Thanks to social media and the introduction of budget flights, the world is a much smaller place and you want to see it all. You know you’ve caught the travel bug when you eat, sleep, dream, repeat getting away from it all. Time to get out your scratch map and plan your next adventure! In this article, we cover six signs that mean you have caught the travel bug.

All your tales begin with “When I was in….”

You can’t help it, but all your tales begin and end in another country. This is because travelling is where all your free time goes and the best place to swap stories in a hostel dorm room. Some of your favourite stories include dancing until dawn at a full moon party in Thailand, watching the sunrise over the Gobi Desert on the Trans-Mongolian railway and that time you went sandboarding in the Peruvian desert oasis of Huacachina. Your friends at home might get sick of hearing your stories and think your adventures are too good to be true but you know best. Just remember to take plenty of snaps to show them exactly what you got up to!

Flight comparison sites are your homepage

Skyscanner, Kayak, Expedia, Momondo, you know them all. Not only are they all your home pages but these flight comparison websites are your holy grail. Getting itchy feet? Check out the cheapest flights next weekend and bag yourself a bargain. Your dream destinations are already saved, and you get a regular notification on flight price fluctuations. All your friends ask you for advice on how you do it and want you to help them book their holidays. You’re ready to pounce on Black Friday and in the January sales, all you need to do now is work out how to get time off from work when you’ve already used up all your holiday allowance!

You have a never-ending bucket list

You think you’ve finally visited every country you want to see but then you pick up the latest copy of Lonely Planet and you’re back to square one. With over 193 countries on earth to choose from, how can you just see a few? If you’re going to Peru, well it just makes sense to include Bolivia and Chile. If you’re seeing Thailand it would be silly not to venture to Cambodia and Vietnam. No matter how you justify it, that list just keeps on growing and that’s okay. Whether you decide to check off your favourites with a lengthy around the world trip or you want to split it up into weekend breaks and mini holidays, you do you.

You have successfully filled a passport with stamps

A standard passport has 17 pages to fill with visas, but you already know this as you’ve run out of room. This is quite an achievement, even if some of the visas have taken up two pages. If you are a British passport holder there are only 33 countries in the world that you will require a visa for beforehand, which is enough to fill two passports worth. This is your new goal! Not only do you have a passport full of stamps but you will have plenty of hair-raising border tales, from the time you had to bribe a border guard in Vietnam to when you turned up in Laos and realized you didn’t have the correct currency to pay for your visa. Along with country stamps you also have iconic stamps from the places you’ve been such as the border guard stamp for Machu Pichu, a collection of Soviet stamps from Checkpoint Charlie and stamp from the Great Wall of China.

Even when you’re on a trip you’re planning the next

Before your last holiday has ended, you’re already working out the next destination to visit. This makes perfect sense, after making friends in hostels from around the world you have heard some stories that give you serious travel envy. Maybe you’ve learnt of a destination that you never even considered before or a must-see sight that you missed the last time around. There is no place like the present to start planning the future. Sometimes you’ve even decided to extend your trip, reschedule your flights and hit another destination nearby. If you’re so close, it’d be rude not to!

You want to visit every country on earth

The club that everyone who has caught the travel bug wants to be a part of. Only 199 people have travelled to every country in the world, with some even hitting every area of the globe twice! Not only will you get to experience the adventure of a lifetime but by achieving this dream of setting foot in 193 countries, but you will be a part of a very exclusive group of dedicated travellers.

This is not a goal for the faint-hearted, going country counting will bring to you to destinations off the beaten path, countries currently at war, countries with infamous dictators and regimes like North Korea and countries that are less travelled but have stolen your heart like the Comoros Islands or Sao Tome and Principle.

Don’t forget to share your journey with the world via Instagram and your travel blog, there are plenty of people who would like to follow in your footsteps and will appreciate your information on accessing notoriously hard visas to places like Eritrea or Iran.  

And if even after reaching this goal you fancy something else to work towards, join the elusive Most Travelled People group that breaks down locations into 891 places and countries to visit. This group includes islands, states and unrecognized countries. There are rules however and if you haven’t left the airport then it doesn’t count. Who are you kidding? If you want to set your sights even higher than 891 then look towards the Nomad Mania group which covers 1,281 different regions and areas around the world including Catalonia and Siberia. Challenge accepted!

Written by Sarah McCann, Blog Editor at MyBaggage.com luggage shipping specialists.