A gap year will be one of the most exciting times in your life. You will have the chance to go off traveling and exploring the world without a care in the world! There are many different places you can go and discover on your gap year. You’ll also find a variety of things you can do while you are away. Many will help you earn money to fund your travels while others will be just for fun! Are you looking for some unforgettable places to see on your gap year? Here are our top ideas.
Backpacking in Australia
Australia is always high on people’s to-do lists for their gap year. And the best way to make sure you see as much as possible is to backpack around the country. Start off on the west coast in Perth. This laid-back city has plenty of cultural highlights. Such as the former Fremantle Prison and the Art Gallery of Western Australia. Once you’re done here, head over to the east coast to get a taste of metropolitan life in Sydney and Melbourne. Don’t forget to stop off at the famous Bondi Beach to soak up some rays!
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Skiing in Canada
Do you dream of being able to hit the slopes every day? Then spend your gap year in Canada. During the winter, this country turns into a skier’s paradise. If you can afford it, you will be able to ski to your heart’s content. However, if you end up running out of cash, there is a simple remedy. Become a ski instructor! Each resort offers Complete Ski Instructor Courses. Once you are a qualified instructor, you can start to ski for money!
Volunteering in Africa
Many people want to do something good during their time away from home. One excellent way to give something back to society is to spend your gap year volunteering in a disadvantaged country. There are lots of charities that take people on gap years to Africa to help out in small villages. There are various jobs you might be doing while you’re out there. You could be involved with installing a well in the village. Or if you have some teaching experience, you could help out at the local school.
Work with animals
Do you want another fantastic and enriching experience for your gap year? Think about a project or volunteer work that involves working with animals. This can be a great experience if you are thinking about following a career as a vet. Most of these volunteering opportunities are in Thailand and South Africa. You could work on projects that help to rehabilitate orangutans or care for tigers before they are released into the wild. Even if you haven’t worked with animals in the past, you will still be able to help out with these kinds of projects. Many different skills are needed to ensure all the animals have well looked after. The quintessential travel format of choice is without a doubt – discounting, of course, a Phileas Fogg style adventure- ‘The Gap Year’, sparky fresh-faced eighteen-year-olds in baggy trousers and overstuffed backpacks all heading off to marvel at the wonders of distant shores for a year.
Can I tell you something? I simply cannot stand Gap Years; the concept of it, cv-enhancing, life experience, pre-prescribedness of it. Nope, don’t like it. Not a jot.
Before anyone takes offense, it’s not the people I have a problem with –unless they pilfer my prized jar of Nutella in the hostel pantry-, just the Gap Year itself.
Let’s start with the title because in its pomp it truly is a Title:
“What are you doing after your exams?”
“Oh you know,” looking down to inspect their fingernails with an overplayed lack of concern, “doing a Gap Year.”
To which the response is inevitably laden with ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ and enough sickly sweet admirations to make your stomach flip. Such admiration and awe, all because someone has chosen to jet off somewhere for a few months – seeing the world should be the norm.
Next up, the plain and simple, downright typicalness of it: a few friends, rucksacks and tickets to Australia/South East Asia/Europe (delete all which are not applicable) and that is a brief summary of about 95% of Gap Year itineraries. Not to mention that you can spot a Gap Year a mile off, which is probably how they manage to cluster and converge like raging river torrents, often to produce similarly disastrous effects if the conditions aren’t quite right. Travel used to be about broadening the mind, well if the Gap Year enclaves in well-worn hostels are anything to go by, that message has been lost. Gap Years return home, crowing all that the world has taught them. In reality, the more I travel, the more I realize how very little it is that I know.
And why oh why the sheer do-goodness of it all? I am all for volunteering, supporting good causes and generally just being a good human being but there is no need to go on about it. Congratulations! I beam with delight; you gave a begging child a whole $1/£1/€1 of your money – how generous! Now think, that kid has been sent to the streets because tourists feel are more likely to feel sorry for the raggedy child than their parents, at the expense of their chance at an education and any shot of getting out of poverty. Or there are those who humbly dedicate themselves for an entire week to some cause here or there; except they don’t really care or give their all. In fact, a lot of the time volunteers just get in the way a bit – I think the rule has to be only to offer your help with something that you are really willing a wishing to be a part of.
I’ll admit, I’m a cheapskate but only to a point. Loads of Gap Years involve such a tight budget that they forget to include fun in the plan. The issue is, unlike traveling as a lifestyle, Gap Years can’t live in a perpetual state of being broke because they have a deadline, where the adventure around the world ends and Real Life begins. One year, with no incomings, that will hit your pockets hard. This time constraint poses other issues, go fast or go slow? See every corner of the globe without actually Seeing it at all or settle somewhere so long that it becomes a home away from home and you may as well have never bothered with the flight in the first place. It’s a tricky conundrum and a hard equilibrium to strike.
Once it’s over then, I can never quite fathom how easily they slot back into Real Life as though the Gap Year was just a job to be ticked off of the list and the remaining evidence of photos to be confined to the murky depths of an external hard drive. Even worse though, are the people who can’t settle and yearn to leave again but don’t, precisely because the Gap Year is done and dusted and it’s time to grow up. In fact, I’ve hit the nail on the head. The problem is that ‘it’s just a Gap Year’ and then it’s all over. Why can’t we travel when we’re 30, 40, 50, 60, or 70? Why can’t we just dash off and leap into the childish thrill of experiencing something new?
Brand new Heineken campaign Voyage is the perfect example. Lucky participants are “dropped” into a tailored travel adventure that will be later broadcast. So far, so good! But, would you do it?
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