Age is no barrier to travelling - a story of a 63 year old traveller

In Boston, Massachusetts I’d not long arrived at my hostel. I quickly popped out to CVS to buy a few things – a new water bottle, some diet coke to stash in the fridge, a packet of museli bars. I came back and was stashing my things in the communal kitchen and I spied an elderly woman with a mug, she was standing at a cooking sink in the kitchen confused – I assumed she ws looking for the dishwashing equipment. I told her that there was a dish room just to the side – I’d seen it earlier. We exchanged polite words and not long after I was sitting down snacking on Swedish Fish and she came and joined me. I wound up chatting to her for about an hour.

She is 63 and a half years of age – interesting that she pointed out the half. I suppose just like how half years are important as a child, when you get older, they are equally important. I think it is important to point out that she felt like an old 63 – she looked and dressed like, well frankly, a grandmother. Slipper like shoes, a saggy big floral dress, no attempts to dye her grey hair. She referred to sometimes taking it one step at a time when climbing up the stairs at the hostel, pausing each step to rest.

She told me that she is travelling around the United States on a 60 day Greyhound Discovery Pass. This isn’t the first time she has done this – she does it every couple of years, changing the time of year she travels. She has travelled lots in Europe, her home being London. She referred to going to Malta just a few months ago. And when she travels, she nearly always stays at Hostelling International hostels.

Hostelling life is her passion – she loves meeting random people, the bigger the dorm room the better because she gets to meet more people. She will talk to anyone who will listen to her talk, she loves sharing travel tips and taking hostel recommendations from people. She has this remarkable memory for addresses – I’d commented that I was booked into a HI Hostel in Sacramento and she said an address and asked if it was that one. She travels without using the internet - she has a book filled with hostel phone numbers and addresses. She decides with only a couple of days notice where she's headed, depending on where she can get to next logically with Greyhound and where there is a hostel with an available bed, after calling around.

Her friends at home think she’s brave for doing what she’s doing but for her, she doesn’t know any other way of travelling. Most of the places she visits, she’s been there before, she’s done most of the ‘siteseeing’ and so more than anything, her experiences are truly centred around the hostel and meeting people. She isn’t jaded by the unusual experiences and encounters – with a twinkle in her eye, she told me about waking up in her hostel in Australia one morning and seeing the girl in the female dorm across from her asleep with a man in the bed.

I understand from our conversation that she doesn’t have a next of kin – I’m not sure if she never married or if he passed, if she is estranged from family or if she was an only child. Bu she referred to having no need to leave behind any money, and while she feels ‘fit as a fiddle’ she’s going to make the most of life and see as much as she can.

I can only dream to maintain her kind of passion and zest for life and such an open minded approach to the budget travel lifestyle into my later years.