The Honest Truth About Nomad Life

Nomad life often looks effortless on social media. We often see so-called travel influencers on Instagram saying things like, “I sold everything back home to travel the world” or “I left my 9 – 5 job to live my dream life“.

Well, I did leave the corporate life to pursue a different kind of life, and I’ve been living in different places ever since. I wanted freedom and flexibility, and now I have both. When people imagine a nomadic life, they picture waking up somewhere new, working from beautiful cafés, chasing sunsets, and all those clichés. And while a lot of that is true,  don’t get me wrong – I am fully embracing this life. But there are things influencers on social media don’t tell you about being a nomad. So before you seriously consider this lifestyle, ask yourself again: are you really cut out for it?

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You end up spending so much of your life at airports

“Catch flights, not feelings,” they say. And while I do love travelling, I definitely don’t love the act of travelling itself; showing up at the airport three hours before a flight, waiting to check in, stressing over whether your luggage is overweight, trying to survive eight-hour layovers at the most random times, having breakfast at 2am, coffee at 9pm, waking up at 4pm and going to sleep at 3am.

By now, I’ve mastered the art of killing time, know what coffee shops are available at certain airports, I’ve watched enough Netflix series while waiting for the next flight to last several lifetimes. I’ve also lifted more than half my body weight in the form of a suitcase, more times than I can count, and a significant portion of my money seems to evaporate into boarding passes.

Airports start to feel strangely familiar; not quite a destination, not quite a home, just a place where life pauses in between chapters.

Taking off – yet again, a rare sight of the iconic bear empty, and a downloaded Grey’s Anatomy episode to kill time

The freedom comes with a lot of admins

And by a lot, I mean A LOT! Especially when you have a not-so-strong passport like mine. There’s this ongoing visa anxiety quietly living in the back of your mind. You’re constantly counting days, checking the latest requirements, figuring out whether there’s even an embassy where you currently live, and planning your next exit before you’ve fully arrived or settled in.

Your calendar isn’t just filled with travel plans or work deadlines – it’s filled with immigration timelines. Visa runs, application windows, document checklists, renewal reminders. Yep, I carry my entire life admin with me everywhere, lol; birth certificate, marriage certificate, original sworn-translated documents, copies, copies of copies – just in case. Also, sometimes you realise you’re not planning your life around where you want to go, but around where you’re allowed to stay.

And just when you start feeling comfortable somewhere, you’re already researching your next country, your next entry stamp, your next temporary home. Freedom, yes – but with paperwork.

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It’s a lifestyle shaped by constant adjustment

You learn to manage different electric plugs like it’s a practical life skill. You also have to be okay with not drinking your favourite coffee from back home for a while – sometimes for a looong while. You become strangely good at calculating currency exchange rates in your head, and before you realise it, you can hold a few basic conversations in a foreign language – enough to order food, ask for directions, and politely apologise for not speaking the language, hehe.

And every few months or so, you explain your life choices all over again – to family, to friends, and to yourself. “Can you come to our wedding in June?”, and “Will you be home for Christmas?” become surprisingly difficult questions to answer.

Packing just to unpack again, and getting used to seeing empty apartments you had only just started to feel comfortable in

Less items, more memories

Over time, you realise you don’t actually need much to live. Heck, your entire life fits into a suitcase (or 2, in my case). And somewhere along the way, you start wanting less, too. You see a cute pink dress in a shop window and feel perfectly happy just admiring it – you don’t feel the need to own it anymore. 

You may have fewer things, but you gain so many new experiences and memories instead. Each place leaves something behind; routines you built temporarily, friends you met along the way, and versions of yourself that existed in a particular place.

You start measuring richness differently – not by what you have, but by what you’ve lived through; a café in one country, a morning walk to the gym in another, time spent with people you may not see again anytime soon.

So many goodbyes

One of the less glamorous truths of being a nomad is how often you have to say goodbye (insert sad face here). You say goodbye to new friends just as connections begin to deepen. You leave one group of friends, travel long distances just to see another, and then eventually say goodbye all over again.

Friendships become intense and condensed, built quickly because everyone understands time is limited. And through that, you learn to appreciate presence more than duration – valuing the moments you have together instead of how long they last.

Leaving one family to reunite with another, leaving home to revisit a place that used to be home

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Leaving home, to go home

Nomadic life reshapes the meaning of home. Sometimes you go back to familiar places, only to realise they’ve changed, or perhaps…you have.

Home stops being a fixed location. It becomes a feeling you occasionally stumble upon; a slow morning that feels natural, a café where staff recognise you and your regular order, a moment when you no longer feel like a visitor.

Being a nomad isn’t simply about movement. It comes with its own price, but this is the life I’ve chosen for now – and it has taught me a lot. Over the past year, I’ve learned how to build my own version of normality wherever I go. How to adapt faster, connect more openly, and find ways to feel grounded even when nothing around me is permanent. 

Stability stops coming from location and starts coming from within. And eventually, I realised something: home is not where you stay the longest. It’s where you feel most like yourself – even if only for a little while.