64 SATURDAY FEBRUARY 15 2014 THETELEGRAPH.COM.AU

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HOMECOMING IS REALLY ANOTHER NEW COUNTRY WRITES TIM MASTERS

The arterial streets ofSydney came toview through theairline window, andthe flight attendantnoticed myexpression andimpressivecollection of dirty wristbands.

Nearly home she said, and I nodded, begrudgingly acceptant. How long has it been, she asked.

It had been three years, and the idea of returning home was terrifying.

It has long been part of theyoung Australian coming-of-age story to venture into the world following university or high school. More and more employers are checking to see if graduates have done a year travelling before employing them. It has become a prerequisite to adulthood. The last gasp of youth is backpacking, and anyone in their 20s will be aware of the social pressure and

expectation to travel, as communicated by friends on Facebook or by drinks with returned adventurers.

The impetus is to abandonlife in Australia friends, family, employment and to travel the world, often for years at a time, in exchange only for the experience of having done so.

Every newly returned traveller I have spoken to has felt some degree of displacement. The offset seems to be proportional to time spent away: if you holiday for three months, the first week back will be difficult. Three years and expect to be out-of-sorts for six months.

My three years abroad have felt like a lifetime of

experiences. I have drunk hallucinogenic

tea with AmazonianIndians, lost myself

among the tidalforce of BrazilianCarnival, climbed

mountains, discovered islands, crossed deserts, smashed steins, bribed officials, slept with an array of varying nationalities in an attempt to treat life as one great after-gig affair, crossed dozens of borders, fumbled through a conversation in every major Latin or European language, I was almost shot, I almost drowned, was almost lost (OK, not almost) and suffered the king-hit of a broken heart.

After everything I had been through, had anything changed? Would anyone care? This is the secret fear of any traveller: to regress to their previous state.

Every person will travel fora reason, whether it be to escape or explore; it might be a search for love or self-fulfilment, sex, adventure, enlightenment, or simply to immerse oneself in a new culture. Regardless, backpackers leave with the expectation that their experiences will change them. That these experiences will be essential, eye-opening, and unique.

Its an opportunity to testthe boundaries of your uniqueness as a person, and to live among people keen to

do the same. Returning to Newcastle, where I had lived before my travels, I was shocked to discover how frozen and unchanged the city felt.

The same applied to myfriends, who still had the same habits and haircuts, some had married, but most were still stuck in the same routine. More shocking still was my family: my parents had aged and my sister had new children, but they felt like minor changes. These people to whom I was closest seemed only curiously familiar and every conversation felt as if I were living a re-run of my very own sitcom, which I had personally cancelled three years ago. More so, it was as if my friends and family expected me to be unchanged; I heard it often between smiling trips to the bar: You havent changed at all! Surely that couldnt be true?

The core of my personalityremained, but after years of adventuring, I saw myself as this person of courage and experience; someone capable of the unexpected and someone who would transcend those routines and familial arguments of old. I knew I had changed. I had learned so much about people and cultures and bravery and kindness.

But the shock of the

familiar was too much, and this fear of whether anyone would recognise this great change in me was overwhelming. I soon fell into behaviour patterns thought long-gone: I argued trivially with my parents and sat quietly during a friends party.

It seemed my hope that my own inner transformation would be reflected and respected by those around me was unrealistic, and I had to confront the idea that, perhaps after all my experience, the change I saw in myself had been only temporary.

This new courage I had grown went unnoticed, and instead I was encouraged to settle back into the routine of old. My impressive stories quickly became sound bites to be performed on the couch and they lost the magic they once privately held.

I had seen so much; the whole world; and now it was to be compressed neatly and compartmentalised in my memory, to be wheeled out at parties and bars. Life returned, albeit with odd alternative dimensional dressing, and the adventure was over.

Everyone adjusts differently upon returning home, but most will in some way return to their old life and find it wanting. It is inevitable that it will feel like an uncomfortable return to old ways, to old arguments, to all-too-familiar house parties. That may be refreshing for a time, depending on your level of homesickness, but pretty

soon that feeling of displacement will hit, and when it does, many will pick up and leave again on further travels, clinging to that last gasp. For a time I felt that pull. I looked to travelling through India or China, but money was growing scarce.

Eventually I decided to stay, to accept the old and contain it within the new: to mix the expectations of my friends and family with my never-forgotten adventurous spirit. I could be here, among my old life, and look at it with new eyes. For all my travels I was not depleted, but enriched.

For those feeling the heavy weight of displacement, the trick is to approach the homecoming not as a return, but as anothernew country with its own unique promise.

Like me, your Facebook feed will be newly minted with travellers of all nationalities and attitudes, and each status update will serve as a reminder of one unique moment, one essential night. Those individual moments will always be there, in your memory and in those with whom you shared the experience. That initial readjustment might take weeks, or months, and provided you intend to remain, the alternate dimension of home will eventually stop feeling so curiously different.

Employment will come, slowly or quickly, you will likely move, probably to a new city where you can immerse yourself in something strange, and life will beckon ever onward.

The journey never stops.

Tim Masters at The Sacred Valley, near Cuzco, Peru.

Travel snapshots: The pyramid Chichn Itz in Mexico and the village of Riomaggiore, Cinque Terre, Italy.