
http://www.overyonderlust.com Erica

Hey Janice,

Just because Shaun and I fit into quite a few minorities of travelers, do you even find yourself lonely in the “otherness”?

I know people are curious but we get a huge red flag in some activities because we are married. I wonder if it is the same on the other “other” end.
solotraveler

Kathy, thanks so much for starting this interesting discussion. I wish you many, long, happy travels.
Kathy Torpie

“Other” IS a reality, I know. I find that I am more inclined now to want to stay longer in one place, to experience it in more depth, than to move on in a quest to see as much as I can. I think you’ve got a good point when you say that with more time, differences give way to similarities and become “more a matter of interest than a factor of separation”
solotraveler

Ah, the concept of the “Other”. Hegel, de Beauvoir, Foucault and so many others much smarter than me have said much about the Other. Yet, I will still try to reply to you in the context of travel.

Unfortunately, I think the Other is simply a reality. If we are a minority in any situation, we can feel it – at least at the beginning of a relationship. What I think is important is what we do with this Otherness.

We can relish being the Other. As my friend mentioned at the end of the post, an older person is needed to “give variety to the tableau”. If I am no more than a curiosity reading in the corner, I can be pretty sure that my Otherness is having an effect on the 20 and 30 somethings in the backpacker hotel. And, I like to think that it is a positive effect. That, they may see a role model in me that travel and curiosity can go on in life. That I may offer a counterpoint to what they understand of people of my age. That they may even think of me in twenty years time when they are considering their own need to travel. I believe this is what Kendra was doing.

On the other hand, if a relationship develops, similarities will become more clear and the sense of being the Other will diminish. As I have spent more time with travelers and locals, as I have traveled with people much younger than me, it is our similarities that have made it work and our differences became more a matter of interest than a factor of separation.

I suspect, Kathy, that again I haven’t given you what you want but that’s my take on being the Other.
Kathy

Thanks for trying to answer my query with this post. Although, I think you might have misunderstood my intention

Of course seniors (myself included) can, and often do, connect with younger travelers and do things together. Like you, I feel and act younger than my age. Most of the travelers I meet, regardless of age, share a curiosity about the world.That kind of connection has never been a problem for me. What I was referring to was feeling set apart as “other”, even among travelers I might be hanging out with and otherwise enjoying.

Your story about being asked whether you do Botox is a great example of what I mean. Although it is an acknowledgment of your youthfulness, and very probably meant as a compliment, it is also an acknowledgment that, as an older traveler, you too are curiosity in your own right. With the focus on your difference – no matter how well that difference is accepted or appreciated – the underlying, deeper connection based on our commonalities, can easily get lost.

It’s the same when, as travelers, we focus on the differences we see in other cultures. When we focus on their “otherness” (or they focus on ours), we lose the kind of connection I was referring to when I said, “I’d love to connect in a more than superficial way with locals and with fellow travelers as well as with the environment itself. “

“So, like, you’ve had botox, right?”

Solo Travelers Connecting Across Generations

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